Psalms 44:23

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

Awake: Psalms 7:6, Psalms 12:5, Psalms 35:23, Psalms 59:4, Psalms 59:5, Psalms 78:65, Isaiah 51:9, Mark 4:38

cast: Psalms 44:9, Psalms 74:1, Psalms 88:14

Reciprocal: 1 Kings 18:27 - must be awaked Esther 7:4 - to be destroyed Job 8:6 - he would Psalms 3:7 - Arise Psalms 9:19 - Arise Psalms 17:13 - Arise Psalms 42:9 - Why hast Psalms 74:3 - Lift Psalms 74:11 - pluck it out Psalms 80:2 - stir up Psalms 83:1 - Keep Jeremiah 14:9 - cannot Daniel 9:19 - defer Matthew 8:25 - and awoke Luke 8:23 - he fell

Cross-References

Genesis 43:3
But Judah replied, "The man solemnly warned us, 'You will not see my face again unless your brother is with you.'

Genesis 43:5
But if you will not send him, we will not go; for the man told us, 'You will not see my face again unless your brother is with you.'"

Genesis 44:15
"What is this deed you have done?" Joseph declared. "Did you not know that a man like me can surely divine the truth?"

Genesis 44:20
And we answered, 'We have an elderly father and a younger brother, the child of his old age. The boy's brother is dead. He is the only one of his mother's sons left, and his father loves him.'

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?.... Not that sleep properly falls upon God: the Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps; his eyes are always upon his people; he never withdraws them from them, and he watches over them night and day: but sometimes he seems and is thought to be asleep; as when wicked men flourish and triumph over the righteous, and go on in sin with impunity; when their judgment seems to linger, and their damnation to slumber, though it does not; and when the saints are under sore afflictions, and the Lord seems to disregard them, and does not appear for their deliverance; and when things are as when the disciples were in a storm, and Christ was asleep, to whom they said, "carest thou not that we perish?" and the Lord may be said to awake, and it is what is here prayed for, when he stirs up himself and takes vengeance on his enemies, as he will before long on antichrist and his followers; and when he takes in hand the cause and judgment of his people, and pleads it thoroughly, and delivers them out of the hands of all their oppressors, and gives them the dominion and kingdom under the whole heaven; see Isaiah 2:9;

arise; to revenge the blood of his people, and to have mercy on his Zion;

cast [us] not off for ever; as he might seem to do, by suffering their enemies to triumph over them; but in reality he does not; much less with loathing and abhorrence, as the word r used signifies, since his church is his Hephzibah, in whom he delights, Isaiah 62:4; and still less for ever, since his love to them is from everlasting to everlasting, and they shall be for ever with him; Isaiah 62:4- :.

r אל תזנח "ne abjicias cum fastidio", Gejerus.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Awake, why sleepest thou? - This is a solemn and earnest appeal to God to interpose in their behalf, as if he were “asleep,” or were regardless of their sufferings. Compare Psalms 3:7, note; Psalms 7:6, note; Psalms 35:23, note.

Arise, cast us not off for ever - Do not forsake us always. Compare Psalms 44:9. He had seemed to have cast them off; to have forgotten them; to have forsaken them utterly, and the psalmist, in the name of the people, calls on him not entirely to abandon them.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Psalms 44:23. Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? — That is, Why dost thou appear as one asleep, who is regardless of the safety of his friends. This is a freedom of speech which can only be allowed to inspired men; and in their mouths it is always to be figuratively understood.