Psalm 77

Psalms 77:1-3

The Hebrew title, not carried on this page, reads To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of Asaph, Jeduthun one of David's three chief musicians alongside Asaph and Heman (1 Chronicles 25:1). The psalmist's trouble is stated three times over before any cause is named, sought, ran, refused to be comforted, a grief that will not resolve itself by being described. Even remembering God troubles him further at this point, the honest admission that recalling who God is can sharpen pain rather than ease it before the psalm finds its turn.

Psalms 77:4-6

Sleeplessness itself is laid at God's own hand, thou holdest mine eyes waking, the trouble too deep even to speak. The psalmist turns to memory on purpose, considering the days of old and calling to remembrance his song in the night, work he describes as diligent search rather than passive recollection. Barnes notes the deliberate effort carried in the Hebrew verbs here, a man working at remembering because comfort has not come on its own.

Psalms 77:7-9

The doubt reaches bottom in a run of questions that answer nothing, cast off for ever, favourable no more, mercy clean gone, promise fail, forgotten to be gracious, tender mercies shut up in anger. The questions are not answered here and the psalm does not pretend they are; Selah lets them stand unresolved for a moment before the turn. Spurgeon calls this the psalm's lowest point, faith questioning its own object without yet denying him.

Psalms 77:10-12

The turn comes not from an answer to the six questions but from a decision: This is my infirmity names the doubting itself as weakness rather than as truth about God, and the psalmist resolves to remember the years of the right hand of the most High instead. I will remember repeats three times over two verses, works, wonders, doings, a discipline of memory chosen against the feeling of the moment. Henry reads the turn as the psalm's whole lesson, that the remedy for despondency is not a new argument but the deliberate recollection of what God has already done.

Psalms 77:13-15

The remembering becomes worship: God's way is holy, set apart from every other way, and who is so great a God as our God answers the earlier questions without repeating a word of them. The wonders and the strength declared among the people culminate in one named act, thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the exodus named as the proof the rest of the psalm has been building toward. The sons of Jacob and Joseph names the whole covenant family, Joseph standing for the tribes descended from him.

Psalms 77:16-18

The psalm turns from statement to vision, the sea itself described as afraid at the sight of God, the deep troubled before a word is spoken. Clouds, thunder, lightning and a trembling earth follow in quick succession, the storm theophany the Psalter and the prophets use elsewhere for the Lord's approach, a picture close to Habakkuk's own description of the same crossing (Habakkuk 3:10-11). No human actor appears in these three verses at all, only the natural world reacting to God directly.

Psalms 77:19-20

The theophany ends without explaining itself, thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known, the crossing described from the far side without the mechanics ever being told. The last verse supplies the human agents only now, Moses and Aaron leading the flock through, after eighteen verses of God's own action alone. Delitzsch reads the closing image, a flock led by the hand, as the psalm's answer to its own opening trouble: the God who once led blindly through the sea can be trusted to lead still, even where his footsteps are not seen now either.