Ps. 44.1 (we heard with our ears)

“O God / we have heard / with our ears – our fathers / told us! – the deed / you did / in their days, - in the days / of old.”  It is an overgeneralization but true nonetheless: the king was appointed over Israel in order to be their protector from enemies. Perhaps his most central role was to command Israel in battle, to rid the land of oppressors and to, continuously, defend Israel against invading nations. For the king, therefore, it would be Israel’s past military acts of deliverance that would be the soil and sun on which he would feed. His office would have a unique perspective, then, on God’s covenantal relationship with Israel, as it related to his role in defending and safeguarding them. We find that here in the opening verse. Whereas the previous psalm (42,43) began with a meditation on the effect of being exiled from God’s face/temple and then flowed into memory of past feasts, here we have a recalling of God’s past actions of deliverance. Likewise, whereas the past feasts were the source of longing and hope, so too do the past stories of God’s military acts of deliverance become the cherished memories of the king. In other words, it is in those stories that the king sees the archetype (or, the measure) of his own role. It would, therefore, be a source of incredible joy to hear it spoken of. However, unlike in other royal psalms, this petition will not be based on personal experience; rather, these stories are only “heard with our ears” and were “in the days of old”. Psalm 42/43 dealt at great length with ‘seeing God’s face’; here, the only organ that can be employed is this memory-ear. This is not, however, to downplay the role of memory in our psalm. There is no indication that the king/psalmist somehow doubts the stories or that they do not have as much ability to inspire him as the vision of God’s temple in psalm 42/43. This is the reason for the interruption—“our fathers told us!”; the source is reliable. Although mediated, this memory will, as we will see, inspire some of the most bold and fervent prayers to God. I think there may be another reason the psalmist speaks about the fathers passing on the story: Yhwh, throughout the histories, but especially in the exodus, tells Israel to make sure to pass down the story from “father to son”. Hence, by interjecting this the psalmist is showing that, in fact, their fathers have not been derelict in their duty; they have maintained this portion of their covenantal obligation (something that will become central later on). The chain of covenantal observation has not been broken on their side.