Psalms 44:20 - Exposition

If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out (rather, spread out ) our hands to a strange god . If Israel had either forgotten the true God (see above, Psalms 44:17 ) or fallen away to the worship of false or strange gods—then her ill success against her foreign enemies would have been fully accounted for, since it would only have been in accordance with the threatenings of the Law (Le 26:14-17; Deuteronomy 28:15-23 ); but as she had done neither of these things, her defeats and depressed condition seemed to the psalmist wholly unaccountable. We trace here the same current belief, which comes out so strongly in the Book of Job—the belief that calamities were, almost of necessity, punishments for sin; and that when they occurred, and there had been no known precedent misconduct, the case was abnormal and extraordinary.