Psalm 77: I Will Remember the Years of the Most High

"I cried unto God with my voice… In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted. I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. Selah. Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak."

"Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah. And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High." Six questions, and then a decision to remember.

"I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old… Thou art the God that doest wonders… Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah. The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled. The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound… The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook."

"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron."

From "I" to "thou"

The first half is full of "I": I cried, I remembered, I complained. The second half is full of "thou": thou art the God, thou hast redeemed, thy way is in the sea. Memory of the exodus moves the speaker's attention from himself to God. The psalm ends abruptly, without returning to the speaker's situation.

Footsteps not known

God led Israel through the sea, yet "thy footsteps are not known": the path is real but invisible. The image holds the psalm's tension: God's presence in the past is certain, but his way through the present is hidden.

77:10, "my infirmity"

Hebrew hallotí hi shenot yemin 'elyon is obscure. It can mean "This is my sickness: the years of the right hand of the Most High" (the KJV supplies "I will remember"), or "This is my grief: that the right hand of the Most High has changed," reading shanot ("to change") for shenot ("years"). The library's Vulgate takes the second: "Et dixi: Nunc coepi; haec mutatio dexterae Excelsi" ("Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High"). The two readings pull in opposite directions: comfort or deepest complaint.

The heading

"To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of Asaph" (Vulgate "pro Idithun"). On Jeduthun see Psalm 39; the Hebrew here has a ketiv/qere spelling difference for the name. Verses 16–19 are close in form to Habakkuk 3:10–15, which also pictures the waters seeing God and trembling.

Later readers

No New Testament writer quotes Psalm 77. Among its early interpreters are the Greek and Latin translators, whose reading of v. 10 ("the change of the right hand of the Most High") was taken up in Christian devotion as a description of God changing a person's heart; Latin commentaries build on that rendering, which differs from the Hebrew.