Mountains of prey and the overthrow of the proud

So he calls the mountains of the land flowing with milk and honey mountains of prey and food, from which he says God will be seen in a manner surpassing all greatness. Then the proud will suffer what has been set before them, finding their hands unable to do anything, as if they were being carried down in drowsiness. For you struck them with terror while defending your people and the places consecrated to you, so that the words fit: “A horse is a false hope for salvation”, and “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will call on the name of the Lord our God; they were hobbled and fell, but we rose and stood upright” (Psalm 19:8-9 (20:7-8)) (Ps 20:8). The same thing as the hobbling and the fall is indicated here through the being carried down and the stupefaction.

Symmachus rendered it this way: “For the wrath of a human being will confess to you, a remnant of wrath girded on” (Psalm 76:10). Since the wrathful and angry person who does everything in anger and not according to what is right is subject to confession and changes of mind concerning the sins he commits. For wrath is quick to lead to sin, bold even to the point of murder itself, so that the reasoning left behind in the soul after wrath brings strong repentances that wrap around the whole soul for what was wrongly done and said through wrath.

From the present psalm up to Psalm 82 (83), the discourse goes through the harsh and painful things concerning the people, and then in what follows it turns to brighter things (Ps 76 argument). In the present psalm he says that there is a long time in which the nation has been despised, sufficient to take away even the hope of help from God, unless someone remembers the former things and is strengthened in hope of the good things to come (Psalm 77:2-3; LXX 76:2,3).

So indeed, having spoken piously in Psalm 72 (73), he now introduces the weak reasonings that come upon people in prolonged afflictions. And now he first gives thanks to God who received his supplications, describing his persistent prayer and the stretching out of his hands through whole nights.

When your power appeared, he says, everything was set in motion: the waters writhed in fear, and a turbulent struggle gripped the depths (Psalm 77:16-18). Waters were also released from above out of the clouds, and the clouds ran through the sky with a great sound, and the arrows from heaven were hurled down. The sounds of thunder rolled around the circle of the sky as the clouds raced through, and lightning flashed across the inhabited world and shook the earth with an earthquake. These things point to the fearful wonders that appeared in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in Judea. For Egypt was struck with hail that came down with fire, and the waters of the Red Sea gave way as if shrinking back in fear. Thunder crashed in the sky and hail came down also upon the Canaanites in the war against the Jews. It is clear that lightning also flashed together with it. As for saying that the thunder sounded in a wheel, another passage says it was when he bound the axles of the chariots and brought them down into the sea with their commanders.

He presents to us the circle of the sky along which the stars revolve, like oxen going around a threshing floor (Psalm 77:18). For a spherical heaven, according to the Greek account, is not to be found in the divine oracles, so that we should not imagine a wheel-like circuit above the earth and below the earth. For the divine Scriptures present water under the earth, not heaven, and waters above the heaven set as a boundary. For he says, “He stretches out the heaven like a curtain, he who roofs his upper chambers with waters” (Psalm 104:2). And the sun is said to run from one end to the other, from east to west, and not to run back from the west for even the smallest part of the day. And he says, “He established the heaven” (not “he who leads it around in a circle”) “and stretched it out like a tent to dwell in” (not “to be whirled around like a circle”). And Isaiah says that those who come from a far land come “from the end of the foundation of heaven”, so that the heaven is founded and standing, not running around in a circle. But these things are said for the sake of a brief reminder, so that we are not carried away to the fictions of the Greeks while neglecting the divine Scriptures.

He says that the divine way has no visible trace, unlike the human way. Therefore he called it a journey “in the sea and in the waters,” since Solomon says that not even the paths of a ship sailing the sea can be recognized, so that what is said is figurative (Psalm 77:19-20). And it is no longer a journey of movement for God. For the Hebrews did not walk through the sea so that he might lead them through it, but the stretch of the Red Sea was brief for them in their journey, while the stretch through the land was long and lengthy. “You led your people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Psalm 76:21 (77:20)).