What Does Psalms 77:10 Mean?

(10) **And I said . . .**—The word rendered “infirmity” may, by derivation, mean “wounding” or “piercing.” So Symmachus, “my wound;” Aquila, “my sickness.” Gesenius says, “that which makes my sickness.” If we keep this meaning we must understand mental sickness or “madness,” and understand the poet to say that to indulge in despairing cries is mere madness (comp. King Lear’s, “Oh! that way madness lies”), he will recall God’s ancient deliverances, and so re-establish his faith. But it seems more natural to take a sense which the cognate verb very commonly bears (Leviticus 19:8; Ezekiel 36:22; Psalm 74:7; Psalm 89:39), and render, “I said this (such despair) is on my part profanation, profanation of the years of the right hand of the Most High.” To despair of continued help from One who had been so gracious in the past is a kind of blasphemy. The word “profanation” must be understood as repeated for the sake of *the *grammar.