Hath God forgotten to be gracious? or hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah.
Asaph's prayer has turned into a run of questions aimed at God Himself. This verse is the sharpest of them. The issue is no longer his trouble but whether God's character has changed.
Verse 9 does not stand alone. It belongs to a run of six questions, and each one puts God, not the psalmist, on trial.
This was the effect with Asaph. It raised a whole host of questions — not about himself, but about God. ... Here are six questions, and every one of them casts blame on God. You will find that is the spirit in the world around. People seize on all these disasters in the civilized world and use them as an excuse to blame God. Here Asaph doubts the Lord.
To ask whether God has forgotten is to ask whether He is still God. And to ask whether anger has closed off His mercy assumes that His anger works the way a man's anger works.
To take up this third set of questions is again to bring God's nature into question (v. 9). Is it possible for God to forget? Is He God, or not? Has He become so angry that He has shut off every chance of showing the tender mercy that marks Him? Men can get so angry that they lose control of themselves. God's anger is always consistent with His love. He loves good, so He is angry with whatever attacks good. His anger is wholly wise, because it is anger against evil, and so it acts for good. It always has in view the greatest good of believers.
The very name the psalmist uses for God here answers his doubt.
He asks, "Has El — the Supreme One over evil in holy power — forgotten to be gracious?" This is "the El who does wonders" (vv. 9, 14), the Redeemer of His people (v. 15).
Asaph had already worked out why things were so low. His people had failed, and God was correcting them. His questions now measure God's grace by that failure.
In the end the psalmist saw that the low state of God's people was the result of their own failure. He saw that the Lord was disciplining them. But, he asks, will the Lord cast them off for ever because of their failure? Has the failure of His people dried up the mercy of God? Can the breakdown of man alter the grace of God, or "shut up His tender mercies?" The psalmist raises these suggestions only to dismiss them as ideas that cannot stand.
The anger Asaph fears turns out to be proof of the love he doubts.
Here then is the point of the argument: it is God Himself we can trust, whatever the present circumstances... Should we let any circumstances at all argue weakness in Him? "Has He shut up (contracted) in anger His compassions?" No, be sure of it. His very anger is the effect of love itself. Throw yourself on His love, and this anger will not harm you. His discipline will only purify and bless.
In verse 10 Asaph stops finding fault in God and names his own condition. Older translations read there, "This is my infirmity" — this is my weakness.
In verse 10 Asaph seems to jolt awake, like a man waking out of sleep, and he says, "This is my infirmity." Perhaps, until then, he had been thinking that all this focus on himself, and the misery that went with it, was very godly and very right. There are dear Christians who live in inward misery. 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 this sort of thing is our weakness. It is a great thing to call things by their right names. This is WEAKNESS, and not godliness!
So what settled the doubt? Asaph looked back at what God had already done.
What God did for Israel long ago is a lesson worth studying right to the end. That nation once knew redemption by power. Could God drop those whom He has redeemed? Impossible. By redeeming power at the Red Sea, God became their God, and they became His people. Light now breaks in on him in his trouble (13-20), and we hear no more of doubts about his God.
There is also a difference in how he was praying, and it decided everything.
Note, there is a difference between "crying with the voice to God," and "communing with one's own heart": while the latter went on, his spirit was overwhelmed; the former was self-renunciation and owned dependence, and God gave ear to the cry. All that passed previously within, though genuine, produced trouble... Before, the resources of our own heart were judged from; now, the manifested favour and resources of God.
- Six questions. The verse belongs to a run of six questions, and all of them cast blame on God rather than on the one asking them.
- Nature questioned. To ask whether God forgot is to ask whether He is God; His anger, unlike man's, never escapes His love.
- El who does wonders. The psalm gives that same name to the God who works wonders and redeems. The title itself answers the question.
- Weakness, not piety. In verse 10 Asaph names his misery for what it is. Brooding over yourself is weakness dressed up as devotion.
- Remember, then rest. Asaph looked back at the redemption God had already worked. Light broke in, and his doubts are never heard again.
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.