Psalm 77:10 And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High. The psalmist really said, "This is my infirmity — the years of the right hand of the Most High!" He does not announce his intention to dwell upon them, but he announces the character of the years themselves. It is the suddenness of a quick appreciation of the true view of things. Do you not know what it is to suddenly adjust a picture, by the slightest touch of the hand, so that the whole thing is seen in its true focus? Yes, you have gained the real point of view. So it is here. From the midst of a God-questioning disposition, in which hope is lost, he suddenly says, "This is my infirmity — the years of the right hand of the Most High!" Now, what do you find? The second half of the psalm is the same picture in focus. The right hand is a symbol peculiar to Hebrew thought and literature, and is used perpetually to mark some great fact in the character and person of God. Law and righteousness, salvation and strength, action and love, and the deep, full satisfaction of every necessity of human life, in pleasures for evermore, — all these things, to the mind of the Hebrew, were wrapped up in that magnificent figure of the right hand of the Most High. "The years of my life," now says the psalmist, "are years conditioned in law and righteousness — years in which there is the perpetual outworking of salvation and the unceasing manifestation of strength; they are years in which God is active for me, years in which I am perpetually caressed by the love and tenderness of the Divine heart, years which, because they come from the hand of God, are years of the making of eternal and undying pleasure." It was a new light upon his own life, a new point of vision, a new outlook. The things which had issued in his dirge of wailing and sorrow were suddenly seen, from this new point of vision, to be working together for his good, thus giving a forecast of the New Testament statement. "The years of the right hand of the Most High." There is a point of vision from which we may look upon the selfsame things, and may catch on them already the light and gleam of morning; a point from which, even to-day, I can look upon great grief and overwhelming sorrow, saying, "Yes, that happened, not upon such a day of such a month, in such a year, but in one of the years of the right hand of the Most High. It was a part of the fiery law, a method of the Divine righteousness, a ministry of salvation, a manifestation of strength, a Divine action, a touch of the Divine love, it had within it the creation of joy for evermore." We can only say those things by faith to-day; not yet by sight, not yet by personal realization, but by faith. There is no agony of heart that we endure, if we know how to false it, that has not in it the element that shall make heaven. "The years of the right hand of the Most High." I do not see the hand, I have only the years; but I know the hand is there. I know that somewhere beyond this, when the mists have rolled aside, and the life I am conscious of to-day shall have passed into fuller realization, then out of the darkness will the light come, and out of the agony of the moment will heaven's pleasure have been evolved. (G. Campbell Morgan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High.WEB: Then I thought, "I will appeal to this: the years of the right hand of the Most High." |
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