Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 77:19

"Thy way was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy footsteps were not known." — Psalms 77:19 (ASV)

Are not known. —“We do not know, they did not know, by what precise means the deliverance was accomplished; we do not know by what precise track through the gulf the passage was achieved. We do not know; we need not know. The obscuring, the mystery, here as elsewhere, was part of the lesson... . All that we see distinctly is, that through this dark and terrible night, with the enemy pressing close behind, and the driving sea on either side, He led His people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Stanley, Jewish Church, i. 128).

To some minds, the abruptness of the conclusion of the psalm marks it as unfinished. But no better end could have been reached in the poet’s perplexity than the one to which his musings on the past led him: the thought of the religious aids available to him, in the faith and worship left by Moses and Aaron.

We are reminded of him who recalled the thoughts of the young man, searching for a higher ideal of duty, back to the law and obedience. Or, if the psalm is rather an expression of the feeling of the community than of an individual, there is a pointed significance in the conclusion given to all the national cries of doubt and despair—the one safe course was to remain loyal and true to the ancient institutions.