A CRY OF DISPAIR
Psalm 44:1-26.
This psalm is national in its character, having been written in behalf of the suffering Israelites at a time when their enemies were triumphant over them. Probably some reversal of circumstances in war with a foreign enemy. There were perhaps many such during the many wars of David, but the occasion is not indicated.
The psalm is divided into four parts.
Part 1: verses 1-8.
The psalmist tells about the mercies of God in the past and concludes that there will be effectual help in the current crisis. He shows his people how God in ancient times gave them the victory over all their enemies, 1-8.
His aim is to strengthen their confidence and form a basis on which to build his expectation of additional help.
While our situation may be different, there are principles that apply to God’s people today. So we may draw some helpful lessons and encouragement in time of trouble.
The psalmist begins with a reference to the time Israel inherited the promised land.
The Lord’s mighty works for Israel are rehearsed. 1-3.
Verse 1.
1 We have heard with our ears, O God,
Our fathers have told us,
The deeds You did in their days,
In days of old:
The Law required the Israelites to teach their children about God’s law and his dealing with his people in times past. A people that are not taught their history, especially in their relation with God are apt to depart from the faith.
This may refer especially to the revealed will of God, but I am persuaded that it also includes, at least in principle, the more immediate history of God’s people.
The value of parents teaching their children the marvelous things God has done for them in the past is clearly evident here. Had they not been taught, they could not remember, and therefore could not be encouraged by what God had done for them in the past.
We have both heard and heeded it with utmost attention and affection.
Three things are necessary to teaching and learning.
- Attention in him who hears, we have heard with our
ears. The best teacher cannot teach one who will
not listen. School teachers, preachers, etc.
- Authority in him that teaches, our fathers have told us.
The teacher must be reliable.
The things taught must be true.
- Love and respect between the teacher and the taught,
“our fathers.”
Verse 2.
2You drove out the nations with Your hand,
But them You planted;
You afflicted the peoples, and cast them out.
Israel had to fight to drive the Canaanites out, which they did under the leadership of Joshua.
But it was “with Your hand” that this was done.
The events referred to are well known being preserved in the book of Joshua.
When the Canaanites were expelled from the land by the decree of God, Israel was planted there. “You brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations [Gentiles] and planted it.” Psa. 80:8.
Verse 3.
3For they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword, Nor did their own arm save them;
But it was Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your countenance, Because You favored them.
It is not that the Israelites did not use the sword, but that it was not their sword alone that gave them victory. The victory was from the Lord, for Israel was greatly outnumbered and fought against skilled warriors with great walled cities. While Israel was not long from slavery and nomads in the wilderness. Not warriors.
So neither by their valor, nor cunning, nor for their merit, did they gain Canaan. It was a land of promise. But how did they conquer? By the right hand of the Lord, and by his arm; by his strength alone, and the light of his countenance—his favour most manifestly shown unto them.
So of our salvation. It requires obedience, but these are but the conditions God imposes. We are saved by grace.
The mercies which men enjoy come not through their own power and goodness, but through the power and goodness of God.
The Canaanites were as a bad tree planted in a good soil, and bringing forth bad fruit. God plucked up this bad tree from the roots, and in its place planted the Hebrews as a good tree, a good vine, and caused them to take root, and fill the land.
God will do so with any people that rebel against him and practice immorality. American take warning!
We see here the contrast in God’s dealings of with saints and sinners.
The Lord’s might works for Israel and in remembrance of them faith in the Lord is expressed. 4-8.
Verse 4.
4You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob.
Because you are our king, therefore deliver your people from their misery. Jacob is the children of Israel all of whom sprang from Jacob.
The psalmist speaks personally, but he speaks for the whole nation. His prayer is their prayer.
- Divine royalty acknowledged. 2. Royal interposition entreated. 3. Divine relationship is indicated in the word Jacob.
The appeal to God as their King shows their trust in his goodness and power.
Verse 5.
5Through You we will push down our enemies;
Through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us.
To push down is to overthrow and prostrate the enemies.
If you are with us, we will defeat our enemies as did our fathers in the time of Joshua. If you are with us, who can be successfully against us?
Literally “We will toss them in the air with our horn;” a metaphor taken from an ox or bull tossing the dogs into the air which attack him.
Through the name of Jehovah, the mighty one of Israel, the victory will come. His name stands for God himself: the infinite, the omnipotent, the eternal Being; whose power none is able to resist.
The name of God expresses the sum of his revealed attributes.
Verse 6.
6For I will not trust in my bow, Nor shall my sword save me.
The bow and sword are the main weapons of Israel.
He did not say he would not use his bow and sword, for by these he would gain the victory. God does not grant victory without effort on our part. But he would not trust in his bow or sword but in the Lord for victory.
Relinquishment of outward trusts. My bow may miss its aim, may be broken, may be snatched away. My sword may snap, or grow blunt, or slip from my hold. We may not trust in our abilities, our experience, our shrewdness, our wealth, etc. but in God.
Verse 7.
7But You have saved us from our enemies, And have put to shame those who hated us.
He speaks in the past tense of what God has done for Israel in the past, but with the expectation that the story of the past will repeat itself in the future.
God never failed to deliver his people when they trusted in him. There was no reason to suppose he would do so now.
One commentary summed it up: “Salvation completed, hell confounded, Christ exalted.”
Verse 8.
8In God we boast all day long, And praise Your name forever.Selah
We have told the heathen how great and powerful our God is. If you do not deliver us by your mighty power, they will not believe our report, but consider that we are held in bondage by the superior strength of their gods.
Their trust is in God and he is the object of their praise—worship—forever.
Part 2: Verses 9-16.
These verses form he second stanza, and are a loud and bitter complaint. God had recently dealt with Israel in a manner that seems to have cast them off.
Verse 9.
9But You have cast us off and put us to shame,
And You do not go out with our armies.
The confessed before that their strength came from the Lord, but now their strength has failed for God is not with them.
There are three complaints:
- God has cast them off.
- He had put them to shame.
- He no longer goes out with the armies.
In the discipline of his people, God sometimes forsakes them “for a small moment.” Isa 54:8-9. This is not a permanent forsaking for they still have their armies and go out to fight battles, but God is not with them.
As a result of this, they are put to shame by defeat.
Their enemies triumphed over them. But no evil can come upon them except by his permission, and for the purpose of purifying them from sin.
By such discipline God prepares his church for greater service in this world, and he thus prepares the faithful spiritual members of it for glory everlasting. When we have reverses or back sets, it may be that God is chastening us for better service.
Verse 10.
10You make us turn back from the enemy,
And those who hate us have taken spoil for
themselves.
God is not with them in batter so they must retreat before their enemy, a people who had them and their God. In putting the armies of Israel to flight, they leave behind their supplies and the enemy takes these as spoil, or they must abandon houses and land that are taken by the enemy. We see the cause and the effect of God’s absence.
No greater calamity can befall the church that for it to behave in such a manner that God forsakes it, leaving it prey to false teaching and false practice that will eventually turn the church into a worldly institution.
The enemy finds delight in the defeat of the church.
Verse 11.
11You have given us up like sheep intended for food,
And have scattered us among the nations.
There is no much hope for sheep that are intended for food. This does not mean the complete destruction of the people but in their defeat it seems the destruction is near.
The scattering does not necessarily refer to the nation being scattered by captivity, but it may refer to many of the people being taken captive and sold into slavery in other nations. This seems to be borne out by the next verse.
Verse 12.
12You sell Your people for next to nothing,
And are not enriched by selling them.
God sells them in the sense that he allows it.
They are as slaves who are sold for a low price. The seller does not look for him who offers the most, but takes the first offer. The implication is that so many are taken captive that the supply is abundant meaning low prices.
Another way of looking at this is that God delivered them into the hands of their enemies, like a slaver selling slaves, but instead of selling them he gives them away, or sells the cheap—“two for the price of one.”
Verses 13-14.
13You make us a reproach to our neighbors,
A scorn and a derision to those all around us. 14You
make us a byword among the nations,
A shaking of the head among the peoples.
The pagan nations looked upon them as having a weak God that could not deliver them in battle. So they became a reproach, a scorn, and a derision to all the nations around them. They are a byword among the nations and a shaking of the head among them. They had become subjects of contempt before the world.
Verses 15-16.
15My dishonor is continually before me,
And the shame of my face has covered me,
16Because of the voice of him who reproaches and
reviles, Because of the enemy and the avenger.
The psalm adds up the shame of Israel in its defeat line by line. We see now the effect of the defeat: the psalmist’s face is covered with shame, his dishonor is continually on his mind.
It is not only the defeat that is shameful, but the derision of the enemy because of it.
Part 3: Verses 17-22.
We have seen how God blessed his people in times past, giving them victory over their enemies in the conquest of Canaan. Then we see the plight of the people because God has forsaken them to their enemies and great shame is upon the nation.
Now in the third stanze of the psalm, the faithfulness of Israel is aroused. The psalmist maintains that the calamities that have befallen Israel are not the result of their own faults, nor was it deserved. He protests that they have been faithful to the Lord, free from idolatry, have been obedient, and faithful in their conduct and life.
He says they have not apostatized and calls on God to confirm his assertion.
Verses 17-18.
17All this has come upon us;
But we have not forgotten You,
Nor have we dealt falsely with Your covenant.
18Our heart has not turned back,
Nor have our steps departed from Your way;
All these evils have come upon Israel, but he denies it is justified. The psalmist claims that:
- We have not forgotten you.
- We have not dealt falsely with God’s covenant.
- Their heart had not turned back from him.
- They had not departed from his way.
We are reminded of Job who suffered greatly although he had been faithful to the Lord all the time.
Not only had they not forsaken the Lord or proved to be unfaithful, but they remained faithful even when these things came upon them.
This is the attitude the Christian must hold to, for all affliction that befalls us is not the result of our sin. We may not understand why bad things happen to us, but we must remain faithful to the Lord come what may. While we do not see the reason, God is in control.
Verses 19-20.
19But You have severely broken us in the place of
jackals, And covered us with the shadow of death.
20If we had forgotten the name of our God,
Or stretched out our hands to a foreign god,
Jackals are wild fox-like animals who dwell in desert places. The term is probably figurative. A figure of impending death as the rest of the verse indicates.
Clarke: “Thou hast delivered us into the hands of a fierce, cruel, and murderous people. We, as a people, are in a similar state to one who has strayed into a wilderness, where there are no human inhabitants; who hears nothing round about him but the hissing of serpents, the howling of beasts of prey, and the terrible roaring of the lion; and who expects every moment to be devoured.”
The nation is described as completely enveloped in the dense darkness of despair and death, covered up as though confined in hopelessness
Verses 21-22.
21Would not God search this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
22Yet for Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
They call upon God to witness that they were upright toward him. He knows the secret of the heart. If they had secretly worshiped idols or committed sins, God would know. This affirmation is similar to Paul called upon to witness the integrity of his heart.
Verse 22 shows that they not only were not suffering for any wrong they had done but that they were suffering because of their faithfulness to God. Paul quotes this verse in Rom. 8:36 to describe Christians in the early church who were persecuted for their faith.
While we do not commonly think of Israel in the Old Testament as suffering persecution, it seems from this that God may have tested Israel as he tested Job. And what a powerful lesson that should be for us. We suffer much in this life for reasons other than punishment for sin. We should not look upon everything bad that happens as being the result of some evil we have done.
Part 4: Vereses 23-26.
The psalmist ends the psalm with an appeal to God after he had made his case. and the Lord for deliverance from their enemy. Psa. 44:23-26.
Verses 23-24;
23Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord?
Arise! Do not cast us off forever.
24Why do You hide Your face,
And forget our affliction and our oppression?
It appears to the psalmist that the Lord is indifferent to his prayer. God is certainly not sleeping.
He delay in answering our prayer must have some purpose, although we may not understand it.
Psa. 121:4, “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
We have a contrast to what God is in reality, and what he seems to be to us.
The weakness of our faith is open to the temptation of supposing that God regards not the situation of his people in the world; and the Spirit, who knows our infirmities, provides a petition suited to this trial, which expresses at the same time an expectation that God will arise to claim his people as his own.
Clarke: “That is, Why dost thou appear as one asleep, who is regardless of the safety of his friends. This is a freedom of speech which can only be allowed to inspired men; and in their mouths it is always to be figuratively understood.”
Milton, Paradise: “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even those who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep.”
Verse 24 is a plea for God to answer why he seemingly has deserted his people.
What we need to learn is that while it may seem that God has deserted us, that he does not answer our petitions, and while our soul may cry out for an explanation, still we simply must trust him to do what his knows is best.
Verses 25.
25For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
Our body clings to the ground.
This describes the plight of God’s suffering people. Body and soul are bowed down in the dust of the ground.
Is this their attitude in prayer? It could well be.
Or is he saying our life is drawing near to the grave. If you delay to help us, we shall become extinct?
It could be both!
The speech is metaphorical, expressing the depth of their misery, or the greatness of their sorrow and humiliation. 1. The depth of their misery, with the allusion to the case of a man overcome in battle, or mortally wounded, and tumbling in the dust, or to a man dead and laid in the earth.
- The greatness of their sorrow and humiliation; and so the allusion is taken from a man prostrate and grovelling on the ground, which was their posture of humbling themselves before the Lord, or when any great calamity befell them. As when Herod Agrippa died, they put on sackcloth and lay upon the earth weeping.
26Arise for our help,
And redeem us for Your mercies’ sake.
Here is the psalmist’s plea. He has not abandoned God, but yet clings in hope that he will redeem them for the sake of his mercy.
Clarke: In this Psalm are livelily expressed the sufferings, the complaints, the assurances, the petitions which are offered to God by good men, who suffer, together with others, in the common afflictions that God brings on his people.
Someone has said: “Were I a martyr at the stake. I would plead my Saviour’s name, Intreat a pardon for his sake, And urge no other claim.”
While the psalm does not end with God’s response, he ends with hope.
A fit prayer for souls under conviction, for saints under trial or persecution, and for the church under oppression or decay.