What Our Fathers Told Us
For the director of music. A wisdom psalm of the sons of Korah.
The people recite the conquest their fathers described, then set it against the present: routed, plundered, sold cheap, a joke among the nations — and, they insist, without having abandoned the covenant. The prayer ends by asking their Father why he sleeps.
44 1O our Father, we have heard with our own ears; our fathers have told us the work you did in their days, in the days of old. 2With your own hand you drove out the nations, but you planted our fathers; you crushed the peoples, but you set our fathers free. 3For they did not take the land by their own sword, and their own arm did not save them; but it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face—because you delighted in them.
4You are my King, our Father; command the victories of Jacob. 5Through you we push back our foes; through your name we trample those who rise against us. 6For I do not trust in my bow, and my sword does not save me. 7But you have saved us from our foes and put to shame those who hate us. 8We have boasted in our Father all day long, and we will praise your name forever. a a v8 Selah: a musical or liturgical marker in the psalm, likely signalling a pause or moment of quiet reflection.
9Yet now you have rejected us and disgraced us, and you no longer go out with our armies. 10You make us retreat before the foe, and those who hate us plunder us at will. 11You hand us over like sheep to be eaten, and you have scattered us among the nations. 12You sell your people for next to nothing and gain nothing from their sale. 13You make us a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and scorned by those around us. 14You make us a byword among the nations, a people that other nations shake their heads at. 15All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face, 16at the voice of the taunter and abuser, in the face of the enemy who takes revenge.
17All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you, and we have not betrayed your covenant. 18Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps strayed from your path, 19though you have crushed us in the haunts of jackals and covered us with deep darkness. 20If we had forgotten the name of our Father or stretched out our hands to a foreign god, 21would our Father not have discovered it? For he knows the secrets of the heart. 22Yet for your sake we are killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. b b v22 Paul lifts this very cry to describe believers who suffer for following Jesus — yet "in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:36-37). The Father never abandons his children, even when faithfulness costs everything.
23Awake! Why do you sleep, Sovereign Father? Rouse yourself; do not reject us forever. 24Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction and our oppression? 25For we are bowed down to the dust; our body clings to the ground. 26Rise up and help us! Redeem us for the sake of your covenant love.
