There is something very touching, and at the same time very instructive, in the path of the soul in this Psalm. It may remind us of Psalm 73. It may be read as an utterance of the Jew under his discipline in the latter day, but the soul of any saint may use it.
The first verse gives us the result, or the end of the path, as is common in the Psalms. The soul’s path is then traced back to its beginning.
It was a time of trouble, and the suppliant religiously seeks the Lord. But this was not properly faith. It was the working of religious sentiment awakened in the day of trouble. It did not lead to strength or liberty. Recollections arise to aggravate the grief. The soul sees God rather in its own sorrows and exercises than in His doings and ways. It was God, but God as in connection with present griefs; and murmurings are cast up by all this working. The Spirit of God at length, however, introduces His power and light, and at once the current of the soul is changed. He leads the suppliant to see that all this was but nature. “This is my infirmity.” It had a religious character in it, but it was merely man, or the infirmity of nature, not the strength and repose of faith. And the Spirit then takes the soul off from God thus seen in the light of its own sorrows, to God seen and understood by the light of His own ways. Old things are again remembered; but they are the old things of God’s salvation, and not of the suppliant’s griefs (Psa. 77:5,11); days of old when His people had to go through trackless deeps and untrod paths, and yet proved Him to be their leader and shepherd. And the doings of God display Himself, tell what He is, and thus they form a “sanctuary,” as the Psalmist here speaks (Psa. 77:13).
And is it not the true Gospel comfort, to know our God in His doings for us? There we learn a simple tale that needs no interpreter—we get an undistracted witness of devoted everlasting love. We read a “glory” that gladdens us “in the face of Jesus Christ.” But His dealings with us are in discipline, and wait to be interpreted. Job was troubled when he thought of God’s dealing with him; but for a happy moment the Spirit led him to God’s dealings and acts for him, and all was triumph (Job 19:23-27). So the Psalmist here.