Psalm 77:17

The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

77:11-20 The remembrance of the works of God, will be a powerful remedy against distrust of his promise and goodness; for he is God, and changes not. God's way is in the sanctuary. We are sure that God is holy in all his works. God's ways are like the deep waters, which cannot be fathomed; like the way of a ship, which cannot be tracked. God brought Israel out of Egypt. This was typical of the great redemption to be wrought out in the fulness of time, both by price and power. If we have harboured doubtful thoughts, we should, without delay, turn our minds to meditate on that God, who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, that with him, he might freely give us all things.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The clouds poured out water - Margin, "The clouds were poured forth with water." The translation in the text is the more correct. This is a description of a storm; but to what particular storm in history does not appear. It was evidently some exhibition of the divine greatness and power in delivering the children of Israel, and may have referred to the extraordinary manifestation of God at Mount Sinai, amidst lightnings, and thunders, and tempests. Exodus 19:16. For a general description of a storm, as illustrating this passage, see Job 36:26-33, notes; Job 37:1-5, notes; and Psalm 29:1-11.

The skies sent out a sound - The voice of thunder, which seems to come from the sky.

Thine arrows also - The lightnings - compared with burning or ignited arrows. Such arrows were anciently used in war. They were bound round with rags, and dipped in some combustible substance - as turpentine - and shot into houses, grain-fields, haystacks, or towns, for the purpose of setting them on fire. It was not unnatural to compare the rapid lightnings with such blazing arrows.

Went abroad - They moved rapidly in all directions.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. Jacob and Joseph—representing all.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The clouds poured out water, when the Israelites passed over the sea; in respect whereof the Israelites are said to have been baptized in the cloud (i.e. sprinkled with water poured forth from the clouds) and in the sea, 1 Corinthians 10:2.

Thine arrows; either hail-stones, or rather lightnings or thunder-bolts, which are called Gods arrows, Psalm 18:14 144:6.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The clouds poured out water,.... This, with some other circumstances which follow, are not related by Moses in the history of this affair; but as they are here recorded by an inspired penman, there is no doubt to be made of the truth of them; besides Josephus (a) relates the same things; he says, that at the time when the Egyptians were drowned in the Red sea, rains descended from heaven, and there were terrible thunders, lightnings, and thunderbolts; this was when the Lord looked through the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, Exodus 14:24,

the skies sent out a sound; or the airy clouds, the lighter ones, and which were higher in the heavens, as the others before mentioned were thick clouds, full of water, and hung lower; these were thunderclouds, and thunder is the sound which they sent forth, as in the following verse:

thine arrows also went abroad: that is, lightnings, as in Psalm 18:14, so Aben Ezra; but Kimchi interprets them of hailstones.

(a) Antiqu. l. 2. c. 16. sect. 3.

Geneva Study Bible

The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a {l} sound: thine arrows also went abroad.

(l) That is, thundered and lightninged.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

17. God came in storm and earthquake. So the poet develops the thought of Exodus 14:24-25. Cp. Psalm 18:7 ff; Psalm 97:3 ff.; and the parallel passage in Habakkuk 3:10-11, where tempest (R.V.) is the cognate substantive to the verb rendered poured out here.

sent out a sound] Better (cp. Hab.), uttered a voice, i.e. thundered. God’s arrows are the flashes of lightning.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 17. - The clouds poured out water. The description here becomes more poetical than historical, unless, indeed, we may suppose that the writer possessed, besides what is said in Exodus, some traditional account of the passage. The skies sent out a sound; or, "uttered a voice" - the voice of the thunder, beyond a doubt (compare next verse). Thine arrows also went abroad; i.e. lightnings darted hither and thither (see Psalm 18:14; 2 Samuel 22:15). Psalm 77:17

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

When He directed His lance towards the Red Sea, which stood in the way of His redeemed, the waters immediately fell as it were into pangs of travail (יחילוּ, as in Habakkuk 3:10, not ויּחילו), also the billows of the deep trembled; for before the omnipotence of God the Redeemer, which creates a new thing in the midst of the old creation, the rules of the ordinary course of nature become unhinged. There now follow in Psalm 77:18, Psalm 77:19 lines taken from the picture of a thunder-storm. The poet wishes to describe how all the powers of nature became the servants of the majestic revelation of Jahve, when He executed judgment on Egypt and delivered Israel. זרם, Poel of זרם (cognate זרב, זרף, Aethiopic זנם, to rain), signifies intensively: to stream forth in full torrents. Instead of this line, Habakkuk, with a change of the letters of the primary passage, which is usual in Jeremiah more especially, has זרם מים עבר. The rumbling which the שׁחקים

(Note: We have indicated on Psalm 18:12; Psalm 36:6, that the שׁהקים are so called from their thinness, but passages like Psalm 18:12 and the one before us do not favour this idea. One would think that we have more likely to go back to Arab. sḥq, to be distant (whence suḥḳ, distance; saḥı̂ḳ, distant), and that שׁהקים signifies the distances, like שׁמים, the heights, from שׁחק equals suḥḳ, in distinction from שׁחק, an atom (Wetzstein). But the Hebrew affords no trace of this verbal stem, whereas שׁחק, Arab. sḥq, contundere, comminuere (Neshwn: to pound to dust, used e.g., of the apothecary's drugs), is just as much Hebrew as Arabic. And the word is actually associated with this verb by the Arabic mind, inasmuch as Arab. saḥâbun saḥqun (nubes tenues, nubila tenuia) is explained by Arab. sḥâb rqı̂q. Accordingly שׁהקים, according to its primary notion, signifies that which spreads itself out thin and fine over a wide surface, and according to the usage of the language, in contrast with the thick and heavy פני הארץ, the uppermost stratum of the atmosphere, and then the clouds, as also Arab. a‛nân, and the collective ‛anan and ‛anân (vid., Isaiah, at Isaiah 4:5, note), is not first of all the clouds, but the surface of the sky that is turned to us (Fleischer).)

cause to sound forth (נתנוּ, cf. Psalm 68:34) is the thunder. The arrows of God (חצציך, in Habakkuk חצּיך) are the lightnings. The Hithpa. (instead of which Habakkuk has יחלּכוּ) depicts their busy darting hither and thither in the service of the omnipotence that sends them forth. It is open to question whether גּלגּל denotes the roll of the thunder (Aben-Ezra, Maurer, Bttcher): the sound of Thy thunder went rolling forth (cf. Psalm 29:4), - or the whirlwind accompanying the thunder-storm (Hitzig); the usage of the language (Psalm 83:14, also Ezekiel 10:13, Syriac golgolo) is in favour of the latter. On Psalm 77:19 cf. the echo in Psalm 97:4. Amidst such commotions in nature above and below Jahve strode along through the sea, and made a passage for His redeemed. His person and His working were invisible, but the result which attested His active presence was visible. He took His way through the sea, and cut His path (Chethb plural, שׁביליך, as in Jeremiah 18:15) through great waters (or, according to Habakkuk, caused His horses to go through), without the footprints (עקּבות with Dag. dirimens) of Him who passes and passed through being left behind to show it.