Psalms 77: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer prays out loud in a time of trouble and cannot be comforted, lying awake and unable to speak. He asks whether the Lord has rejected him for good, whether God's mercy and promise have run out, and whether God's anger has shut off his compassion. He then turns deliberately to remembering what God has done in the past, and recalls how God rescued Israel with a display of storm and thunder, leading his people through the sea by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Claim by Claim

1. 77:1
   • The speaker cried out to God with his voice.
   • The speaker cried out to God with his voice a second time.
   • God gave ear to the speaker.
2. 77:2
   • In the day of his trouble the speaker sought the Lord.
   • At night the speaker's hand was stretched out continually.
   • The speaker's hand did not grow slack or numb.
   • The speaker's soul refused to be comforted.
3. 77:3
   • The speaker remembered God.
   • Remembering God, the speaker groaned and was troubled.
   • The speaker mused and complained.
   • The speaker's spirit grew faint and was overwhelmed.
4. 77:4
   • God held the speaker's eyelids open so he could not sleep.
   • The speaker was too troubled to speak.
5. 77:5
   • The speaker considered the days of old.
   • The speaker considered the years of long ago.
6. 77:6
   • At night the speaker called his own song to mind.
   • The speaker spoke with his own heart.
   • The speaker's spirit made a diligent search.
7. 77:7
   • The speaker asked whether the Lord will reject forever.
   • The speaker asked whether the Lord will never again show favor.
8. 77:8
   • The speaker asked whether God's steadfast love has ceased forever.
   • The speaker asked whether God's promise has failed for all generations.
9. 77:9
   • The speaker asked whether God has forgotten to be gracious.
   • The speaker asked whether God has in anger shut up his compassions.
10. 77:10
    • The speaker said that this is his sickness and grief.
    • The speaker said he will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.
    • What is said of the right hand of the Most High is ambiguous between its years and a change in it.
11. 77:11
    • The speaker will remember the deeds of the LORD.
    • The speaker declares he will surely remember God's wonders of old.
12. 77:12
    • The speaker will meditate on all of God's work.
    • The speaker will talk of God's doings.
13. 77:13
    • God's way is in holiness, which may also mean in the sanctuary.
    • The speaker asked what god is as great as our God.
14. 77:14
    • God is the God who does wonders.
    • God has made his strength known among the peoples.
15. 77:15
    • God redeemed his people with his arm.
    • God's people are the sons of Jacob and Joseph.
16. 77:16
    • The waters saw God.
    • The waters saw God a second time.
    • The waters were afraid and writhed.
    • The depths also trembled.
17. 77:17
    • The clouds poured out water.
    • The skies gave forth a sound.
    • God's arrows went out in every direction.
18. 77:18
    • The sound of God's thunder was in the whirlwind.
    • The lightnings lit up the world.
    • The earth trembled.
    • The earth shook.
19. 77:19
    • God's way was in the sea.
    • God's path was in the great waters.
    • God's footsteps were not known.
20. 77:20
    • God led his people like a flock.
    • God led them by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

77:2

The King James "my sore ran in the night" uses an old sense of "sore" meaning a wound, reading the Hebrew as an injury that would not stop discharging. The Hebrew more likely says "my hand was stretched out through the night and did not grow numb." Hands held out or lifted up were the ordinary posture for prayer, so the line pictures a whole night of unbroken pleading.

77:3

"Selah" appears seventy-one times in the Psalms, and its meaning was already lost by the time of the earliest translations. It is usually taken as a direction to the musicians or the congregation (a pause, an instrumental break, a lift in volume), rather than as part of the words being sung. Translators leave it untranslated because no one knows what to put in its place.

77:4

"Thou holdest mine eyes waking" means he cannot sleep. He feels that God himself is the one holding his eyes open.

77:6

"I commune with mine own heart" is not about feelings. In Hebrew the heart is where a person thinks, weighs things and decides, closer to what we call the mind, so this line describes hard thinking, not emotion.

77:7

"Cast off" in 1611 English meant to reject and abandon for good, the way you might throw away something you no longer want. The question is whether God has finished with his people permanently.

77:8

"Mercy" in the King James translates the Hebrew word hesed: the loyal, committed kindness owed inside a binding relationship. It is closer to a promise kept than to a warm feeling, which is why the next line pairs it with a failed promise.

77:9

"Tender mercies" translates a Hebrew word built on the word for womb. It names a physical, gut-level compassion, the kind felt for one's own child, rather than a decision to be lenient.

77:10

This is one of the hardest verses in the Psalms, and translators genuinely disagree. The Hebrew can be read as the King James takes it ("this is my weakness, but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High") or as "my grief is this: the right hand of the Most High has changed." The first turns the psalm toward hope at this point; the second keeps it a complaint. The "right hand" is a standard idiom for a person's strength and their power to act.

77:11

The King James prints "LORD" in capital letters wherever the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God, four consonants usually written YHWH. "Lord" in ordinary type, as in verses 2 and 7, translates a different word, adonai, meaning master or sovereign. The distinction is invisible when the text is read aloud.

77:13

The Hebrew word here can mean either "holiness" or "the holy place," that is, the sanctuary where God was worshiped. So the line reads either "your way is holy" or "your way runs through the sanctuary," and translations divide between the two.

77:14

"Among the people" translates a plural in Hebrew, the peoples, meaning the surrounding nations rather than Israel itself. The claim is that outsiders saw what God did.

77:15

"Redeemed" translates a Hebrew legal term for buying back what belongs to your family, a relative's freedom, or land and property sold off under debt. Applied to a whole nation it points to the escape from slavery in Egypt, which the rest of the psalm describes. Jacob was the ancestor of the twelve tribes; Joseph was his son. Naming both together is unusual, and may reflect that Joseph's descendants were the leading tribes of the northern kingdom.

77:16

From here to the end, the psalm is describing the escape from Egypt, when the sea divided and the people crossed. "The depths" translates a Hebrew word used for the primeval ocean, and in the poetry of the ancient Near East the sea is regularly pictured as a power that writhes or recoils when God appears.

77:17

Arrows are standard ancient imagery for lightning. The storm is being described as a warrior shooting, with thunder as the shout and lightning as the arrows.

77:18

The King James "in the heaven" renders a Hebrew word that more likely means a whirlwind, or a rolling wheel. The picture is of thunder crashing inside a spinning storm rather than simply sounding overhead.

77:19

Because the sea closed again behind the escaping people, the road God took through it left no trace. The point is that God's route was real and yet impossible to track afterward.

77:20

Moses and Aaron were brothers who led the Israelites out of Egypt; Moses spoke for God to Pharaoh, and Aaron served as priest. Calling a nation a flock and its leaders shepherds was ordinary political language in the ancient Near East, applied to kings and gods alike. The psalm stops here, without ever returning to the trouble the speaker began with.