Psalms 44

God, we have heard it with our own ears. Our ancestors told us what you did in their time, in the days long ago.

1We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.

2With your own hand you drove out the other nations, and you planted our ancestors in their place. You crushed those peoples and forced them out.

2How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.

NoteThe KJV's "heathen" translates a Hebrew word that means simply "nations" or "peoples", here the peoples already living in Canaan before Israel settled there. In 1611 the word carried no suggestion of savagery. "Plantedst them" is a farming image: one crop pulled up by the roots and another set in the same soil.

3They did not take the land with their own swords. Their own strength did not bring them victory. It was your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your face, because you were pleased with them.

3For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto them.

Note"The light of your face" is a fixed idiom. A face turned toward someone and lit up means favor, welcome, attention; a face hidden or turned away means rejection. The same image returns, reversed, in verse 24.

4You are my King, God. Give the order for victories for Jacob's people.

4Thou art my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob.

NoteJacob was the ancestor who was renamed Israel; "Jacob" is a standard poetic name for the whole nation descended from him, used in place of the people's own name.

5Through you we push back the ones who fight us. Through your name we trample those who rise up against us.

5Through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us.

NoteThe Hebrew verb behind "push down" is the action of an ox goring, driving an opponent backwards with its horns.

6I do not put my trust in my bow. My sword cannot save me.

6For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me.

7But you are the one who saves us from our enemies. You put those who hate us to shame.

7But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us.

8We boast about God all day long, and we will praise your name forever. Selah.

8In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever. Selah.

NoteSelah appears throughout the Psalms and is probably a direction for performance, a pause, a musical interlude, or a change of instruments. Its exact meaning was already lost by the time of the earliest translations, so it is normally left untranslated.

9But now you have thrown us aside and shamed us. You no longer march out with our armies.

9But thou hast cast off, and put us to shame; and goest not forth with our armies.

NoteIsrael's armies expected God to march out with them, and a defeat was therefore described not as bad tactics but as God declining to come along.

10You make us turn and run from the enemy, and those who hate us take our goods for themselves.

10Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy: and they which hate us spoil for themselves.

11You have handed us over like sheep to be eaten. You have scattered us among the nations.

11Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat; and hast scattered us among the heathen.

NoteIn 1611 English "meat" meant food of any kind, not flesh in particular. "Sheep appointed for meat" are sheep set aside to be butchered and eaten.

12You sell your own people for nothing. You gain no profit from the price you get for them.

12Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth by their price.

NoteThe picture is of a trader who lets goods go so cheaply he makes nothing on the sale. The complaint is not that God sold them but that he got nothing whatever out of it.

13You make us something our neighbors sneer at. Everyone around us mocks us and laughs at us.

13Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us.

14You make us a byword among the nations, so people use our name as an insult and shake their heads at us.

14Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people.

NoteA "byword" is a nation whose name has become a proverb for disaster, the sort of name people use as a curse or a warning. Shaking the head at someone was a recognized gesture of mockery and contempt, not of sympathy or mild disapproval.

15My disgrace is in front of me all day long, and shame covers my face,

15My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me,

Note"Confusion" in the KJV means public disgrace and humiliation, not mental muddle. The word has narrowed since 1611.

16because of the voice of the one who taunts and insults us, and because of the enemy who is out for revenge.

16For the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth; by reason of the enemy and avenger.

NoteThe KJV's "blasphemeth" translates a Hebrew word meaning to revile, jeer at, or insult; it is aimed at the defeated people and at their God together, and is broader than the narrow religious sense the English word now has. The "avenger" is an enemy out to settle a score.

17All of this has come on us, and still we have not forgotten you. We have not been false to your covenant, the binding agreement you made with us.

17All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant.

NoteA covenant was a formal binding agreement of the kind made between a king and a people or between two rulers, setting out obligations on both sides. Israel's relationship with God was routinely described in these legal terms, which is why the speaker can insist on having kept his side of it.

18Our hearts have not turned back. Our steps have not wandered off your path,

18Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way;

19even though you have broken us badly in the place where jackals live, and covered us with the deepest darkness.

19Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.

NoteThe KJV's "dragons" renders a Hebrew word for jackals, scavenging wild dogs that haunt ruins and abandoned country. "The place of jackals" is desolate wasteland where nobody lives. "The shadow of death" translates a Hebrew word for the very deepest darkness; the ear can hear "death-shadow" in it, but the plain sense is pitch blackness.

20If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands in prayer to a foreign god,

20If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god;

NoteSpreading the hands out, palms open, was the ordinary bodily posture of prayer, so to spread your hands towards a god is to worship it. The KJV's "strange god" means foreign, a god belonging to some other nation, not a peculiar one.

21would God not have found it out? He knows the secrets of the heart.

21Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.

NoteIn Hebrew the heart is the seat of thought, planning and decision, closer to what we would call the mind than to the feelings.

22But it is for your sake that we are being killed all day long. We are treated as sheep to be slaughtered.

22Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

23Wake up! Why are you sleeping, Lord? Get up! Do not throw us aside forever.

23Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off for ever.

NoteTelling God to wake up is standard blunt language in the psalms of complaint, where sleep is a figure for not acting. Neighboring cultures used the same image of their own gods.

24Why do you hide your face and forget how we suffer and how we are crushed?

24Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression?

NoteHiding the face is the exact reverse of "the light of your face" in verse 3: turning away, withholding attention and favor.

25Our souls are pressed down into the dust. Our bodies lie flat against the ground.

25For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaveth unto the earth.

NoteLiterally "our belly clings to the earth", the posture of someone defeated or in mourning, lying face down in the dirt.

26Get up and help us. Set us free because of your faithful love.

26Arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies’ sake.

Note"Redeem" comes from family and property law: to buy something back, or to pay the price that frees a relative from slavery or debt. "Mercies" translates the Hebrew word chesed, the loyal, committed kindness owed to someone inside a binding relationship.