A Description Of What God Has Done For His People In The Past (Psalms 44:1-3).
The Psalmist first calls to mind how it was God Who gave His people victory when they initially took possession of the land of Canaan.
‘We have heard with our ears, O God,
Our fathers have told us,
What work you did in their days,
In the days of old.
The people (‘we') call to God and describe what they have learned from their fathers in the past, of how God had acted for them in days of old. Each year at their festivals these things would be recalled, and read out to them as a reminder of God's graciousness in the past, and especially so at the end of the seven year cycle. Compare Exodus 23:14-17; Exodus 24:7; Deuteronomy 16:16; also note Deuteronomy 31:11-13; Deuteronomy 31:24-28.
‘Our fathers have told us.' It was the responsibility of every father to make his family aware of YHWH's deliverance of His people from Egypt at the Feast of the Passover (Exodus 12:26-27; Exodus 13:8), and to make known His word daily (Deuteronomy 11:19).
‘You drove out the nations with your hand,
But them you planted,
You afflicted the peoples,
But them you spread abroad.
On the one hand He had driven out the nations with His hand, on the other He had planted and established His own people in their place. On the one hand He had afflicted the peoples, and on the other He had spread His own people abroad throughout the land.
The picture is possibly of a tree which is firmly planted, and then grows and spreads out its leafy branches (compare Psalms 80:8-11). The idea of His people being ‘planted' is a common one in Scripture (e.g. Exodus 15:17; 2 Samuel 7:10). It is applied in Isaiah 61:3 to those who will be restored to God by the coming Anointed Prophet, ‘that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of YHWH', compare Matthew 15:13 where those who are not of the Father's planting will be rooted up.
‘For they did not get the land in possession by their own sword,
Nor did their own arm save them,
But your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance,
Because you were favourable to them.
And it was God Who had done it. For it was not by their sword that they took possession of the land, nor as a result of the exercise of the strength of their own arm that they were saved (although they used both. Trust in God is no excuse for not acting ourselves where possible). Rather it was God's right hand, and His arm, and the fact that He was looking on them with love and favour, that was responsible for their success.
The thing that stood out to them in their history was the amazing way that time and again God had openly acted on their behalf when they themselves were in dire straits.