This Psalm gets “personal!”
As much as those well-known passages in Jeremiah or Habakkuk or Jonah, for that matter.
And in Psalm 77 Asaph is facing some sort of challenge … severe in nature. And the man wisely brings all his problems to the Lord!
Today’s Verse, the 4th of 20, is so brutally honest! “Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”
“Thou” meaning the Lord, of course.
In other words, “God is keeping me awake, giving me no sleep!”
The verb “holdest” is “achaz,” meaning “to seize, take possession of, catch.” The Lord is thus holding his eyes open, no rest whatsoever!
That’s a unique way, though Biblical, of viewing insomnia!
On the other hand, read Psalm 127:2. “It is vain to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so HE (the Lord) GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP.”
Jeremiah once said, “My sleep is sweet unto me.” Jeremiah 31:26
But not Asaph!
He is, according to our verse, “troubled.” Again: “Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”
The verb “am troubled” is “paam,” only found 5 times in the entire Old Testament. It means “disturbed.” Or “beaten persistently, pushed, impelled.”
Certain things, conditions of his life, are “bullying” him!
Sounds like Paul’s “thorn in the flesh!”
These burdens are so vexing the man cannot even “speak!” Cannot logically express himself (“dabar” in Hebrew) as he would wish. I think he means he cannot “pray” like he would ideally.
Yet he, with Holy Spirit inspiration, sure did write a beautiful Psalm.
Question today … Have any of you our readers been in such a deep, dark, trying place?
No sleep?
Thoughts so tangled that you can’t half talk?
And God does not seem to care?
Then, if so, real the rest of Psalm 77.
The man achieves victory ere the Poem ends!
Through the Lord God Almighty.
Learn to “filter” all your feelings, emotions, thoughts, decisions, life “turns” … through Scripture. You will “grow” spiritually in the process.
Like Peter said, many years later: “Desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” 1st Peter 2:2
Amen.
— Dr. Mike Bagwell