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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 77:1 - 77:1
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The poet is resolved to pray without intermission, and he prays; fore his soul is comfortless and sorely tempted by the vast distance between the former days and the present times. According to the pointing, וְהַֽאֲזִין appears to be meant to be imperative after the form הַקְטִיל, which occurs instead of הַקְטֵל and הַקְתִילָה, cf. Psa 94:1; Isa 43:8; Jer 17:18, and the mode of writing הַקְטֵיל, Psa 142:5, 2Ki 8:6, and frequently; therefore et audi = ut audias (cf. 2Sa 21:3). But such an isolated form of address is not to be tolerated; וְהַֽאֲזִין has been regarded as perf. consec. in the sense of ut audiat, although this modification of הֶֽאֱזִין into הַֽאֲזִין in connection with the appearing of the Waw consec. cannot be supported in any other instance (Ew. §234, e), and Kimchi on this account tries to persuade himself to that which is impossible, viz., that וְהַֽאֲזִין in respect of sound stands for וְיַֽאֲזֶין. The preterites in Psa 77:3 express that which has commenced and which will go on. The poet labours in his present time of affliction to press forward to the Lord, who has withdrawn from him; his hand is diffused, i.e., stretched out (not: poured out, for the radical meaning of נגר, as the Syriac shows, is protrahere), in the night-time without wearying and leaving off; it is fixedly and stedfastly (אֱמוּנָה, as it is expressed in Exo 17:12) stretched out towards heaven. His soul is comfortless, and all comfort up to the present rebounds as it were from it (cf. Gen 37:35; Jer 31:15). If he remembers God, who was once near to him, then he is compelled to groan (cf. Psa 55:18, Psa 55:3; and on the cohortative form of a Lamed He verb, cf. Ges. §75, 6), because He has hidden Himself from him; if he muses, in order to find Him again, then his spirit veils itself, i.e., it sinks into night and feebleness (הִתְעַטֵּף as in Psa 107:5; Psa 142:4; Psa 143:4). Each of the two members of Psa 77:4 are protasis and apodosis; concerning this emotional kind of structure of a sentence, vid., Ewald, §357, b.