Psalm 77 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 77 (1928 BCP) is the fifteenth-day Morning Prayer psalm in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. Its movement is unusually candid: sleepless lament and questions about God's mercy give way, not to an explanation of suffering, but to remembered acts of redemption and the shepherding of Israel.
Prayer Book Text and Movement
I WILL cry unto God with my voice; * even unto God will I cry with my voice, and he shall hearken unto me. 2 In the time of my trouble I sought the Lord: * I stretched forth my hands unto him, and ceased not in the night season; my soul refused comfort. 3 When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God; * when my heart is vexed, I will complain. 4 Thou holdest mine eyes waking: * I am so feeble that I cannot speak. 5 I have considered the days of old, * and the years that are past. 6 I call to remembrance my song, * and in the night I commune with mine own heart, and search out my spirit.
The opening makes prayer possible without pretending that comfort has already arrived. The first-person voice cries to God, names the refusal of comfort, and brings its inner vexation into speech. In the Daily Office that candour becomes common prayer: the congregation does not merely observe distress from a distance but gives it scriptural words addressed to God.
Will the Lord absent himself for ever? * and will he be no more intreated? 8 Is his mercy clean gone for ever? * and is his promise come utterly to an end for evermore? 9 Hath God forgotten to be gracious? * and will he shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure?
These are questions, not a settled doctrine that God has changed. They take seriously the felt contradiction between affliction and the divine mercy promised to Israel. Their placement in the Psalter also keeps them from becoming the psalm's final word.
Remembering God's Works
And I said, It is mine own infirmity; * but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest. 11 I will remember the works of the LORD, * and call to mind thy wonders of old time. 12 I will think also of all thy works, * and my talking shall be of thy doings. 13 Thy way, O God, is holy: * who is so great a God as our God?
The turn comes through remembrance. The singer does not deny his infirmity; he deliberately turns from private rumination to God's public works. The language of God's “right hand” and wonders prepares for the Exodus-shaped conclusion, where God's holiness is shown in deliverance rather than in an abstract answer to every question.
The revolution in feeling is abrupt. All is sunny and bright in the last half. What makes the change? The recognition of two great truths: first, that the calamity is laid on Israel, and on the psalmist as a member of the nation, by God, and has not come because of that impossible change in Him which the bitter questions had suggested; and, second, the unchangeable eternity of God's delivering power.
Maclaren's reading identifies the psalm's theological argument without flattening its lament: the remembered past matters because it witnesses to God's enduring power, not because it supplies a simple optimism. His historical-critical discussion also notes the Psalm's sustained allusions to Exodus 15 in verses 13-15.
Exodus, Holy Way, and Shepherding
Thou art the God that doest wonders, * and hast declared thy power among the peoples. 15 Thou hast mightily delivered thy people, * even the sons of Jacob and Joseph. 16 The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee, and were afraid; * the depths also were troubled. 17 The clouds poured out water, the air thundered, * and thine arrows went abroad. 18 The voice of thy thunder was heard round about: * the lightnings shone upon the ground; the earth was moved, and shook withal.
The storm imagery gathers the language of the sea crossing into worship. Exodus 15:11 likewise asks, “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?” and Exodus 15:13 speaks of God's leading the redeemed people. Psalm 77 thus uses Israel's foundational deliverance to teach faith to speak of God's holiness as active, saving power.
Thy way is in the sea, and thy paths in the great waters, * and thy footsteps are not known. 20 Thou leddest thy people like sheep, * by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
The unknown footsteps are not divine absence. The final image is pastoral: the God whose way is untraceable in great waters nevertheless leads a people “like sheep,” using Moses and Aaron as ministers of that deliverance. This matters for Anglican corporate prayer, where faith is formed by rehearsing the scriptural acts of God rather than by requiring a private explanation before prayer can begin.
“Your way is in the sea,” that is, Your Christ is preached among the Gentiles.... “Your way is in the sea, and Your paths in many waters,” that is, in many peoples.
Augustine's Christological interpretation is a historic Christian reading, not the replacement of the Psalm's Israelite and Exodus setting. It shows how the Church has heard the sea and “many waters” as a figure for the nations reached by Christ's Gospel; the Prayer Book use preserves the prior literal and liturgical force of the psalm while allowing that Christian reception.
Prayer Book Use
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
Psalm 77 therefore trains a worshipper to bring anguish before God, to remember God's mighty acts, and to receive the Church's hope as a disciplined act of praise. In the 1928 BCP it is appointed for the Fifteenth Day at Morning Prayer; its position before Psalm 78 also makes its remembered deliverance a fitting threshold to the next psalm's extended rehearsal of Israel's history.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- The Psalter (1928 BCP)
- Daily Office (1928 BCP)
- Exodus in Anglican Worship
External Links
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 77, Voce mea ad Dominum, The Fifteenth Day, Morning Prayer, 1928 Psalter text.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 77:7-9, The Fifteenth Day, Morning Prayer, 1928 Psalter text.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 77:10-13, The Fifteenth Day, Morning Prayer, 1928 Psalter text.
- ↑ Alexander Maclaren, The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, vol. 2 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1894), pp. 386-387, exposition of Psalm 77, Project Gutenberg transcription.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 77:14-18, The Fifteenth Day, Morning Prayer, 1928 Psalter text.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 77:19-20, The Fifteenth Day, Morning Prayer, 1928 Psalter text.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 76, §19 (Psalm 76 in the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering = Psalm 77 in the Hebrew numbering), trans. J. E. Tweed, in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), New Advent text.
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version, Colossians 3:16, Wikisource text.