John Calvin Commentary Psalms 44:25

"For our soul is bowed down to the dust: Our body cleaveth unto the earth." — Psalms 44:25 (ASV)

For our soul is humbled to the dust. The people of God again lament the greatness of their calamities. So that God may be more inclined to help them, they declare to Him that they are afflicted in an extraordinary way. By the metaphors they use here, they mean not only that they are cast down, but also that they are crushed and laid on the earth, so that they are unable to rise again.

Some understand the word soul to mean the body, so that this verse would repeat the same idea; but I prefer to understand it as the part in which human life consists, as if they had said, 'We are cast down to the earth and lie prostrate on our belly, without any hope of getting up again.'

After this complaint, they add a prayer (Psalms 44:26) that God would arise for their help. By the word redeem, they do not mean an ordinary kind of help, because there was no other way to ensure their preservation except by redeeming them. Yet, there can be no doubt that they diligently meditated on the great redemption from which all the deliverances God daily brings about for us—when He defends us from dangers by various means—flow like streams from their source.

In a previous part of the psalm, they had boasted of the steadfastness of their faith; but to show us that, in using this language, they did not boast in their own merits, they do not claim here any recompense for what they had done and suffered for God. They are content to ascribe their salvation to the unmerited goodness of God as its sole cause.