strength · noun, common masculine singular absolute
forgotten
הֲשָׁכַ֣חha.sha.Khach
H7911
to mislay · interrogative particle + verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
gracious
חַנּוֹתchannôwth
H2589
supplication
anger
בְּ֝אַ֗ףbe.'Af
H639
properly · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
up
קָפַ֥ץka.Fatz
H7092
to draw together · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
mercies
רַחֲמָ֥יוra.cha.Mav
H7356
compassion (in the plural) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Selah
סֶֽלָהSe.lah
H5542
suspension (of music) · interjection
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 49:14-15 But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.
Psalms 40:11 Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me.
Psalms 25:6 Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old.
Psalms 51:1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Isaiah 40:27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God?
Isaiah 63:15 Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of…
Luke 13:25-28 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, L…
Romans 11:32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 77:1-10
We have here the lively portraiture of a good man under prevailing melancholy, fallen into and sinking in that horrible pit and that miry clay, but struggling to get out. Drooping saints, that are of a sorrowful spirit, may here as in a glass see their own faces. The conflict which the psalmist had with his griefs and fears seems to have been over when he penned this record of it; for he says (Psa 77:1), I cried unto God, and he gave ear unto me, which, while the struggle lasted, he had not the comfortable sense of, as he had afterwards; but he inserts it in the beginning of his narrative as an intimation that his trouble did not end in despair; for God heard him, and, at length, he knew tha…
Hath God forgotten to be gracious,.... He has not, is it possible that he should? as the Targum; it is not; he cannot forget the purposes of his grace and mercy, nor the covenant and promises of it, nor people the objects of it; and much less can he for his grace and mercy itself, so agreeable to his nature, what he delights in, and which he has proclaimed in Christ:
hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?; as an avaricious man shuts up his hand, and will not communicate liberally; or as the sea is shut up with doors, that its waters may not overflow; no, the mercies of God are not restrained, though unbelief says they are, at least queries if they are not, Isaiah 63:15, but Faith says…
Psalm 77:7-10
7. Will the Lord cast off [292] for ever? and will he be favorable no more? 8. Is his mercy quite gone for ever? Doth his oracle fail from generation to generation? 9. Hath God forgotten, to be merciful? Hath he shut up his compassions in anger? Selah. 10. And said, My death, [293] the years [294] of the right hand of the Most High.
7. and 8. Will the Lord cast off for ever? The statements here made undoubtedly form a part of the searchings which engaged the Psalmist's mind. He intimates that he was almost overwhelmed by a long succession of calamities; for he did not break forth into this language until he had endured affliction for so long a period as hardly to venture to e…
The Church Fathers
"Or will God forget to be merciful?" (ver. 9). In thee, from thee unto another there is no mercy unless God bestow it on thee: and shall God Himself forget mercy? The stream runneth: shall the spring itself be dried up? "Or shall God forget to be merciful: or shall He keep back in anger His mercies?" That is, shall He be so angry, as that He will not have mercy? He will more easily keep back anger than mercy.
Let no man then so understand the words of the Psalmist, "Shall God forget to be gracious? shall he shut up in his anger his tender mercies" as if the sentence of God were true of good men, false of bad men, or true of good men and wicked angels, but false of bad men. For the Psalmist's words refer to the vessels of mercy and the children of the promise, of whom the prophet himself was one; for when he had said, "Shall God forget to be gracious? shall he shut up in his anger his tender mercies?" and then immediately subjoins, "And I said, Now I begin: this is the change wrought by the right hand of the Most High," he manifestly explained what he meant by the words, "Shall he shut up in his anger his tender mercies?" For God's anger is this mortal life, in which man is made like to vanity, and his days pass as a shadow. Yet in this anger God does not forget to be gracious, causing his sun to shine and his rain to descend on the just and the unjust; and thus he does not in his anger cut short his tender mercies, and especially in what the Psalmist speaks of in the words, "Now I begin: this change is from the right hand of the Most High;" for he changes for the better the vessels of mercy, even while they are still in this most wretched life, which is God's anger, and even while his anger is manifesting itself in this miserable corruption; for "in his anger he does not shut up his tender mercies." And since the truth of this divine canticle is quite satisfied by this application of it, there is no need to give it a reference to that place in which those who do not belong to the city of God are punished in eternal fire. But if any persist in extending its application to the torments of the wicked, let them at least understand it so that the anger of God, which has threatened the wicked with eternal punishment, shall abide, but shall be mixed with mercy to the extent of alleviating the torments which might justly be inflicted; so that the wicked shall neither wholly escape, nor only for a time endure these threatened pains, but that they shall be less severe and more endurable than they deserve. Thus the anger of God shall continue, and at the same time he will not in this anger shut up his tender mercies.
Dictionary and topics
Despondency · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Doubting · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Seekers · 5:8;8:5,6; — 5:8;8:5,6;
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
He calls his eyelids the "guards of my eyes." He who holds these so that they remain open when they want to shut together for sleep, is God; for his looking up to Him keeps the poet awake in spite of all overstraining of his powers. Hupfeld and others render thus: "Thou hast held, i.e., caused to last, the night-watches of mine eyes," - which is affected in thought and expression. The preterites state what has been hitherto and has not yet come to a close. He still endures, as formerly, such thumps and blows within him, as though he lay upon an anvil (פּעם), and his voice fails him. Then silent soliloquy takes the place of audible prayer; he throws himself back in thought to the days of old…
The psalmist questions his status before God.
77:7 Feeling rejected (see 43:2), the psalmist asks if the situation is permanent.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 77:9
Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah.
Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Has El, the Mighty One, become great in everything but grace? Does he know how to afflict, but not how to uphold? Can he forget anything? Above all, can he forget to exercise that attribute which lies nearest to his essence, for he is love? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Are the pipes of goodness choked up so that love can no more flow through them? Do the bowels of Jehovah no longer yearn towards his own beloved children? Thus with cord after cord unbelief is smitten and driven out of the soul; it raises questions and we will meet it with questions: it mak…
It is quite in vain, then, that some--indeed very many--yield to merely human feelings and deplore the notion of the eternal punishment of the damned and their interminable and perpetual misery. They do not believe that such things will be. Not that they would go counter to divine Scripture--but, yielding to their own human feelings, they soften what seems harsh and give a milder emphasis to statements they believe are meant more to terrify than to express the literal truth. "God will not forget," they say, "to show mercy, nor in his anger will he shut up his mercy." This is, in fact, the text of a holy psalm. But there is no doubt that it is to be interpreted to refer to those who are called "vessels of mercy," those who are freed from misery not by their own merits but through God's mercy. Even so, if they suppose that the text applies to all men, there is no ground for them further to suppose that there can be an end for those of whom it is said, "Thus these shall go into everlasting punishment." Otherwise, it can as well be thought that there will also be an end to the happiness of those of whom the antithesis was said: "But the righteous into life eternal." But let them suppose, if it pleases them, that, for certain intervals of time, the punishments of the damned are somewhat mitigated. Even so, the wrath of God must be understood as still resting on them. And this is damnation--for this anger, which is not a violent passion in the divine mind, is called "wrath" in God. Yet even in his wrath--his wrath resting on them--he does not "shut up his mercy." This is not to put an end to their eternal afflictions, but rather to apply or interpose some little respite in their torments. For the psalm does not say, "To put an end to his wrath," or, "After his wrath," but, "In his wrath." Now, if this wrath were all there is in man's damnation, and even if it were present only in the slightest degree conceivable--still, to be lost out of the Kingdom of God, to be an exile from the City of God, to be estranged from the life of God, to suffer loss of the great abundance of God's blessings which he has hidden for those who fear him and prepared for those who hope in him--this would be a punishment so great that, if it be eternal, no torments that we know could be compared to it, no matter how many ages they continued.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
