READ: Ps. 44:1–26: You have cast off the nations with Your hand … I will not trust in my bow, nor shall my sword save me … You save us from our enemies … nevertheless … You have given us up like sheep for food … for Your sake we are killed all day long … Awake! Do not cast us off forever … redeem us …
In His good pleasure God delivered His people from their enemies and gave them the promised land. The poet points to the special character of God’s gracious election as His work without the merits of Israel. It was not their sword, but God’s right hand that protected them (v.4). He also preserves them in the land assigned to them. There is every reason to praise God forever for this (v.9).
From verse 10 onward the tone of the psalmist changes. From praise he turns to lament. The reason is the change he observes in God’s acts. God no longer goes out before them against their adversary, but gives them over to him, so that he plunders them and brings them into distress.
Israel feels not only abandoned and rejected by God, but also given over as spoil to the nations. They are helplessly scattered among the heathen and become an object of their reproach and mockery (vv.10–17). They have become “sheep for slaughter”: sheep that have no other purpose than to be butchered for consumption (cf. Rom. 8:36).
These developments lead the poet to self-examination: is there guilt with us because we have denied God’s covenant or forgotten God and His great deeds? Have we served foreign gods?
The poet knows that this is not so. He also knows that this is not the reason for their punishment before God. In verse 23 he says: “Yet for Your sake we are killed all day long.” Not because of our sins, but for Your cause this has happened (cf. Belgic Confession art. 37).
This Psalm verse is quoted in Rom. 8:36, and certainly also applies now that Christ has paid for our sins. Therefore we may also take verses 24–26 into our prayers to the Lord in faith: “Arise for our help, and redeem us for Your mercies’ sake,” as You have shown them in Christ.
Do you examine yourself in adversity as in vv.18–22?
Singing: Ps. 44:2,4,9