“For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
The complaint against God for apparent rejection and the request for vindication frame David's emotional state as abandonment despite the covenant relationship. The specific designation of God as the strength of David emphasizes that separation from God leaves him powerless and defenseless before enemies. The language of rejection and forgetting echoes Psalm 42, establishing continuity in the complaint and suggesting that these psalms address successive waves of the same spiritual crisis. The question about why God causes him to forget and casts him down frames the apparent divine action as the source of David's suffering. Yet the very act of complaint to God presumes God's attention and power, suggesting that David maintains faith in God's ability to intervene even while questioning God's willingness.
Church Fathers on Psalms 43:2
1. This Psalm is a short one; it satisfies the mental cravings of the hearers, without imposing too severe a trial on the hunger of those fasting. Let our soul feed upon it; our soul, which he who sings in this Psalm, speaks of as “cast down;” cast down, I suppose, either in consequence of some fist, or rather in consequence of some hunger he was in. For fasting is a voluntary act; being an-hungered is an involuntary thing. That which is an-hungered, is the Church, is the…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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