Psalm 77:5

Psalm 77 is one of the psalms of Asaph, the group that runs from Psalm 73 to Psalm 83, and those psalms often move from honest complaint to a fresh look at who God is and what he has done. Asaph was a Levite whom David appointed to lead Israel’s worship with music before the ark (1 Chronicles 16:4–5). He was also a seer, and his sons prophesied with music under his direction (1 Chronicles 25:1–2). The psalm leaves its trouble unnamed. It may have been a national disaster or a private affliction, and its words fit both.

The opening verses (Psalm 77:1–4) show a man crying aloud to God, sleepless, overwhelmed in spirit and refusing to be comforted. Even remembering God has brought him no relief yet. Our five verses come next. In verses 5 and 6 he deliberately turns to remembering and searching, and in verses 7 to 9 that search breaks out into questions. The rest of the psalm (Psalm 77:10–20) turns to the mighty works of God, above all the deliverance from Egypt, and ends in renewed trust.

So the remembering of verses 5 and 6 leads straight into the questions, and at this point the memory of better days sharpens his pain. Yet it is the right road. When he takes it further and fixes his mind on the works of the LORD himself, the psalm turns from lament to praise.

“I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times.” The verb châshab properly means to plait or weave together, and from there it means to think, regard, value or reckon. Asaph is weighing the past on purpose, turning it over in his mind. The two phrases say the same thing twice, as Hebrew poetry often does, and together they reach back across the whole long history of God with his people.

The word for days, yôwm, means a day or a span of time, and in “days of old” it means the eras of long ago. The word behind “ancient times”, ʻôwlâm, properly means what is hidden or out of sight, time out of mind, and it can look either backward or forward, which is why it is often translated “everlasting”. Here it looks back to the most distant past. The same word returns in verse 7 as “for ever”. The man who has just looked back across time out of mind now fears that God’s rejection will stretch just as far ahead.

For an Israelite the days of old meant the founding acts of God: the Passover and the going out of Egypt (Exodus 12), the crossing of the sea (Exodus 14), the covenant at Sinai (Exodus 19), and God’s care of his people in the wilderness and his bringing them into the land. Remembering these things lay at the heart of Israel’s worship and hope. Moses had told the people, “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee” (Deuteronomy 32:7). Asaph, a worship leader steeped in that history, does exactly this. The God who acted then is the same God now, and the New Testament says the same of the Son: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Verse 6 moves inward in three steps, each going deeper than the one before. Asaph remembers, then talks with his own heart, then searches with his whole spirit.

“I call to remembrance my song in the night.” The night of this psalm is both the literal sleepless night of verses 2 to 4 and the darkness of his trouble. The song he remembers is most likely a past time when God gave him praise or comfort in the dark. It may have been a real song sung in the night hours, or a time when God’s help moved him to thanksgiving. Now the night has come again, and he remembers that once it held a song.

“I commune with mine own heart.” The verb sîyach means to ponder, muse or converse, and it also means to complain, which suits a man pouring out a lament. The heart, lêbâb, is the inmost part of a person, the seat of thought, will and moral character as well as feeling. So Asaph is thinking the whole matter through with all that he is. The spirit (rûwach) in the next phrase names the same whole inner person.

“And my spirit made diligent search.” The verb châphas means to search out, examine or explore. His spirit is looking hard for understanding, for an answer to God’s silence, and for God himself. Scripture promises that such seeking is answered. Moses told Israel they would find the LORD “if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29), and God says through Jeremiah, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Isaiah puts the night and the spirit together as Asaph does: “With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early” (Isaiah 26:9).

Verses 7 to 9 hold six questions, set in three pairs, and in each pair the second line repeats and sharpens the first. Asaph asks them to pour out his fear and to plead with God, and every one of them asks whether something God is known to be has come to an end: his favour, his mercy, his promise, his grace and his compassion. The words “for ever”, “no more” and “for evermore” carry the weight of his pain, which makes the present feel permanent.

The questions also show what Asaph knows. He could only fear the loss of God’s favour, mercy and faithfulness because he had known God to be favourable, merciful and faithful. His fear is about how things look in his trouble, and the God he questions is the God he trusts enough to question.

Scripture records these questions as prayer, asked by a leader of Israel’s worship and kept in the book God gave his people to pray, so we may bring the same honest questions to God. Laments like Psalm 13 do the same, and Job and Jeremiah also wrestled openly with God in their pain. Lament was a recognised part of Israel’s prayer, a way to bring pain, confusion and even complaint before a God who hears.

Asaph brings his fear to God and keeps talking to him, and that itself is an act of faith. What matters is where the questions lead. He moves through them to remembering, and he resolves to remember the works of the LORD and to meditate on all that God has done (Psalm 77:11–12). Doubt left to itself can wear faith down, but doubt carried to God and then to his works becomes a road to deeper trust.

The psalm answers Asaph by turning him to what God has done, beginning in Psalm 77:10. The rest of Scripture answers each question in plain words.

To “Will the Lord cast off for ever?” God answers through Isaiah, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15). He also says, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5), and Paul is persuaded that nothing in all creation “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

To “Is his mercy clean gone for ever?” Lamentations, written in the ruins of Jerusalem, replies, “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23).

To “Doth his promise fail for evermore?” Scripture says, “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent” (Numbers 23:19), and “the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). What God says accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11).

To “Hath God forgotten to be gracious?” God’s own name answers: “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6–7). He says of himself, “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). His grace and tender mercies belong to who he is, and he keeps them.

Every one of Asaph’s questions is answered most fully in Jesus Christ. The fear of being cast off is what Christ took on himself at the cross, when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He bore that forsakenness as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), so that all who are in him are accepted and will never be cast off. He lives for ever as our priest, and “he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:24–25).

God’s mercy is shown most clearly in the gift of his Son: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16), and “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Far from shutting up his tender mercies, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). In Christ “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19), and the Word made flesh came “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

God’s promise is kept in Christ, for “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20). At the Last Supper Jesus said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). Christ is the mediator of a better covenant, established on better promises (Hebrews 8:6), in which God writes his laws on his people’s hearts and remembers their sins no more (Hebrews 8:10–12).

Asaph’s diligent search for God also ends in Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), and God, who spoke in many ways through the prophets, “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). The song in the night that Asaph longed for is now the song of redemption that the church sings “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16).

Jesus knows this kind of night from the inside. In Gethsemane, “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). So we have a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and we may come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:15–16). He still says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

These verses give you words for the nights when God feels far away. You can take your fears to him as plainly as Asaph did, naming what you dread, and trust that he hears. Your feelings in those hours are real, and God’s character stays the same through them.

Asaph also shows where to go next. Think over the days of old as Scripture tells them, the deliverance from Egypt, the cross and the empty tomb. Recall your own songs in the night, the times God has helped and comforted you before. Let the Selah have its place too, a pause to be still before God. The same God who acted then is gracious now, his mercy is new every morning, and in Christ every one of these six questions has its answer.