This psalm is a community lament, that is, a song for when the people of God as a whole have suffered some great calamity at the hands of their enemies and are now seeking help from God, asking him to rouse himself to come to the help of his people.370 The calamity is particularly painful because God has chosen his people, given them a special place, and favored them over their enemies in the past. In this particular case the people profess that they are innocent of anything that might explain the calamity as a chastisement; at the same time, they also reiterate their trust and loyalty toward the Lord. The unintelligibility of the circumstances heightens the pain of the suffering, and this in turn heightens the poignancy of the trust.

The psalm suits a calamity for the whole community (as opposed to a more individual trouble), as we can see from the frequent “we,” “us,” and “our.” This corporate focus, however, is not impersonal; each member of the congregation identifies with the whole people, using the singular “I” (vv. 4, 6, 15). When the worshiping congregation sings this, it does more than simply present the request to God; it remind itself of its privileged standing with God, of the obligation to faith and holiness laid upon it, and of God’s unfailing loyalty to his purpose for his people (cf. Psalms 74; 77; 79; 80; 83). In some of the community laments the cause for the calamity is mysterious (as here); in others it is acknowledged as being due to the people’s unfaithfulness (e.g., 79:8).

The flow of the psalm is straightforward: it begins by recounting the ways in which God has saved his people in the past (44:1–8) and then moves on to the current circumstances of distress (vv. 9–16). In both these sections the focus is on what God has done—in saving his people and then in bringing calamity upon them. The third stanza (vv. 17–22) explains why the circumstances are so perplexing: “We have not forgotten you” (v. 17). The final stanza (vv. 23–26) begins and ends with prayer: “Awake! . . . Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!” (v. 23) and “Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us” (v. 26).

  I.  We Have Heard What You Did for Us in the Past (44:1–8)

  II.  But Now You Have Rejected Us (44:9–16)

  III.  But We Have Not Forsaken You (44:17–22)

  IV.  Therefore Come Now to Help Us (44:23–26)

The psalm shows a high level of cohesion, particularly in the way it repeats words. For example, the term “save” (or “salvation”) appears four times in the first stanza as something God has provided in the past (vv. 3, 4, 6, 7). In contrast to God’s having “put to shame those who hate” his people (v. 7), in the current distress “shame has covered [the singer’s] face” (v. 15). God has “rejected” the people (v. 9), and the psalm asks him not to “reject [them] forever” (v. 23). The people have become “sheep for slaughter” (vv. 11, 22). The comments below will draw out more of the cohesive elements in the psalm.

As I have said above, this is a corporate lament, suited for a time of deep distress for God’s people, when there is no obvious charge of unfaithfulness that can be leveled against the corporate life of God’s people. The distress is therefore unintelligible. The song guides the faithful in laying their perplexity and objections before God in trusting prayer when the more “natural” response might be to rail against him. As with other psalms, it would require conscientious pastoral judgment to decide when to use this song.

This need for pastoral judgment in the choice of the psalm for a particular service enables us to evaluate proposals to read the psalm as representing a protesting voice within Israel. For example, Dalit Rom-Shiloni suggests that there were two

antagonistic social and literary circles. One set of voices expresses mainstream, “orthodox” thinking, which justifies the actions of God and thus places the blame on the people for their distressing present circumstances. This line of thought is expressed independently by prophetic, priestly, and historiographic circles. The second set of voices can only be characterized as antagonistic to the first, expressing “nonorthodox” views; this grouping is represented by the Book of Lamentations, the communal laments, and diverse quotations in the prophetic books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Psalm 44 can be ascribed to the second set of voices.374

A number of factors lead us away from this kind of analysis. For one, the Psalter as it exists now is what we have, and the meaning of a psalm is its function in the Psalter we have. Further, the community laments suit different kinds of occasions, and the priests in charge must decide which to use. Whatever might have been the processes by which particular compositions became part of the canonical book, the Psalter’s current function is to provide a resource for liturgical response to a variety of circumstances.

We can appreciate the rhetoric of the psalm in two directions. The first way is the way in which it serves as a prayer and thus as a means of “persuading” God to act. The psalm recalls God’s past actions, which display his character and his choice of Israel, and thus appeals to his “steadfast love” as the basis for its request. The other kind of rhetorical impact is seen in how the psalm shapes the praying community. It enables them to put words to their feelings and leads them to humble and determined trust in the midst of their perplexity—without offering easy answers. Loren Crow observes, “Psalm 44 provides a window into the vibrant faith of a community whose whole world was collapsing, and which had no alternative but to blame that collapse on God, but whose appeal is nonetheless to One who cares.”375 I would prefer to say that it shapes such a community into one with a vibrant faith, since that is what a lament psalm does.

The apostle Paul applies verse 22 to the experiences of Christians such as himself in Romans 8:35–39:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

   “For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

    we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Christian churches may well encounter such experiences, with the same kind of unintelligibility as those presupposed in Psalm 44. Paul never suggested that believers would be able to discern how “all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28; cf. Response section on Psalm 37); rather, on the ground of the love shown in Christ Jesus they can offer their prayers for relief in trust. As John Stott put it,

A willingness for martyrdom is certainly the final test of Christian faith and faithfulness. In order to enforce this, the apostle quotes from a psalm, which depicts the persecution of Israel by the nations. They were not suffering because they had forgotten Yahweh or turned to a foreign god. Instead, they were suffering for Yahweh’s sake, because of their very loyalty to him. . . . Nevertheless, can pain, misery and loss separate Christ’s people from his love? No! On the contrary, far from alienating us from him, in all these things (even while we are enduring them) Paul dares to claim that we are more than conquerors.376Psalm 44

Psalm 45