Israel shall cry unto me, My God, we know thee. The more literal as well as more exact rendering is, to me wilt they cry, My God, we know thee, we Israel! Notwithstanding their provocation, their unfaithfulness to the covenant of God, and their disobedience to the Law, they appeal unitedly and severally to God in the day of their distress, and urge two pleas—their knowledge of God, or acknowledgment of him as the true God; and their high position as his people.
Thus the Chaldee paraphrase has: "As often as calamity comes upon them they pray and say before me, Now we acknowledge that we have no God beside thee; deliver us, because we are thy people Israel." As to the construction, either "Israel" is in apposition to anachnu, the subject of the verb, or there is a transposition.
Thus Rashi: "We must transpose the words, and explain, ' To me, cries Israel, My God, we know thee; '" so also Kimchi and Aben Ezra. The former says, "' Israel ' which comes after, should be before, after לייו, and many inversions of this kind occur in Scripture, as Ezekiel 39:11 and Psalms 141:10."
The word "Israel" is omitted by the LXX. and Syriac, and in many manuscripts of Kennicott and De Rossi.