Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 77:10 - 77:10

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 77:10 - 77:10


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With וָאִמַר the poet introduces the self-encouragement with which he has hitherto calmed himself when such questions of temptation were wont to intrude themselves upon him, and with which he still soothes himself. In the rendering of הַלֹּֽותִי (with the tone regularly drawn back before the following monosyllable) even the Targum wavers between מַרְעוּתִי (my affliction) and בָּעוּתִי (my supplication); and just in the same way, in the rendering of Psa 77:11, between אִשְׁתְּנִיו (have changed) and שְׁנִין (years). שְׁנֹות cannot possibly signify “change” in an active sense, as Luther renders: “The right hand of the Most High can change everything,” but only a having become different (lxx and the Quinta ἀλλοίωσις, Symmachus ἐπιδευτέρωσις), after which Maurer, Hupfeld, and Hitzig render thus: my affliction is this, that the right hand of the Most High has changed. But after we have read שׁנות in Psa 77:6 as a poetical plural of שָׁנָה, a year, we have first of all to see whether it may not have the same signification here. And many possible interpretations present themselves. It can be interpreted: “my supplication is this: years of the right hand of the Most High” (viz., that years like to the former ones may be renewed); but this thought is not suited to the introduction with וָאִמַר. We must either interpret it: my sickness, viz., from the side of God, i.e., the temptation which befalls me from Him, the affliction ordained by Him for me (Aquila ἀῤῥωστία μου), is this (cf. Jer 10:19); or, since in this case the unambiguous חֲלֹותִי would have been used instead of the Piel: my being pierced, my wounding, my sorrow is this (Symmachus τρῶσίς μου, inf. Kal from חָלַל, Psa 109:22, after the form חַנֹּות from חָנַן) - they are years of the right hand of the Most High, i.e., those which God's mighty hand, under which I have to humble myself (1Pe 5:6), has formed and measured out to me. In connection with this way of taking Psa 77:11, Psa 77:12 is now suitably and easily attached to what has gone before. The poet says to himself that the affliction allotted to him has its time, and will not last for ever. Therein lies a hope which makes the retrospective glance into the happier past a source of consolation to him. In Psa 77:12 the Chethîb אזכיר is to be retained, for the כי in Psa 77:12 is thus best explained: “I bring to remembrance, i.e., make known with praise or celebrate (Isa 63:7), the deeds of Jāh, for I will remember Thy wondrous doing from days of old.” His sorrow over the distance between the present and the past is now mitigated by the hope that God's right hand, which now casts down, will also again in His own time raise up. Therefore he will now, as the advance from the indicative to the cohortative (cf. Psa 17:15) imports, thoroughly console and refresh himself with God's work of salvation in all its miraculous manifestations from the earliest times. יָהּ is the most concise and comprehensive appellation for the God of the history of redemption, who, as Habakkuk prays, will revive His work of redemption in the midst of the years to come, and bring it to a glorious issue. To Him who then was and who will yet come the poet now brings praise and celebration. The way of God is His historical rule, and more especially, as in Hab 3:6, הֲלִיכֹות, His redemptive rule. The primary passage Exo 15:11 (cf. Psa 68:25) shows that בַּקֹּדֶשׁ is not to be rendered “in the sanctuary” (lxx ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ), but “in holiness” (Symmachus ἐν ἁγιασμῷ). Holy and glorious in love and in anger. God goes through history, and shows Himself there as the incomparable One, with whose greatness no being, and least of all any one of the beingless gods, can be measured. He is הָאֵל, the God, God absolutely and exclusively, a miracle-working (עֹשֵׂה פֶלֶא, not עֹשֶׂה פֶלֶא cf. Gen 1:11)

(Note: The joining of the second word, accented on the first syllable and closely allied in sense, on to the first, which is accented on the ultima (the tone of which, under certain circumstances, retreats to the penult., נסוג אחור) or monosyllabic, by means of the hardening Dagesh (the so-called דחיק), only takes place when that first word ends in ֶה- or ָה-, not when it ends in ֵה-.))

God, and a God who by these very means reveals Himself as the living and supra-mundane God. He has made His omnipotence known among the peoples, viz., as Exo 15:16 says, by the redemption of His people, the tribes of Jacob and the double tribe of Joseph, out of Egypt, - a deed of His arm, i.e., the work of His own might, by which He has proved Himself to all peoples and to the whole earth to be the Lord of the world and the God of salvation (Exo 9:16; Exo 15:14). בִּֽזְרֹועַ, brachio scil. extenso (Exo 6:6; Deu 4:34, and frequently), just as in Psa 75:6, בְּצַוָּאר, collo scil. erecto. The music here strikes in; the whole strophe is an overture to the following hymn in celebration of God, the Redeemer out of Egypt.