The believing people has suffered a defeat and complain to God.
① 1* 2With our ears, O God, we have heard; our ancestors have declared to us the works you did in their days of old. 3You drove out the nations and settled them in their land; you conquered the peoples to make room for them.
4For it was not with their own sword that they conquered the land nor were they victors by their own hand; but it was by your right hand and arm and by the light of your countenance; for you truly loved them.
5It is you, my King and my God, who ordain victories for Jacob.
6Through you we batter down our foes; through your name we shatter our enemies.
7For it is not in my bow that I trust, nor in my sword to make me victorious.
8But it is you who give us victory, you who bring our adversaries to shame.
9It is always in God that we find glory. Forever shall we praise your name.
10Yet now you have rejected and humbled us; you no longer go forth with our armies.
11You have let our enemies drive us back and our adversaries plunder us.
12You have let us be driven for slaughter like sheep, scattered among nations as captives.
13You have handed us over to them for nothing: the sale was of no benefit for you.
14You have made us the butt of our neighbors’ insult, the scorn and laughingstock of those around us. 15You have made us a byword among the nations; they look at us and shake their heads.
16All day long my disgrace is before me and shame covers my face, 17at the voice of the one who mocks and reviles, in the presence of the enemy and the avenger.
18All this has happened to us, although we have not forgotten you, nor have we been untrue to your covenant.
19Our heart has not turned back nor have our steps faltered; 20yet you have crushed us in the desert of the snakes and covered us with deep darkness.
21Had we forgotten the name of our God and stretched forth our hands to an alien god, 22God would have discovered this, for the secrets of the heart are not hidden from him.
23For your sake we are slain all day and accounted as sheep for slaughter.
24Awake, O Lord! Why are you asleep? Arise! Reject us not forever.
25Why hide your face from us? Why forget our misery and woes? 26Our souls are humbled in the dust, our bodies smashed to the ground.
27Come to our help, deliver us for the sake of your kindness.
- Everywhere, including Christian countries, Christians are only a minority among a mass of people of other religions, or far removed from faith in Christ. That is why we remember with nostalgia other times when everyone professed the same faith and took part in religious celebrations. The Jews were in a similar situation when this psalm was written. It must have been the time of the Maccabees, when a minority of believers were trying to uplift Israel in the face of Syrian persecution and the resignation of the majority. In a poetical contrast, the psalmist opposes the failure of the faithful troops to the triumphant conquest of Palestine, six centuries earlier when the Israelites left Egypt under the leadership of Moses and Joshua (vv. 2-9). Verses 10-17: These humiliated people express anguish at having lost God himself: he no longer does the wonders he did before to prove that he alone is God. Yet this passionate complaint (vv. 24-25) is not without hope: the psalmist is convinced that God is all-powerful and his love is faithful (v. 27). It is the same for us. We have good reason to be discouraged: how many counter testimonies! how many apostolic efforts that seem to fail; how God seems to let his Church get stuck in the mud of old, lifeless structures! _How the mission to the masses has been forgotten! Will God not come back? Whatever may be the responsibility of Christians in the actual situation, God still knows how to draw a greater good from it.
