Psalms 44:20

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹⁷All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten You or betrayed Your covenant. ¹⁸Our hearts have not turned back; our steps have not strayed from Your path. ¹⁹But You have crushed us in the lair of jackals; You have covered us with deepest darkness. ²⁰If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god,²¹would not God have discovered, since He knows the secrets of the heart? ²²Yet for Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. ²³Wake up, O Lord! Why are You sleeping? Arise! Do not reject us forever. ²⁴Why do You hide Your face and forget our misery and oppression? ²⁵For our soul has sunk to the dust; our bodies cling to the earth. ²⁶Rise up, be our help! Redeem us on account of Your loving devotion.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

If we: Psalms 44:17, Psalms 7:3-5, Job 31:5-40

stretched: Psalms 68:31, Exodus 9:29, 1 Kings 8:22, Job 11:13

Reciprocal: Deuteronomy 27:15 - and putteth Deuteronomy 32:18 - forgotten Job 13:23 - many Job 20:27 - heaven Job 31:7 - If my Psalms 9:17 - forget Psalms 69:5 - and my sins Psalms 88:9 - stretched Psalms 119:168 - for all my Psalms 143:6 - stretch forth 2 Corinthians 6:14 - for 1 John 3:20 - and

Cross-References

Genesis 35:18
And with her last breath-for she was dying-she named him Ben-oni. But his father called him Benjamin.

Genesis 37:3
Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons, because Joseph had been born to him in his old age; so he made him a robe of many colors.

Genesis 37:19
"Here comes that dreamer!" they said to one another.

Genesis 42:13
But they answered, "Your servants are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan. The youngest is now with our father, and one is no more."

Genesis 42:36
Their father Jacob said to them, "You have deprived me of my sons. Joseph is gone and Simeon is no more. Now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is happening against me!"

Genesis 42:38
But Jacob replied, "My son will not go down there with you, for his brother is dead, and he alone is left. If any harm comes to him on your journey, you will bring my gray hair down to Sheol in sorrow."

Genesis 44:7
"Why does my lord say these things?" they asked. "Your servants could not possibly do such a thing.

Genesis 44:8
We even brought back to you from the land of Canaan the money we found in the mouths of our sacks. Why would we steal gold and silver from your master's house?

Genesis 44:27
And your servant my father said to us, 'You know that my wife bore me two sons.

Genesis 44:30
So if the boy is not with us when I return to your servant, my father-his life is wrapped up in the boy's life-

Gill's Notes on the Bible

If we have forgotten the name of our God,.... As antichrist, and the antichristian party did in those times, Daniel 11:36;

or stretched out our hands to a strange god; as not to any of the Heathen deities under the Pagan persecutions, so not to any images of gold, silver, brass, and wood, under the Papal tyranny; not to the Virgin Mary, nor to angels and saints departed; nor to the breaden God in the mass, never heard of before; see Daniel 11:38.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

If we have forgotten the name of our God - That is, if we have apostatized from him.

Or stretched out our hands to a strange god - Or have been guilty of idolatry. The act of stretching out the hands, or spreading forth the hands, was significant of worship or prayer: 1Ki 8:22; 2 Chronicles 6:12-13; see the notes at Isaiah 1:15. The idea here is, that this was not the cause or reason of their calamities; that if this had occurred, it would have been a sufficient reason for what had taken place; but that no such cause actually existed, and therefore the reason must be found in something else. It was the fact of such calamities having come upon the nation when no such cause existed, that perplexed the author of the psalm, and led to the conclusion in his own mind Psalms 44:22 that these calamities were produced by the malignant designs of the enemies of the true religion, and that, instead of their suffering for their national sins, they were really martyrs in the cause of God, and were suffering for his sake.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Psalms 44:20. If we have forgotten the name of our God — That name, יהוה Jehovah, by which the true God was particularly distinguished, and which implied the exclusion of all other objects of adoration.

Or stretched out our hands — Made supplication; offered prayer or adoration to any strange god - a god that we had not known, nor had been acknowledged by our fathers. It has already been remarked, that from the time of the Babylonish captivity the Jews never relapsed into idolatry.

It was customary among the ancients, while praying, to stretch out their hands towards the heavens, or the image they were worshipping, as if they expected to receive the favour they were asking.