Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 44:12

"Thou sellest thy people for nought, And hast not increased [thy wealth] by their price." — Psalms 44:12 (ASV)

Thou sellest thy people for nought - The margin notes 'without riches,' meaning without gain or advantage; that is, for no price that would be an equivalent. The people were given up to their enemies, but there was nothing in return that would be of equal value. The loss was in no way made up. They were taken away from their country and their homes.

They were withdrawn from useful labor in the land. There was a great diminution of national strength and wealth, but there was no return to the land, no advantage, no valuable result that would be an equivalent for thus withdrawing them from their country and their homes. It was as though they had been given away.

A case may be supposed where the exile of a part of a people might be an advantage to a land, or where there would be a full equivalent for the loss sustained. For example, when soldiers go out to defend their country and repel a foe, they render a higher service than they could by remaining at home. Or, when colonists go out and settle in a new region, they produce valuable returns in commerce. Similarly, when missionaries go out among the pagan, they often produce, by a reflex influence, effects on the piety and prosperity of the churches at home that are more important and more widely diffused than would have been produced by their remaining to labor in their own country.

But no such valuable results occurred here. The idea is that they were lost to their homes, to their country, and to the cause of religion. It is not necessary to suppose that the psalmist here means to say that the people had been literally sold into slavery, although it is not in itself improbable that this had occurred. All that the words necessarily imply would be that the effect was as if they were sold into bondage. In Deuteronomy 32:30; Judges 2:14; Judges 3:8; Judges 4:2, 9; and Judges 10:7, the word used here is employed to express the fact that God delivered his people into the hand of their enemies. Any removal into the territories of the pagan would be a fact corresponding with all that is conveyed by the language used.

There can be little doubt, however, that (at the time referred to) those who were made captives in war were literally sold as slaves. This was a common custom. Compare the notes at Isaiah 52:3.

And dost not increase thy wealth by their price - The words “thy wealth” are supplied by the translators, but the idea of the psalmist is undoubtedly expressed with accuracy. The meaning is that no good result to the cause of religion, no corresponding returns, had been the consequence of thus giving up the people into the hand of their enemies. This may, however, be rendered, as DeWette translates it, “you have not enhanced their price;” that is, God had not set a high price on them, but had sold them for too little, or had given them away for nothing. But the former idea seems better to suit the connection and to convey more exactly the meaning of the original. So it is rendered in the Chaldee and by Luther.