"We haven’t been false to your covenant" (44:17). Can a whole people say that?

First, what the psalm says, and what it doesn't. It doesn't say the people never sinned. It names particular things: "yet we haven’t forgotten you. We haven’t been false to your covenant" (44:17), and "Our heart has not turned back, neither have our steps strayed from your path" (44:18). Then it puts that before God to test: "If we have forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a strange god, won’t God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart" (44:20-21) (tap secrets). Search is chaqar, and the Psalms have it in only two other verses: "LORD, you have searched me, and you know me" (Psalm 139:1), and "Search me, God, and know my heart" (Psalm 139:23). Other psalms also speak of the psalmist's integrity: "Judge me, LORD, according to my righteousness, and to my integrity that is in me" (Psalm 7:8). The chapters on Psalms 7, 17 and 26 take up whether such words mean a person never sinned. Psalm 44 names no sin as the reason for what has come on the people, and it leaves its claim with God, who "knows the secrets of the heart" (44:21). These notes don't judge the claim either way.