The psalm asks if God has given up on us. Is that allowed?
Verses 8 to 10 are three questions in a row. Will God reject us forever? Has His kindness run out? Has He forgotten how to be gracious? Anyone who has ever felt dropped by God will recognize this.
Who is speaking? Radak says the whole psalm is said in the voice of exile, and Rashi calls the exile a night. So the "I" is the Jewish people, far from home.
The Gemara (Berakhot 7a) says Moshe asked God something just as hard: why do some righteous people do well while others suffer? Two teachers in the Gemara disagree about what happened next. Rabbi Yochanan, quoting Rabbi Yosei, says God granted Moshe's request to understand His ways. Rabbi Meir says that request was not granted.
The prophet Chavakuk said he would stand at his post and wait to see what God would say to him. Midrash Tehillim (a collection of rabbinic teachings on the psalms) adds that he drew a shape, stood inside it, and said he would not move until God answered him. God told him: you called out to Me and did not doubt Me, so I will answer you.
Then the psalm answers its own questions. In verse 11, Rashi hears the speaker's thoughts say that this is only meant to frighten me into coming back to God. Metzudat David reads the last verse as a return to the beginning. When I remember all this, the speaker says, I will know it is not because His hand is too short to save us, but to wake our hearts to return.
So the psalm says the doubt out loud. It does not stop there. It goes looking for evidence, and the evidence it finds is history.
Tehillim 77:8-10,Radak and Rashi on Tehillim 77:1 and 77:3,Berakhot 7a,Chavakuk 2:1,Midrash Tehillim 77:1,Rashi on Tehillim 77:11,Metzudat David on Tehillim 77:21Why would anyone refuse to be comforted?
Verse 3 says, "My soul refuses to be comforted." That sounds odd. Comfort is supposed to be good.
Radak says the speaker does try. He tells his own heart that God will bring him out of exile, even if it takes long. But the troubles are so many that the soul still refuses.
Midrash Tehillim gives a reason: the speaker does not know when it ends. It tells a parable. A father tells his son, "You will get ten lashes." After the first, he says, "Nine more." He keeps counting up to ten, and the son is comforted as he goes, because he knows how many are left. In the same way, the Midrash says, the Jewish people tell God that their soul refuses comfort because they do not know the end. It quotes David: "Let me know, Hashem, my end" (Tehillim 39:5).
The Midrash is talking about exile. What it says is simple: not knowing the end is what makes comfort fail.
Radak also explains why the psalm happens at night. A person is free of daily business then and thinks about his own troubles. Verse 5, he says, is a man awake at night and broken in the morning.
One more thing you can see in the Hebrew. The Hebrew for "refuses" and "be comforted" uses the same two roots the Torah uses when Yaakov mourns Yosef: he refused to be comforted. The sources we opened do not connect them. But the psalm names Yaakov and Yosef in verse 16, right before the Sea.
Tehillim 77:3,Radak on Tehillim 77:3 and 77:5,Midrash Tehillim 77:1,Tehillim 39:5,Bereishit 37:35Why does a psalm about a sleepless night end at the Splitting of the Sea?
Verse 12 is the turn. Up to there, the speaker is stuck in the dark, asking questions. From there, he starts to remember something different: what God did. Radak says these are the wonders in Egypt, at the Sea, at Mount Sinai and in the desert. His reasoning: those wonders came after people had given up hope, so God will do the same for us in this exile.
The storm in verses 17 to 19 is more than the Torah tells. In Shemot 14:24, God looks down from the pillar of fire and cloud and throws the Egyptian camp into panic. The psalm adds water pouring, thunder, lightning and a shaking earth. Rashi says the thunder rolled like a wheel on the sea to confuse the Egyptian camp.
Verse 20 says, "Your way was in the sea, and Your footprints were not known." Radak and Metzudat David take this plainly: the water went back at once, so no trace of the path was left.
That detail sits next to the first half. There, the speaker cannot find God anywhere. Here, even at the Sea, there were no footprints to see. We noticed that match. The commentators we read do not draw it.
The psalm ends quietly: "You led Your people like a flock, by the hand of Moshe and Aharon." It never says the speaker feels better.
Radak on Tehillim 77:12-13,Shemot 14:24,Rashi on Tehillim 77:19,Radak and Metzudat David on Tehillim 77:20