Psalm 44 Bible study: For your sake

Psalm 44 is titled "For the Chief Musician. By the sons of Korah. A contemplative psalm" (44:1), and it speaks mostly as "we", God's people, with a single voice now and then speaking of my King, my sword and my dishonor (44:4, 44:6, 44:15). It opens with what the people were told: "We have heard with our ears, God; our fathers have told us what work you did in their days, in the days of old" (44:1). What they were told is that the land was God's doing: "For they didn’t get the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face" (44:3) (tap save). The psalm says it of the present too, first in the single voice, "For I will not trust in my bow, neither will my sword save me" (44:6), and "In God we have made our boast all day long" (44:8). Then the psalm turns: "But now you rejected us, and brought us to dishonor, and don’t go out with our armies" (44:9) (tap reject). From there to 44:14 every verse says what God has done to them: "You make us turn back from the adversary" (44:10), "You have made us like sheep for food" (44:11), "You sell your people for nothing" (44:12), "You make us a reproach to our neighbors" (44:13), "You make us a byword among the nations" (44:14). The psalm says the victories of the past were God's doing, and it says the defeat of the present is his doing too.

Psalms 44:22→leads toRomans 8:37-39

The psalm says, "Yes, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are regarded as sheep for the slaughter" (Psalm 44:22). Paul (Romans 1:1) asks, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Romans 8:35), and quotes the psalm's words: "Even as it is written, “For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”" (Romans 8:36). Romans has no Yes, has "We were accounted" where the psalm has "We are regarded", and doesn't name the psalm. Then: "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37), and nothing "will be able to separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). Paul applies the psalm's words to "us" (Romans 8:35), not to Jesus; Romans doesn't say the psalm speaks of Jesus. It is Paul's argument that goes on from the psalm's words to the love of God in Christ Jesus.

שָׁכַחshakhachsay sha-KHAKH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "forget". Strong's: "to mislay, i.e. to be oblivious of, from want of memory or attention". The psalm has it three times. Twice it is the people's: "yet we haven’t forgotten you" (44:17), and "If we have forgotten the name of our God" (44:20). The third time it is a question to God: "Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?" (44:24). Moses had used it as a warning: "if you shall forget the LORD your God" (Deuteronomy 8:19). The Psalms have it 33 times in Hebrew.