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44. Psalm 44

¹ We have heard it with our ears, O God;
   our ancestors have told us
what you did in their days,
   in days long ago.
² With your hand you drove out the nations
   and planted our ancestors;
you crushed the peoples
   and made our ancestors flourish.
³ It was not by their sword that they won the land,
   nor did their arm bring them victory;
it was your right hand, your arm,
   and the light of your face, for you loved them.

    ⁴ You are my King and my God,
   who decrees Septuagint, Aquila and Syriac; Hebrew King, O God; / command victories for Jacob.
⁵ Through you we push back our enemies;
   through your name we trample our foes.
⁶ I put no trust in my bow,
   my sword does not bring me victory;
⁷ but you give us victory over our enemies,
   you put our adversaries to shame.
⁸ In God we make our boast all day long,
   and we will praise your name forever. The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here.

    ⁹ But now you have rejected and humbled us;
   you no longer go out with our armies.
¹⁰ You made us retreat before the enemy,
   and our adversaries have plundered us.
¹¹ You gave us up to be devoured like sheep
   and have scattered us among the nations.
¹² You sold your people for a pittance,
   gaining nothing from their sale.

    ¹³ You have made us a reproach to our neighbors,
   the scorn and derision of those around us.
¹⁴ You have made us a byword among the nations;
   the peoples shake their heads at us.
¹⁵ I live in disgrace all day long,
   and my face is covered with shame
¹⁶ at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me,
   because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge.

    ¹⁷ All this came upon us,
   though we had not forgotten you;
   we had not been false to your covenant.
¹⁸ Our hearts had not turned back;
   our feet had not strayed from your path.
¹⁹ But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals;
   you covered us over with deep darkness.

    ²⁰ If we had forgotten the name of our God
   or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
²¹ would not God have discovered it,
   since he knows the secrets of the heart?
²² Yet for your sake we face death all day long;
   we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

    ²³ Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep?
   Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.
²⁴ Why do you hide your face
   and forget our misery and oppression?

    ²⁵ We are brought down to the dust;
   our bodies cling to the ground.
²⁶ Rise up and help us;
   rescue us because of your unfailing love.

4. Thou, even thou, art my King, O God! In this verse the faithful express still more plainly what I have already alluded to a little before, namely, that the goodness of God was not only apparent in the deliverance of his people, but also flowed upon them in continued succession from age to age; and therefore it is said, Thou, even thou, art my King In my judgment, the demonstrative pronoun הוא, hu, imports as much as if the prophet had put together a long series of the benefits of God after the first deliverance; so that it might appear, that God, who had once been the deliverer of his people, did not show himself otherwise towards their posterity: unless, perhaps, it might be considered as emphatic, and employed for the purpose of asserting the thing stated the more strongly, namely, that the faithful praise God alone as the guardian of their welfare to the exclusion of all others, and the renunciation of aid from any other quarter. Hence they also present the prayer, that God would ordain and send forth new deliverances to his people; for, as he has in his power innumerable means of preservation and deliverance, he is said to appoint and send forth deliverances as his messengers wherever it seems good to him.