Psalms 77

To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of Asaph.

There are no historic allusions in this psalm by which to identify it with its proper occasion, but its internal marks are strongly drawn. It is not of himself that the author speaks, only as he shares the common calamity, but of the people, and from the depth of the national heart. It is as if the nation spoke out its griefs through him. As to the subject of the psalm, it consists of two divisions. The first (Psalms 77:1-9) details the sorrows of the nation and their dispirited state; the second (Psalms 77:10-20) is an attempt to rally faith and re-assure hope by a retrospect of God’s early mercies and wonders to his people. Psalms 77:10 is the transition point of the psalm. But this trouble of the nation, which is the burden of half the song, was deep and overwhelming, (Psalms 77:2-3,) and had been of long continuance so long that hope had nearly died out. (Psalms 77:7-9.) The language employed to give utterance to discouraged faith, on account of the delays of avenging providence, fits only the period of the captivity. Besides other strong forms of expression, the words עולם and נצח , eternity, for ever, and in an accommodated sense, indefinite time, ages, are here applied to the continuance of the national affliction. They are used freely in the psalms of the captivity; as Psalms 13:1; Psalm 14:23; Psalms 74:1; Psalms 74:3; Psalms 74:10; Psalms 74:19; Psalms 75:5; Psalms 89:46; all of which date from that gloomy period. Once only does David use the former word in his darkest hour, (Psalms 143:3,) and once the latter occurs in the time of Hezekiah, when the ten tribes had already gone into exile. Psalms 44:23. It would be the petulance of unbelief to employ such terms on occasion of a recent or a transient affliction. They denote long-standing calamities; or such, at least, as seem without remedy, and which stand in apparent painful contradiction of the divine covenant. In the present psalm, language exhausts itself in setting forth the greatness and the continuance of the trial, the severest point of which is, that God does not seem to notice it, does not interpose, though it stands directly against his covenant and name. We must refer it to the time of Belshazzar, when the Jews were in reproach, and even Daniel was forgotten at court. Hammond quotes Rabbi Kimchi: “This psalm is spoken in the dialect of the captives.”

TITLE:

To the chief Musician This might have been prefixed to the psalm by the author, or by Ezra, after the return of the exiles, when the regular temple service was reorganized; or we may suppose some provision for music might have been made in connexion with the synagogue service which originated during the exile, in which the sons of Jeduthun had their place. The people certainly had their sacred music and musical instruments in Babylon, (Psalms 137:0;) and Jeduthun, to whom the musical performance of this psalm is assigned, who was probably the son of Merari, belonged to the third division of David’s choir, (1 Chronicles 23:5-6,) whose sons performed on the harp. 1Ch 25:1 ; 1 Chronicles 25:3. His descendants were among the captives, and returned and resumed their place in the sacred choir in Nehemiah’s time. Nehemiah 11:17. But as the Hebrew title reads, not ( ל ) to or of Jeduthun, but ( על ) upon Jeduthun, the designation here may be to some instrument or musical key or mode, or the particles may be considered interchangeable. See on title of Psalms 39, 62