The Book of Psalms

Word Study

"cast off," Hebrew yiznach (יִזְנַח). In the depth of his distress, Asaph asks six desperate questions in a row, and this is the first of them: "Will the Lord cast off for ever?" His dread is not merely that God is displeased, but that God has thrown him away altogether.

"for ever," le'olamim (לְעוֹלָמִים). This word haunts the whole passage, sounding again and again: cast off "for ever," mercy clean gone "for ever," the promise failing "for evermore." It is not the trouble itself that terrifies Asaph so much as the thought that it will never end.

"favourable," lirtzot (לִרְצוֹת). "And will he be favourable no more?" To be favourable is to look upon someone with pleasure and acceptance, and Asaph fears that this look has been permanently withdrawn from him.

"mercy clean gone," afes chasdo (אָפֵס חַסְדּוֹ), his lovingkindness at an end. "Is his mercy clean gone for ever?" The very covenant love on which Israel had always rested is the thing he now fears has run dry.

"promise fail," gamar omer (גָּמַר אֹמֶר). "Doth his promise fail for evermore?" If God's own word has come to an end, then the sufferer has nothing left underfoot to stand on.

"forgotten to be gracious," hashakhach channot El (הֲשָׁכַח חַנּוֹת אֵל). "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?" Each of these questions probes the same terrible fear, that God Himself has permanently changed.

"shut up his tender mercies," qafatz rachamav (קָפַץ רַחֲמָיו), closed off His compassions. "Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" The picture is of compassion shut away behind a closed door, still there but no longer given out.

Explanation

Read these six questions slowly, and notice that they are all really asking one thing: has God changed? "Cast off for ever... favourable no more... mercy clean gone for ever... promise fail for evermore... forgotten to be gracious... shut up his tender mercies." Every question fears that the God who was once gracious, merciful, and faithful has somehow become a different God, that His love has run out, His promises have expired, His compassion has been switched off. This is the peculiar terror of the dark night of the soul: not merely that things are hard, but the creeping dread that God's very character has altered toward us, that He who was kind is kind no longer. And notice how honestly the Bible records it. Here is a godly man, a worship leader in Israel, asking out loud whether God has abandoned him for ever. Scripture does not censor these questions or scold Asaph for them; it writes them down, which is itself a comfort, for it means that if you have ever lain awake asking, "Has God forgotten me? Is His mercy gone?", you are in the company of the saints, and such thoughts, however dark, are not beyond the reach of grace. But mark this: the questions, terrible as they are, are still addressed. Asaph is not walking away from God; he is crying to Him, even while asking whether God has left. And that is the thin thread of faith that holds through the darkest night, still speaking to the God we fear has gone silent. The questions are honest; the answer is coming; and the very asking keeps the door open.

Gospel Focus

"Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?", the answer to every one of these fearful questions is a resounding No, secured forever in Jesus Christ, in whom God's unchanging mercy is displayed. God does not change, "I am the LORD, I change not" (Malachi 3:6), and His Son is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8); His mercy is not "clean gone," for "his compassions fail not. They are new every morning" (Lamentations 3:22-23). And the promise does not "fail," for "all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen" (2 Corinthians 1:20). The proof that God has not forgotten to be gracious, and never will, is the cross: "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). A God who gave His Son for us has not cast us off and will not; His tender mercies are not shut up but poured out in Christ. And Jesus knows the dark night Himself, having cried, "why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46), and He has promised, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5). So when your heart asks whether God's mercy is gone, look to Christ crucified and risen, and know the answer: God has not changed, His mercy is not spent, and He has not forgotten to be gracious, and never will.

Word Study

"my infirmity," Hebrew challoti hi (חַלּוֹתִי הִיא), my sickness, my weakness. The psalm turns on a single sentence: "And I said, This is my infirmity." Asaph names his despairing thoughts as his own weakness, not the truth about God.

"the years of the right hand," shenot yemin (שְׁנוֹת יְמִין). Against his own frailty he sets whole years of God's strong hand at work. The cure is deliberate: "but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High."

"I will remember," ezkor (אֶזְכֹּר). This is not a feeling that happens to him but a resolve he makes: "I will remember the works of the LORD." Where his thoughts had drifted into despair, he now turns them by decision toward what God has done.

"works of the LORD," ma'alelei-Yah (מַעַלְלֵי־יָהּ). The remedy for a heart afraid that God has changed is the record of what God has actually done. Asaph does not argue himself out of his fear; he recalls God's deeds.

"wonders of old," pil'akha miqqedem (פִּלְאֲךָ מִקֶּדֶם). "Surely I will remember thy wonders of old." He reaches back past his present darkness to God's ancient marvels, the things done long before his trouble began.

"meditate," hagiti (הָגִיתִי). Remembering is not a glance but a dwelling: "I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings." What he calls to mind he then turns over slowly, and speaks aloud.

Explanation

This is the hinge of the whole psalm, and everything turns on the little sentence, "And I said, This is my infirmity." That is a moment of enormous spiritual wisdom. Asaph has been drowning in dark questions, "has God cast me off? is His mercy gone?", and now he stops and labels them for what they are: "This is my infirmity", my weakness, my sickness, not the truth about God. He recognizes that the despairing thoughts were coming from his own frailty, his exhausted, sleepless, overwhelmed heart, and not from reality. That distinction is life-saving. Feelings can lie; a heart in the dark can tell you God has changed when He has not changed at all. Asaph learns to say, "This bleak assessment is my infirmity talking, not the actual state of things." And having named the sickness, he reaches for the medicine, and the medicine is memory. Four times over he sets his will to it: "I will remember... I will remember... I will remember... I will meditate." Notice it is an act of the will, not a feeling. He does not wait until he feels better; he deliberately turns his mind away from his present darkness and onto God's past deeds, "the years of the right hand of the most High," "thy wonders of old." When the present is too dark to read, faith goes back and reads the record of what God has already done. This is the way out of the pit: name the despair as your own weakness, and then, by an act of will, remember. Preach God's proven works to your frightened heart until the memory of what He has done overpowers the fear of what He might not do.

Gospel Focus

"This is my infirmity: but I will remember the works of the LORD", the remembering that heals the dark night is given its surest anchor in Jesus Christ, whose finished work is the great deed of God for us to recall. When feelings say God has cast us off, we do what Asaph did, we remember, and the supreme thing we remember is the cross, "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). The Lord Jesus even gave His people a way of remembering, the Lord's Supper, "this do in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19), so that when the heart grows faint we may look back to His broken body and shed blood and be steadied. Faith is not the denial of dark feelings but the deliberate turning of the mind to the works of God in Christ, "casting down imaginations" and "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). And the God whose "wonders of old" Asaph recalled has done a greater wonder still in the death and resurrection of Jesus, an unchangeable proof of His love. So when your own infirmity fills you with fear, name it, and then remember, not chiefly your feelings, but the finished work of Christ, and let the memory of the cross overpower the darkness of the hour.

Word Study

"thy way," Hebrew darkekha (דַּרְכֶּךָ). Remembering the Red Sea, Asaph marvels at God's mysterious ways: "Thy way is in the sea." God's road runs where no road could be, straight through the place that should have stopped His people cold.

"in the sea," bayyam (בַּיָּם). The sea was the barrier, the end of every human hope of escape; and that is precisely where God's way lay. What blocked Israel became the very ground of their deliverance.

"thy path," shevilekha (שְׁבִילְךָ). The second line matches the first: "and thy path in the great waters." God made a path through the deep, a track for His people to walk where there had been only water.

"great waters," mayim rabbim (מַיִם רַבִּים). Not a stream to be forded but the great waters, vast and deep. The bigger the obstacle, the plainer it is that the way through it belongs to God alone.

"footsteps are not known," iqvotekha lo noda'u (עִקְּבוֹתֶיךָ לֹא נוֹדָעוּ). "And thy footsteps are not known." God made a path through the deep, yet left no tracks; His people walked through on dry ground and could not afterward trace how He had done it.

"leddest thy people like a flock," nachita katzon ammekha (נָחִיתָ כַצֹּאן עַמֶּךָ). And the same God whose footsteps cannot be traced "leddest thy people like a flock." The untraceable One is also the shepherd walking ahead of His sheep, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Explanation

These closing verses hold together two truths that we badly need to keep together, and Asaph has arrived at them by remembering the Red Sea. The first is the mystery of God's ways: "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known." When God led Israel through the sea, the waters closed behind them and left no footprints; you could not trace the path He took. So it is with God's dealings still: His ways run through deep waters we cannot fathom, and He leaves no tracks we can follow with our understanding. Often we cannot see where He is going or why, His footsteps are not known, His path is hidden in the deep. That could be a frightening thought on its own, a God whose ways we cannot trace. But Asaph does not leave it there; he adds the second truth in the very next breath: "Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." The God whose footsteps cannot be traced is, at the same time, the tender Shepherd leading His flock. Hold the two together and you have the deepest comfort available to a soul in the dark: you may not be able to see or understand the path God is taking, His footsteps are not known, and yet you are not lost, for He is leading you like a shepherd leads his sheep. The sheep does not need to trace the shepherd's route or grasp his reasons; it needs only to follow the hand that leads. God's way is in the sea, unsearchable, but His leading is sure, and He brings His flock safely through the deepest waters to the other side.

Gospel Focus

"Thy way is in the sea... and thou leddest thy people like a flock", the God whose path runs untraceable through the deep, yet who leads His flock safely through, is fully revealed in Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. The Red Sea crossing, the great rescue Asaph remembered, is a picture of the greater redemption in Christ, who leads His people through the deep waters of sin and death by a way we could never have devised. His own path ran through the deepest waters of all, "all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me" (Psalm 42:7), into death itself, a way whose depths we cannot fully trace; yet He came through and leads His flock after Him. He is "that great shepherd of the sheep" (Hebrews 13:20), who says, "I am the good shepherd... and I lay down my life for the sheep" (John 10:11, 15), and, "my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27). We may not understand the way He is taking us, His footsteps are not known, but we are led by a Shepherd who has gone through the deep waters before us and will bring us safely home, "he leadeth me beside the still waters" (Psalm 23:2). So when God's path is hidden and you cannot trace His footsteps, remember: you follow a Shepherd, not a map. Trust the hand that leads, the pierced hand of the Lord Jesus, and He will bring His flock through every sea to the shore of glory.