Ps. 44.4 (praise and the implied petition)

“You are / my king and / my God, - the one / who commanded / Jacob’s victory.” At this point the psalm, importantly, shifts into the present. We are now moving out of the realm of memory and are focusing the attention on the present situation. It is key, then, to look at how the psalmist sets the stage for the present in light of the story he has just told. In verses 2-3, as we saw, the action was solely and entirely on God. Not only was his action emphasized to the exclusion of human action, but human action was explicitly relativized. As we saw in our reflection on those verses, the purposes of this dual movement was in order to appeal to God to act, now, as he did in the past. In other words, by painting such a stark picture, the psalmist, by implication, is saying that God is, now, not acting as he did in the past; whereas he seemed so “present” then, he seems largely ‘absent’ now (this becomes very clear in the concluding verses). With that in mind, this statement as a transitional statement into the present makes a great deal of sense. The psalmist is alleging continuity (“the one who commanded Jacob’s victory”—here alluding to a rather ancient designation of Israel) and asserting that God is his Warrior King and his God. The covenantal relationship  (“You will be my people, and I will be your god”) is alluded to here as continuing. No matter how absent (or, aloof) God seems to be, the psalmist will maintain a resolute faith in God as “my King and my God”. He will, by force of memory, pull his past character as Jacob’s deliverer, into the present. The king is placing himself, centrally, in trust in God. This is the first ‘action’ taken by the king (everything else has emphasized what he/they haven’t done). From this point on, the present will be infused by the duality of God enlivening his people in battle; the following verse will, in somewhat contrast to verse 3, state that “With you we push back our enemies…”. And, finally, the emphasis here on God as “king” is instructive—as we will see, the psalmist will frequently alludes to Israel being abandoned “like sheep for slaughter”. The image here is of a negligent shepherd who has not attended to his flock. As we know, the image of the ‘shepherd’ in the Mediterranean world alludes to the king (the ‘shepherd of his flock’). He is to take care of his people (‘lay down his life’) in the same manner and with the same concern. By stating that God is “my king”, therefore, he is invoking the duties of a king to his flock, and, in the context of this psalm, that certainly involves, at the least, protection. So, just as the memory of the past served to highlight the condition of the present, so too does his assertion of God as King serve to attempt to ignite in God his ‘shepherd’ role over his flock (see vs. 11 and 22).