Then said I, This is my weakness -- the years of the right hand of the Most High
Asaph has spent nine verses turning his trouble over in the dark, asking whether God's mercy has run out for good. Verse 10 breaks that mood: the ESV reads "I will appeal to this," while older translations read "This is my infirmity" — the moment he stops questioning God and names the weakness as his own.
The change begins with honesty about what all that brooding was. One writer points out that misery can dress itself up as devotion:
In verse 10 Asaph seems to jolt awake, like a man rousing out of sleep, and he says, "This is my infirmity." Perhaps he had been thinking that all this self-occupation, and the misery that comes with it, was very pious and very right. There are dear Christian people who live in inward misery, and in a way they pride themselves on it. If they were not miserable, they would begin to be miserable because they were not miserable. The fact is that all of this is our infirmity. It is a great thing to label things by their right names. This is INFIRMITY, and not piety!
The weakness was not just a mood. It was a way of thinking — judging God by how His people had behaved.
He sees where the thought came from. The idea that God could cast off His people rose out of the weakness of his own mind, which had judged God's ways towards His people by the way they had acted towards Him. So he stops these thoughts. Instead of recalling his own experiences and the years of ancient times, he now remembers "the years of the right hand of the most High," "the works of the Lord," and His "wonders of old."
The same writer names what steadied him. The sin of God's people can never be greater than the grace of God.
The second half of the verse says very little. That restraint is its force:
And so we come to the point. Shall we argue that the weakness is in Him, or in ourselves? Here there can be no question, and the trouble is over: "And I said, This is my infirmity" — "my malady," we might translate it: "there are years of the right hand of the Most High." It is an inadequate statement, and that makes it all the more effective. "God has had years of experience," he says to himself. That represents the truth so weakly, and yet in that weak form it so forbids doubt, that at once he is master of himself again, and can only praise Him.
Notice which years he now has in view.
Before, he had "the years of ancient times" in front of him, plainly tied to his own experiences. Now he has "the years of the right hand of the Most High" in front of him. We spend our years like a story that is told, whether in ancient times or today. But His years run through all generations, since from everlasting to everlasting He is God.
Verse 10 splits the psalm in two, and you can see the split just by tracking the pronouns.
In verses 2 to 6, it was all "my" — my this, that and the other. In verses 10 to 20, it is all "Your" — "Your years … Your wonders … Your work … Your doings … Your way … Your strength … Your arm … Your arrows … Your thunder … Your path … Your footsteps." What deliverance, what blessing, what strength there is in looking at God's things, after the weakness and humiliation of looking at our own.
The psalm holds two very different activities side by side, and only one of them helps.
There is a difference between "crying with the voice to God" and "communing with one's own heart." While the communing went on, his spirit was overwhelmed. The cry was self-renunciation and owned dependence, and God gave ear to it. Everything that went on inside him before, though genuine, only produced trouble... but when the cry brought in God, His ways of old reassured the heart. Before, we judged by the resources of our own heart; now, by the favour and resources God has shown.
One writer describes leaning on this sentence in weakness, and what that exposes:
As in weakness, David's words have often been strength to me — "This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." ... When the soul is turned to seek His face, and Him only as our aim and object, we discover with amazement how many false props we have had. We have often been leaning on the love and approval of others, and not on a Father's love alone.
- Diagnose. The despairing questions of verses 7–9 were not devotion. Call them by their right name: weakness, not piety.
- Detect. The weakness is a method: judging God's ways towards His people by the way they have acted towards Him.
- Displace. "My years" give way to "the years of the right hand of the Most High" — an understatement so mild it leaves no room for doubt.
- Direct. From verse 10 on, every pronoun turns. "My" becomes "Your," and strength comes with the change of subject.
- Depend. Talking things over with your own heart leaves you overwhelmed. Crying out to God brings Him in, and His works of old steady you.
Will I remember, -- the works of Jah; for I will remember thy wonders of old,
Psalm 77 records a man in trouble. He looks inward and finds no comfort, until one decision changes everything: he stops examining himself and starts recalling what God has done. Verse 11 is the hinge. It raises the question every troubled believer asks: how does remembering the past help now?
You can trace the change in this psalm by watching the pronouns. Before verse 10 the psalmist's own case fills the page; from verse 10 onward God fills it.
In verses 2 to 6, it was all "my" — my this, that and the other. In verses 10 to 20, it is all "Your" — "Your years … Your wonders … Your work … Your doings … Your way … Your strength … Your arm … Your arrows … Your thunder … Your path … Your footsteps." What deliverance, what blessing, what strength there is in looking at God's things, after the weakness and humiliation of looking at our own.
Earlier in the psalm he had already looked backwards and gained nothing by it. The difference now is not that he looks back, but what he sees there.
Before, he was thinking about the "days of old" and finding no comfort in it. Now he is remembering "your wonders of old," which must have been a very welcome change.
Those wonders are not vague. They are a chain of things God really did, and for us that chain runs longer than it did for the psalmist.
This would include creation, then God's dealings in the flood, His choosing and blessing of Abraham, and His raising up of the nation Israel. It would include the power He showed when He delivered them from Egypt, brought them through the wilderness into the promised land, and did many other marvellous works of power and grace. Today we can add the wonders of the New Testament: the Son of God becoming man, His life of great goodness, His sacrifice of infinite value, His resurrection, and His return to heaven.
Some translations use "Jah" here for the LORD's name. What that name carries explains why remembering the LORD's deeds steadies a frightened heart.
We first meet Jah in Exodus 15:2, after God delivered the people from Pharaoh at the Red Sea. It appears often in the Psalms in the well-known compound Hallelujah, and it occurs in Psalm 77:11 too. If we look at the context of most of the places where it occurs, I think we will be convinced that it is not just a short form of Jehovah. It has a meaning of its own, reminding His people that He has stepped in with power for them, and will do so again.
Earlier in the psalm, thinking about God only made him more troubled. The cure was not more honesty about himself, but a new object to look at.
Only the enjoyment of grace, felt and known, casts fear out of the heart of a person born again. And you can never work out grace from the inward experience of a heart that judges itself by the truth. The springs of grace are in God. They flow out to meet the sinner in the word of His grace… Light and joy come back to the sin-burdened spirit of the self-condemned believer in one way only. The heart must turn away from cutting itself open and look at Him in whom the brightness of the Father's glory shines in loving mercy on us, as the effect of His atoning work.
Earlier he judged by what he found inside himself. What he does in verse 11 draws on something else.
Before, we judged from the resources of our own heart. Now we judge from the favour and resources God has shown. Remembrance of His doings is one of the marks of faith. "They soon forgot his works."
Remembering does not stop with the past. It gives back trust, speech, and praise.
A moment ago this broken-hearted man thought of God and only ended in complete confusion. Now his spirit revives at the fresh remembrance of God's ancient ways of truth and mercy. He finds heart and speech to trust Him and to speak His praise as he talks of His wonderful works. All turns to peace and hope when we remember God according to the proven truth of His own righteous and triumphant grace.
- Turn — The psalm turns from "my" to "Your". Strength comes from looking at God's things, not our own.
- Object — He was already remembering. Healing came when he looked at God's wonders instead of at the old days.
- Name — The name used here marks God as the One who stepped in with power for His people, and will again.
- Faith — Grace is never found by digging into yourself. It flows from God in His word, and remembering what He has done is a mark of faith.
- Result — Remembering gives back speech. Trust and praise return, and everything turns to peace and hope.
And I will meditate upon all thy work, and muse upon thy doings.
Psalm 77 records a man in the dark. He wears himself out asking whether God has forgotten to be gracious. Verse 12 is the hinge. He stops examining his own trouble and sets his mind on what God has done. The tone of the psalm changes from there.
Count the pronouns in the two halves of the psalm.
In verses 2 to 6, it was all "my" — my this, that and the other. In verses 10 to 20, it is all "Your" — "Your years … Your wonders … Your work … Your doings … Your way … Your strength … Your arm … Your thunder … Your footsteps." What deliverance, what blessing, what strength there is in looking at God's things, after the weakness and humiliation of looking at our own.
The thing he had to abandon first was a way of reasoning: measuring God by how His people have behaved.
It soothes the troubled soul of the psalmist to realize this: the sin of God's people can never be greater than the grace of God. He sees where the thought came from that God's people could be cast off. It came from the weakness of his own mind, which had judged God's ways towards His people by the way they had acted towards Him.
"Ponder" and "meditate" name work the mind chooses to do.
We exercise our minds when we use them for reflection and meditation. Of this the Psalms are full, speaking of meditation on God Himself, on His word and His works. It is often worth going over again in our minds the scriptures we have just read, the main point of a message we have heard, or some experience we have been through. That way we make sure we have taken in what it has to say to us.
What is there to meditate on? The list runs from creation to the rescue of a nation, and for a reader today it runs further still.
This would include creation, then God's dealings in the flood, and His choosing and blessing of Abraham. It would include raising up the nation Israel, showing His power in their rescue from Egypt, and bringing them through the wilderness into the promised land, along with many other marvellous works of power and grace. Today we can add the wonders of the New Testament: the Son of God becoming man, His life of great goodness, His sacrifice of infinite value, His resurrection and His ascension back to heaven.
The old wonders point to a way of working that is still going on around us.
If our eyes were completely clear, where would we find one thing that could not be a text for speaking of the "works of the Lord"? And with what blessing to our own souls, as well as to the souls of others! Even the "wonders of old" are only the visible signs and marks of a way of working that everywhere carries the stamp of the same Author. Indeed that is what gives them their main charm and interest.
Older translations end the verse "and talk of your doings," where the ESV has "meditate on your mighty deeds." The commentator below quotes that older wording. Meditation gave the psalmist his voice back.
Now, meditating on all the work of the Lord, he found his tongue once more. He had found something which gave him a worthy theme. "I will … talk," he said, "of Your doings."
The order matters: the heart is filled before the mouth opens.
Verses 11, 12 describe the renewing effect on the tried spirit of turning like this from self to God. Meditation on His work first fills the heart with joyful assurance and a full sense of blessedness, and then makes the lips open in His praise: "I will talk of Your doings."
The psalmist's meditation ends in God's presence. Verses 13 and 19 are quoted below from an older translation.
How infinitely precious it is to meditate like this on all God's work and to speak of His deeds! Thinking over all these wonderful works is more than enough to fill our hearts with eternal praise. In verse 19 we shall see that God's way is "in the sea," so far as our experience goes. Yet verse 13 gives us this assurance: "Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary." Certainly only in God's presence, in the calm of the sanctuary, will we truly learn God's way, and realize that no one could possibly be so great a God as our God, the God who does wonders.
- Diagnosis. The trouble was a mind that judged God's ways by how His people had behaved — as if sin were bigger than grace.
- Decision. Meditation here is a choice to use the mind: to go back over Scripture, a message, or an experience until you have taken it in.
- Material. "All Your work" runs from creation to the rescue from Egypt, and now takes in the Son of God becoming man, His sacrifice, His resurrection and ascension.
- Reach. The wonders of old carry the stamp of the same Author. He is still at work, so anything at all can become a text for speaking of the works of the Lord.
- Result. The man who could not speak finds a worthy theme, and "my" gives way to "Your" for the rest of the psalm.
O God, thy way is in the sanctuary who is so great a god as God?
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Thou art the God that doest wonders; thou hast declared thy strength among the peoples.
Asaph begins Psalm 77 sleepless, asking whether God has abandoned His people for good. Then his tone turns: in verse 14 the man who was counting his own miseries names God by what God does.
The turn is visible in the psalm's own vocabulary. One writer traces it through the possessive pronouns in each half:
In verses 2 to 6, it was all "my" — my this, that and the other. In verses 10 to 20, it is all "Your" — "Your years … Your wonders … Your work … Your doings … Your way … Your strength … Your arm … Your arrows … Your thunder … Your path … Your footsteps." What deliverance, what blessing, what strength there is in looking at God's things, after the weakness and humiliation of looking at our own.
The same writer turns the contrast into two questions, quoting verse 13 in an older wording:
Suppose we fix the eye of our hearts, not on the seen things, not on the failings of others and on the peculiar things they say and do, but on the God who marches through the circumstances, who works His sovereign will, who has revealed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ… we should be transformed! There could not be a greater contrast than between the spirit of these early verses of the psalm and the spirit of verse 13… borrowing the language of Romans 7, he was previously saying, "Who is so wretched a man as I am?" Now he says, "Who is so great a God as our God?"
Asaph does not reason his way to this. The verse before points to a place: the sanctuary, the holy place where Israel worshipped God. That is where the answer comes:
When perplexed by the prosperity of the wicked, the soul found the answer to its difficulties in the sanctuary (Ps. 73:17). So, when puzzled by God's apparent silence while His people are in trial, he again finds an answer to his exercises in the sanctuary. There he learns that God has a settled way that governs His acts; that God is great and does wonders. In accordance with His way God makes known His strength among the peoples to redeem His own.
Asaph goes on to recall God's works of long ago, so the wonders include old ones. But the verse itself is not in the past tense:
He quite recognised that God had worked great wonders in the past, as the following verses of the psalm show. Still, in saying, "You are the God who works wonders," he laid the stress on the present, and that is the great test of faith. It is comparatively easy to believe that God has done great wonders in the past, and that He will do them in the future. To genuine faith God is a present reality: He is a God who is doing wonders today.
If God is still working wonders, what are they? One answer is what He does inside His people:
What wonders does He not do in the hearts and minds of His saints? — lifting them out of themselves, in their littleness and feebleness, into the greatness and strength and love which is found in Himself. It is by faith that His people are enabled to endure, and out of weakness are made strong, for Hebrews 11 tells us this plainly. Still it is God who does it, and faith on our side simply lays hold on His strength.
The second half of the verse looks outward. God does not keep His power to Himself or to Israel alone. He makes it known where the nations can see it, and He does it to rescue:
His own perfection must hide Him. Yet He is not outside the knowledge of men everywhere, for "You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples." And in Israel especially — through His relationship to them — He makes Himself known, and known in the grace which this declares: "You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph."
Commentators also read the verse forward, to a declaration not yet complete. One notes that redemption's full reach is still ahead for Israel, and reads the two names in the next verse as a pair:
Jacob is mentioned to indicate their unworthiness of the blessing, while Joseph indicates the place of blessing to which God will elevate His people.
- Trouble — Asaph's darkness came from staring at himself. The first half of the psalm is crowded with "my," and it produced only the cry of a wretched man.
- Sanctuary — he did not argue his way out. He learned God's settled way in the sanctuary, as in Psalm 73.
- Wonders — there he finds that God's greatness is not a memory. The verse is present tense, and present-tense faith is the real test.
- Strength — what God works, He also announces. He makes His might known among the nations instead of hiding it.
- Redemption — wonders and strength serve one end: an arm stretched out to redeem His people. For us, that redemption reaches into weak hearts and makes them strong.
Thou hast with [thine] arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.
The psalmist has spent the first half of this psalm asking whether the Lord has cast him off for ever and forgotten to be gracious. Verse 15 is where his answer lands: a redemption worked by God's own arm, for a people named after Jacob and Joseph.
The psalmist finds no relief while he studies his own state.
He remembers Jehovah's works. When he reached Jehovah with his own humbled spirit, he reached One who had always been for His people, who had worked for them and redeemed them long ago. Their God became the source of his thoughts, not his own state towards Him.
Why an arm? The same picture runs all through the Old Testament, and redemption is only one of the things it stands for.
The part of the body that can lift burdens and defend the person: Scripture uses it as a picture of the power and strength of God on behalf of His saints (Ex. 15:16; Ps. 77:15; Isa. 51:9). The arm of Jehovah is often spoken of in the Old Testament. It redeemed (Ex. 6:6); it gathers His own (Isa. 40:11); and it rules for Him (Isa. 40:10), as in the kingdom... God reveals the arm of the Lord to those who repent and believe the report He sends (Isa. 53:1; Rom. 10:16). Even the far-off nations are to trust in it — that is, sinners everywhere in creation (Isa. 51:5).
That redemption came in two stages, and the sheltering blood of the Passover was only the first.
But Israel was not redeemed — though perfectly safe under the shelter of the blood — as long as they were in Egypt. So the second part, the completion of their redemption, came when God brought them out of the land of Egypt through the Red Sea with a high hand and an outstretched arm. There He destroyed Pharaoh and all his army in its mighty waters. On the basis of the shed blood, God — now satisfied as Judge — can act for His people as their Deliverer.
The psalm calls God by several names, and each one is chosen with care.
The use of the divine names is beautiful and definite. In the day of his trouble the psalmist seeks Adonay, the Deliverer of His people (v. 2), and asks, "Will Adonay cast off for ever?" (v. 7). He asks, "Has El [the Supreme over evil in holy power] forgotten to be gracious?" — "the El that does wonders" (vv. 9, 14), the Redeemer of His people (v. 15).
God makes His strength known to all peoples. In Israel He makes more than strength known.
And here He makes Himself known especially in Israel, through His relationship to them — known in the grace which this declares: "You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph."
Commentators differ on why these two names stand together. One reads them as a contrast, with the full blessing still ahead.
With His arm He will have redeemed His peoples, the sons of Jacob and Joseph (v. 15). The work of redemption was accomplished at Calvary, and believers today enjoy it. But Israel will share in the blessing of redemption only when the millennium comes in. Jacob's name shows how little they deserve the blessing, while Joseph shows the place of blessing to which God will raise His people.
Another looks back further, to how Joseph's name gained such weight in the first place.
Reuben lost the birthright by his sin, and it came naturally to Joseph, Rachel's firstborn. The tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh were the two-fold witness of this, and so was the tabernacle at Shiloh in the land of Ephraim... It is no wonder, then, that Asaph should make Joseph prominent, since he goes back to the beginning of the nation.
- Memory. His darkness lifts when God's past works, not his own state, feed his thoughts.
- Arm. The arm is God's power acting for His people. It redeems, it gathers, it rules — and God reveals it to those who repent and believe.
- Two stages. Blood sheltered Israel in Egypt; the outstretched arm brought them out. Once satisfied as Judge, God acts as Deliverer.
- Name. The El who does wonders in verse 14 is the same El who redeems in verse 15 — power and grace under one name.
- Reach. God shows His strength to all peoples, yet He names the redeemed: Jacob the unworthy, and Joseph the place of blessing He gives.