Psalm 44:20

Psalm 44:20, in plain English

The psalmist is about to make a final protestation: If we had forgotten You or worshipped foreign gods, then Your punishment would make sense. But we haven't, so what's happening?

Why it's here

This verse sets up the final argument. The psalmist is saying: The only way Your treatment of us would be justified is if we had abandoned You for other gods. But we haven't done that, so the punishment is undeserved.

Who's speaking

The psalmist, introducing the final piece of their complaint to God.

Where it sits in the story

This is a conditional statement that will lead into the psalm's final verses—the ultimate appeal to God based on the covenant that should still hold between them.

The scholarly reading

The conditional statement—if Israel had abandoned monotheism or engaged in idolatry—establishes the counterfactual: our suffering cannot be justified by such violations, because they never occurred.

Language and setting

The hypothetical protasis 'If we had forgotten the name of our God' introduces the thought-experiment that confirms Israel's righteousness by negation. The phrase 'spread out our hands to a foreign god' (פרשנו כפינו לאל זר, parashan kapenu le-el zar) employs the gesture of worship and supplication extended toward alien deities. By positing what they have NOT done, the psalmist strengthens the claim that the covenant curses (defeat, humiliation) have been applied without corresponding violation—hence the cosmic injustice at the psalm's core.

Voice

The community's voice reaches its most legalistic-argumentative register, employing conditional rhetoric to fortify the claim of innocence.

Significance

This legal-defensive posture anticipates the theodicean arguments of Job, where Job protests his suffering through systematic denial of guilt categories. The logic—'if X, then curse would be justified; but not-X, so curse is unjust'—establishes the grammar of protest that characterizes lament psalms and reaches its culmination in Christ's unanswered question, 'Why have you forsaken me?'

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.

Read all of Psalm 44 — We haven't forgotten You — so why have You forgotten us? Israel cries out from defeat they didn't earn. Sometimes the godly suffer too.