Psalm 77:15

Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

77:11-20 The remembrance of the works of God, will be a powerful remedy against distrust of his promise and goodness; for he is God, and changes not. God's way is in the sanctuary. We are sure that God is holy in all his works. God's ways are like the deep waters, which cannot be fathomed; like the way of a ship, which cannot be tracked. God brought Israel out of Egypt. This was typical of the great redemption to be wrought out in the fulness of time, both by price and power. If we have harboured doubtful thoughts, we should, without delay, turn our minds to meditate on that God, who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, that with him, he might freely give us all things.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thou hast with thine arm - That is, with strength or power, the arm being a symbol of strength. Exodus 6:6; Exodus 15:16; Psalm 10:15.

Redeemed thy people - Thou didst rescue or deliver them from Egyptian bondage. See the notes at Isaiah 43:3.

The sons of Jacob and Joseph - The descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Jacob is mentioned because he was the ancestor of the twelve tribes; Joseph, because he was conspicuous or eminent among the sons of Jacob, and particularly because he acted so important a part in the affairs of Egypt, from whose dominion they were redeemed.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. Jacob and Joseph—representing all.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Redeemed thy people, to wit, out of Egypt, after a long and hard bondage; which he here mentions to strengthen his faith in their present captivity.

Jacob and Joseph; whom he mentions, partly, as a most eminent portion of the sons of Jacob, branched forth into two numerous tribes; partly, because the sons of Joseph were born in Egypt, which Jacob’s other sons were not; and partly, because he laid the foundation of that redemption by bringing them into Egypt, and preserving and nourishing Jacob and his sons there, as a little child is nourished, as it is expressed in the Hebrew text, Genesis 47:12; in which respect he was a second father to them, and they might well be called his sons; without whose care (to speak humanly) there had been no such redemption, nor people to be redeemed.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people,.... The people of Israel out of Egypt, which was typical of the redemption of the Lord's people by Christ, the arm and power of God:

the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Joseph is particularly mentioned for honour's sake, and because he was the means of supporting Jacob and his family in Egypt; and had special faith in their deliverance from thence; the Targum is,

"the sons whom Jacob begot, and Joseph nourished.''

Selah. See Gill on Psalm 3:2.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. Thou hast &c.] With a (strong) arm didst thou redeem thy people. Cp. Exodus 15:13; Exodus 15:16; Exodus 6:6; Psalm 74:2.

the sons of Jacob and Joseph] According to the Targum, Joseph is named because, by preserving the lives of his brethren in Egypt, lie became as it were a second father of the nation. But more probably Joseph is named as the father of Ephraim and Manasseh, the ancestors of the most powerful tribes of the Northern Kingdom. Cp. Psalm 78:67; Psalm 80:1; Psalm 81:5. In Amos (Amos 5:6; Amos 5:15; Amos 6:6) Joseph denotes the Northern Kingdom. In Obadiah 1:18, the house of Jacob and the house of Joseph stands for the whole nation. Cp. Zechariah 10:6; Ezekiel 37:16; Ezekiel 37:19; Ezekiel 47:13; Ezekiel 48:32.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - Thou hast with thine arm (i.e. with thy mighty strength) redeemed thy people. The deliverance from Egypt is constantly called a "redemption" (Exodus 6:6; Exodus 15:13; Deuteronomy 7:8; Deuteronomy 9:26, etc.; 2 Samuel 7:23; 1 Chronicles 17:21, etc.). It is brought forward here "as the greatest and most wonderful of all the works of God, and hence as containing the strongest pledge of future deliverance" (Hengstenberg). The sons of Jacob and Joseph. A new designation of the people of Israel, and one which elsewhere occurs only in Obadiah 1:18. Professor Cheyne suggests that it is a geographical division - by Jacob southern Israel, and by Joseph northern Israel, being intended (comp. Hosea 12:2; Amos 5:6, 15; Amos 6:6). Psalm 77:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

With ואמר the poet introduces the self-encouragement with which he has hitherto calmed himself when such questions of temptation were wont to intrude themselves upon him, and with which he still soothes himself. In the rendering of הלּותי (with the tone regularly drawn back before the following monosyllable) even the Targum wavers between מרעוּתי (my affliction) and בּעוּתי (my supplication); and just in the same way, in the rendering of Psalm 77:11, between אשׁתּניו (have changed) and שׁנין (years). שׁנות cannot possibly signify "change" in an active sense, as Luther renders: "The right hand of the Most High can change everything," but only a having become different (lxx and the Quinta ἀλλοίωσις, Symmachus ἐπιδευτέρωσις), after which Maurer, Hupfeld, and Hitzig render thus: my affliction is this, that the right hand of the Most High has changed. But after we have read שׁנות in Psalm 77:6 as a poetical plural of שׁנה, a year, we have first of all to see whether it may not have the same signification here. And many possible interpretations present themselves. It can be interpreted: "my supplication is this: years of the right hand of the Most High" (viz., that years like to the former ones may be renewed); but this thought is not suited to the introduction with ואמר. We must either interpret it: my sickness, viz., from the side of God, i.e., the temptation which befalls me from Him, the affliction ordained by Him for me (Aquila ἀῤῥωστία μου), is this (cf. Jeremiah 10:19); or, since in this case the unambiguous חלותי would have been used instead of the Piel: my being pierced, my wounding, my sorrow is this (Symmachus τρῶσίς μου, inf. Kal from חלל, Psalm 109:22, after the form חנּות from חנן) - they are years of the right hand of the Most High, i.e., those which God's mighty hand, under which I have to humble myself (1 Peter 5:6), has formed and measured out to me. In connection with this way of taking Psalm 77:11, Psalm 77:12 is now suitably and easily attached to what has gone before. The poet says to himself that the affliction allotted to him has its time, and will not last for ever. Therein lies a hope which makes the retrospective glance into the happier past a source of consolation to him. In Psalm 77:12 the Chethb אזכיר is to be retained, for the כי in Psalm 77:12 is thus best explained: "I bring to remembrance, i.e., make known with praise or celebrate (Isaiah 63:7), the deeds of Jāh, for I will remember Thy wondrous doing from days of old." His sorrow over the distance between the present and the past is now mitigated by the hope that God's right hand, which now casts down, will also again in His own time raise up. Therefore he will now, as the advance from the indicative to the cohortative (cf. Psalm 17:15) imports, thoroughly console and refresh himself with God's work of salvation in all its miraculous manifestations from the earliest times. יהּ is the most concise and comprehensive appellation for the God of the history of redemption, who, as Habakkuk prays, will revive His work of redemption in the midst of the years to come, and bring it to a glorious issue. To Him who then was and who will yet come the poet now brings praise and celebration. The way of God is His historical rule, and more especially, as in Habakkuk 3:6, הליכות, His redemptive rule. The primary passage Exodus 15:11 (cf. Psalm 68:25) shows that בּקּדשׁ is not to be rendered "in the sanctuary" (lxx ἐν τῷ ἁγίῳ), but "in holiness" (Symmachus ἐν ἁγιασμῷ). Holy and glorious in love and in anger. God goes through history, and shows Himself there as the incomparable One, with whose greatness no being, and least of all any one of the beingless gods, can be measured. He is האל, the God, God absolutely and exclusively, a miracle-working (עשׂה פלא, not עשׂה פלא cf. Genesis 1:11)

(Note: The joining of the second word, accented on the first syllable and closely allied in sense, on to the first, which is accented on the ultima (the tone of which, under certain circumstances, retreats to the penult., נסוג אחור) or monosyllabic, by means of the hardening Dagesh (the so-called דחיק), only takes place when that first word ends in ה- or ה-, not when it ends in ה-.))

God, and a God who by these very means reveals Himself as the living and supra-mundane God. He has made His omnipotence known among the peoples, viz., as Exodus 15:16 says, by the redemption of His people, the tribes of Jacob and the double tribe of Joseph, out of Egypt, - a deed of His arm, i.e., the work of His own might, by which He has proved Himself to all peoples and to the whole earth to be the Lord of the world and the God of salvation (Exodus 9:16; Exodus 15:14). בּזרוע, brachio scil. extenso (Exodus 6:6; Deuteronomy 4:34, and frequently), just as in Psalm 75:6, בּצוּאר, collo scil. erecto. The music here strikes in; the whole strophe is an overture to the following hymn in celebration of God, the Redeemer out of Egypt.