Commentary - Psalm 44:23-26

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 44 is a raw, corporate lament from the people of God. It begins with a confident recitation of God's mighty acts in the past (vv. 1-8), but then pivots sharply to a brutal description of their present reality: defeat, shame, and slaughter, despite their covenant faithfulness (vv. 9-22). This final section, verses 23-26, is the desperate, climactic cry for God to intervene. It is a prayer that borders on accusation, demanding to know why God appears to be asleep, inactive, and forgetful of His people's plight. This is not the prayer of those suffering for their own sin; the psalmist has already pleaded their innocence (vv. 17-22). Rather, it is the cry of the righteous martyr, suffering "for Your sake," a reality the apostle Paul quotes in Romans 8. The psalm, therefore, does not end in despair but in a desperate appeal to God's character, specifically His lovingkindness (hesed). It is a bold, honest, and faithful prayer that refuses to let God go, wrestling with Him in the darkness and demanding that He act in accordance with His own covenant promises.

This kind of prayer is deeply unsettling to a tidy, quiet-time piety. But it is thoroughly biblical. The people of God are not called to pretend that everything is fine when it is not. They are given permission, even encouraged, to bring their confusion, pain, and rawest emotions before the throne of grace. This is not a sign of unbelief, but of a robust faith that takes God at His word and holds Him to it. It is a faith that knows God is good and powerful, and therefore cannot reconcile His character with their present suffering, so it cries out for Him to bridge the gap. The ultimate answer to this cry, of course, is the cross, where God in Christ entered into the ultimate dereliction so that His people would never truly be forsaken.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 44 is a communal lament, a prayer from the nation as a whole. It is attributed to the Sons of Korah, who were temple musicians and Levites. This psalm is unique because of its strong assertion of national innocence. Unlike many other laments (e.g., Psalm 51, 79), there is no confession of sin. The suffering described is not presented as divine chastisement for apostasy. Instead, the psalmist argues that despite their faithfulness to the covenant, they are experiencing the curses of the covenant. This creates a profound theological tension. The psalm directly precedes Psalm 45, a royal wedding psalm celebrating the King, which points ultimately to Christ. The placement is instructive: the desperate cry of the faithful remnant in their suffering finds its ultimate answer in the glorious King and His bride, the Church. The anguish of Psalm 44 is the context for the triumph of the gospel.

Key Issues

Wrestling with a Sleeping God

One of the hardest things for a Christian to learn is how to pray honestly when everything is going wrong. We have a tendency to clean up our prayers, to put on a brave face, lest God think we are complaining. But the psalter is God's inspired prayer book, and it is filled with prayers that are anything but tidy. This psalm is a prime example. The people of God are in the crucible, and they are not pretending. They are not suffering because they've been wicked; in fact, the Apostle Paul takes a line from this very psalm to describe the normal Christian life of martyrdom (Rom. 8:36). They are suffering "for Thy sake."

And so they come to God and, in essence, grab Him by the lapels. "Wake up! Why are you sleeping?" This is shocking language. The Bible tells us elsewhere that the Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps (Ps. 121:4). The psalmist knows this. This is not a theological statement about God's ontology; it is a phenomenological cry from the depths of suffering. "God, from our perspective, it looks like you are asleep at the switch. It looks like you have forgotten us. It feels like you have rejected us." This is the prayer of faith, not unbelief. Unbelief just walks away. Faith stays and argues. Faith, like Jacob, wrestles with God in the dark and refuses to let go until it receives the blessing. This is the kind of raw, desperate, clinging faith that God honors.

Verse by Verse Commentary

23 Arouse Yourself, why do You sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not reject us forever.

The prayer explodes with a series of urgent imperatives. Arouse! Awake! The language is anthropomorphic, of course. The psalmist does not believe God is literally napping. He is using human language to describe the divine inaction from his desperate point of view. It is a bold, almost audacious, summons. It is the cry of a watchman on the walls shaking the king awake because the enemy is at the gates. The plea "do not reject us forever" shows that they feel utterly cast off. They are experiencing what feels like covenant rejection, and they are appealing to God's covenant loyalty, pleading that this apparent rejection not be a permanent state of affairs. They know God has promised never to ultimately cast off His people, and they are holding Him to that promise.

24 Why do You hide Your face And forget our affliction and our oppression?

The psalmist moves from commands to questions. "Why?" This is the quintessential cry of the sufferer. To hide one's face in the ancient world was an expression of disfavor and rejection. For God to hide His face was to withdraw His blessing and presence, the very source of Israel's life. The questions are accusatory. You are hiding. You are forgetting. Again, this is not a statement of settled theological conviction but an expression of agonizing reality. From the ground, in the midst of the affliction and oppression, it looks for all the world like God has become forgetful and distant. This is the very experience of dereliction that Christ Himself would cry out from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

25 For our soul has sunk down into the dust; Our body cleaves to the earth.

Here the psalmist provides the grounds for his desperate plea. He is describing a state of utter prostration and defeat. Their "soul," their very life, is in the dust of death and humiliation. Their body is stuck to the ground, unable to rise. This is a picture of complete helplessness. They are not just in a tight spot; they are pinned down, crushed, with the life being squeezed out of them. They have reached the end of their own strength. There is no human solution, no bootstraps by which they can pull themselves up. If help is to come, it must come from outside, from above. This confession of total inability is the necessary prelude to a genuine cry for redemption.

26 Rise up, be our help, And redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness.

The psalm concludes with one final, powerful appeal. "Rise up" echoes the "arouse" and "awake" from verse 23. It is a call for God to enter the battlefield as a warrior on their behalf. But the basis of the appeal is crucial. They do not ask to be redeemed because of their righteousness, though they have maintained it. They do not appeal to their own merit. The final plea is grounded entirely in the character of God: "redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness." The word is hesed, that great covenant term that combines love, loyalty, faithfulness, and mercy. They are saying, "God, act like Yourself. Be who You have promised to be. Your reputation is on the line. Redeem us, not because we are worthy, but because You are a God of steadfast love." This is the bedrock of all true prayer. Our only claim on God is God Himself.

Application

This psalm gives us permission to be honest with God. When we are suffering, particularly when we are suffering unjustly, we are not required to put on a plastic smile and pretend that our hearts are not breaking. God is big enough to handle our questions, our anger, and our confusion. He invites us to wrestle with Him. The man who shouts at God in prayer is still praying. The man who walks away in silent bitterness is not.

Second, this psalm teaches us where to ground our ultimate appeal. In the end, our hope is not in our circumstances, our feelings, or even our own faithfulness. Our hope is in the character of God. Our final plea must always be, "For the sake of Your lovingkindness." We come to God with empty hands, acknowledging our helplessness, and we cast ourselves entirely on His hesed. This is the heart of the gospel. We are not saved because we are good, but because He is merciful.

Finally, we must read this psalm through the lens of the cross. The ultimate answer to the cry, "Why do you hide your face?" is found at Calvary. God hid His face from His own Son, pouring out the full measure of covenant curse upon Him, so that He would never have to hide His face from us. Jesus was sunk down into the dust of death so that we could be raised to new life. He was rejected so that we could be accepted. Because He was forsaken, we can have the sure confidence that even when it feels like God is sleeping, His redeeming purpose is always at work, for the sake of His lovingkindness, a lovingkindness demonstrated definitively in the giving of His Son.