Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

Psalm 77. This is a community lament, suitable to a time when the people of God are in a low condition. The description of the low condition is general enough that the psalm cannot be tied to any specific occasion. The psalm acknowledges that the reason for the trouble may be some fault in the people: to refer to God's "anger" (v. 9) raises the question of whether his people's unfaithfulness provoked it; hence this is like Psalms 74; 79; and 80 in their recognition of this factor. (Psalm 44, on the other hand, is a community lament suited to an occasion in which the community's unfaithfulness is not the cause of its trouble.) That this is a community lament is clear from the nature of the appeal in 77:10-20: "the years of the right hand of the Most High" (v. 10) refer to ancient times in which God "redeemed your people" (v. 15) and "led" them "like a flock" (v. 20). Thus the emphasis is on the condition of God's people as a body; but this corporate focus is certainly not impersonal. Each person singing this owns his or her membership in the people, and acknowledges that his or her well-being is bound up with the well-being of the whole: "I cry aloud to God" (v. 1), "the day of my trouble" (v. 2), "I am so troubled" (v. 4). The Bible presents the individual as a member of the community and encourages each member to seek the good of the whole. The repeated key words here are "remember" and "meditate" (vv. 3, 6, 11-12), both of which appear in each of the main sections. The psalm moves from remembering and meditating on God (as the one who has made promises to his people), to remembering and meditating on how things once were better, to remembering and meditating on God's mighty deeds of old that build confidence for his people's future.

77:1-3 Opening Statement: I Cry Aloud to God. This section describes earnest prayer coming from a troubled heart: the statements I cry aloud to God (v. 1), I moan, and my spirit faints (v. 3) convey deep feeling, and my hand is stretched out (to God) is a common posture of prayer (cf. 44:20; 88:9; 143:6; Job 11:13; 1 Tim. 2:8). Here, however, it is not limited to prayer in public worship: it preoccupies his private moments as well (Ps. 77:2, in the night; cf. v. 4).