23 No indeed, for Thy sake are we slain continually, "We are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
24 Awake then, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? Arouse Thyself, cast not off for ever !
25 Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face,
Why forgettest Thou our affliction and oppression 1
26 For our soul is bowed down to the dust, Our body cleaveth to the earth.
27 Oh arise for our help,
And redeem us, for Thy loving-kindness' sake.
The Korahitic Maskı̂l Psa 42:1-11, with its counterpart Psa 43:1-5, if followed by a second, to which a place is here assigned by manifold accords with Ps 42-43, viz., with its complaints (cf. PsPsa 44:26 with the refrain of Psa 43:1-5, Psa 42:1-11; Psa 44:10, Psa 44:24. with Psa 43:2; Psa 42:10), and prayers (cf. Psa 44:5 with Psa 43:3; Psa 42:9). The counterpart to this Psalm is Psa 85:1-13. Just as Ps 42-43 and Psa 84:1-12 form a pair, so do Ps 44 and Psa 85:1-13 as being Korahitic plaintive and supplicatory Psalms of a national character. Moreover, Psa 60:1-12 by David, Ps 80 by Asaph, and Ps 89 by Ethan, are nearest akin to it. In all these three there are similar lamentations over the present as contrasting with the former times and with the promise of God; but they do not contain any like expression of consciousness of innocence, a feature in which Ps 44 has no equal.
In this respect the Psalm seems to be most satisfactorily explained by the situation of the חסידים (saints), who under the leadership of the Maccabees defended their nationality and their religion against the Syrians and fell as martyrs by thousands. The war of that period was, in its first beginnings at least, a holy war of religion; and the nation which then went forth on the side of Jahve against Jupiter Olympius, was really, in distinction from the apostates, a people true to its faith and confession, which had to lament over God's doom of wrath in 1 Macc. 1:64, just as in this Psalm. There is even a tradition that it was a stated lamentation Psalm of the time of the Maccabees. The Levites daily ascended the pulpit (דוכן) and raised the cry of prayer: Awake, why sleepest Thou, O Lord?! These Levite criers praying for the interposition of God were called מעוררים (wakers). It is related in B. Sota 48a of
