Ps. 77.11-12 (implosion to explosion)

Then / I remember / the deeds of Yhwh
for I do remember / your wonders of old
I reflect / on all your works
and ponder / on all your acts. 

There seems to be two ways of approaching this portion of the psalm. One view sees this as the psalmist’s transition into hope and away from the despair that seemed the prevalent mood of the first half. The other view does not see in this portion of the psalm a change of mood. I tend to fall along the lines of latter—and for several reasons. That said, there are important differences that make this interpretation difficult. For one, as we saw, the first half of the psalm was marked by an internal monologue; the psalmist never addressed God directly, and when the questions came they were not addressed to God but were rather the psalmist’s own questioning to himself. He was, in a sense, imploding under the weight of God’s “changing” right hand. Here, however, the psalmist turns directly to God as “you”. And he will address God thus right up to the end of the psalm. Furthermore, the first half of the psalm is very vague in specifics about what the psalmist is ‘pondering’ and ‘reflecting on.’ Nowhere does the psalmist allude to a specific event (except perhaps in the questioning section, but even that is not referring to an historical event but a creed developed from it—and, he’s questioning it…). Here, by contrast, the ‘shape’ of God’s deliverance is fully in view. Clearly, it is the exodus event and its power that the psalmist’s mind is directly turning toward. There are other differences we will likely note as we proceed. All of that said, I still think that this portion does not mark the transition noted above. For one, as we have seen in our analysis of verses 1-5, the psalmist has intentionally portrayed his present situation in contrast to this portion of the psalm. Whereas his voice ‘cries out to God’, God’s voice is only in the past. Whereas his hands are stretched out to God, the ‘hands of Moses and Aaron’ are now nowhere to be found. Whereas his eyes are held open at night (and witnessing nothing), the waters in the past saw God and were afraid. Furthermore, theses verses , in each line, refer to the psalmist’s internal state of “remembering, reflecting and pondering”—all actions taken in the first portion of the psalm and all producing in the psalmist, without exception, a state of torment and grief. All of this, it seems to me, points to the fact that the central questions of the psalm are not ‘answered’ in this portion of the psalm—the questions themselves flow from and embody the clash between the second and first portion. In this way, this is not an ‘answer’ but the precise cause of the questions. It is in this ‘memory’ that the content of the question is formulated. That is to say—we noted that the central questions are not an abstract form of reasoning but the deeply felt sense of covenantal-kinship abandonment. Therefore, beneath these questions is a deep and profound love, admiration, respect and total dependency upon Yhwh. It is in this portion of the psalm that we come to see that ‘positive’ force that leads to such a profoundly troubling sense of loss (of ‘change’). This is the reflection of an abandoned spouse on the good and foundational times of the past—he is, in a way, remembering the marriage of God to Israel. Which is why these verses can be the source of the deeply troubling central questions. Has all of this been lost? Have we been abandoned? In a way, we could say the first portion represents implosion while this portion is the explosion.