Psalms 88
ButlerA SONG, A PSALM OF THE SONS OF KORAH; FOR THE CHIEF MUSICIAN; SET TO MAHALATH LEANNOTH. MASCHIL OF HEMAN THE EZRAHITE.
1. O LORD, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee : 2 Let my prayer enter into thy presence; Incline thine ear unto my cry: 3 For my soul is full of troubles, And my life draweth nigh unto Sheol. 4 I am counted with them that go down into the pit; I am as a man that hath no help: 5 Cast off among the dead, Like the slain that lie in the grave, Whom thou rememberest no more; And they are cut off from thy hand. 6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, In dark places, in the deeps. 7 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, And thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. [Selah 8 Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. 9 Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction: I have called daily upon thee, O LORD,
I have spread forth my hands unto thee. 10 Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? Shall they that are deceased arise and praise thee? [Selah 11 Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? Or thy faithfulness in Destruction? 12 Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? And thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? 13 But unto thee, O LORD, have I cried, And in the morning shall my prayer come before thee. 14 LORD, why castest thou off my soul? Why hidest thou thy face from me? 15 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: While I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. 16 Thy fierce wrath is gone over me; Thy terrors have cut me off. 17 They came round about me like water all the day long; They compassed me about together. 18 Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, And mine acquaintance into darkness.
THIS is the darkest, saddest Psalm in all the Psalter. It is one wail of sorrow from beginning to end. It is the only Psalm in which the expression of feeling, the pouring out of the burdened heart before God, fails to bring relief and consolation. In every other instance, however heavy the gloom, however oppressed and dejected the spirit of the sufferer, prayer and supplication are mingled with thanksgiving, the accents of lamentation are changed into the notes of triumph, the darkness of midnight gives way to the brightness of faith’s morning-dawn. The deeper the sorrow at the opening, the greater the joy at the close. But here the darkness continues to the end. There is no confidence expressed that prayer will be heard, no hope uttered, much less any triumph. The Psalm ends with complaint, as it began. Its last word is “darkness.” One ray of light only struggles through the gloom, one star pierces that thick midnight blackness; it is the name by which the Psalmist addresses God: “O God of my salvation.” That he can address God by that name is a proof that faith and hope are not dead within him; it is the pledge of his deliverance, though he cannot yet taste its comfort. There is but one such Psalm, as if to teach us that our Father’s will concerning us is not to leave us in our dejection, but, in answer to the prayer of faith, to lift us out of it; there is one, that we may remember that even His truest servants may be called upon “to walk in darkness and have no light,” that thus they may be the better trained, like a child holding his father’s hand in the dark, “to trust in the name of the Lord, to stay themselves upon their God.”
As to the author, and the circumstances under which the Psalm was written, various conjectures have been made, but they are really worth nothing. One thing only is clear, that it is not a national Psalm, and that it does not deplore any national calamity. It is throughout personal and individual. P.
There is one word of trust, inseparable from inward hopefulness, in the beginning; the Psalmist knows that the Lord is the God of his salvation; but that word occurs but once, and finds no echo in the succeeding strains. Death is nigh at hand (v. 3), all strength exhausted (v. 4); as one already occupying the grave (v. 5) the sufferer lies in darkness, overwhelmed by God’s wrath (v. 6); forsaken of all friends, an object of loathing to them, shut up in prison (v. 8), he is still praying, urgently and without ceasing (vs. 9, 13), yet finds no response; from his youth ever on the point of death, distracted by the terrors of God, crushed by His fierce wrath, he lies now without lover or friend, with but one acquaintance left, even the darkness of Sheol. We have the portraiture of an individual, highly gifted, but subjected to every affliction which can try a faithful servant of God. Cook.
What trouble of wounded spirit some of God’s children have felt in former times, others dear to God may find in after ages. They must comfort themselves in this, that other saints have been under like affliction; for this Psalm is appointed to “give instruction;” it is “Maschil of Heman.” Such as are most afflicted in spirit and do flee to God for reconciliation and consolation through Christ have no reason to suspect themselves that they are not esteemed of and loved as dear children, because they feel so much of God’s chastening; for here is a saint who hath drunken of that cup, as deep as any who shall read this Psalm. Dickson.
The Psalm is designed to express one particular stage of consolation, viz., the earliest one of all, that which consists in the simple expression of the sorrow itself, only with this addition, that it expresses it as in the presence of God, and as an address to Him. All its expression indeed is that of grief; but that very expression is only one stage of consolation. The grief is relieved by giving due and reverential vent to it. A surface of evil is accompanied by a reserve and undercurrent of hope, and a grief externally unchecked proceeds upon an understanding that it is seen and compassionated by One who is able to remove it. Such a Psalm is wanted, as being the representation of one particular stage and form of consolation in affliction. This stage of consolation has its own peculiar and characteristic graces, which entitle it to such recognition. The earlier stages of consolation are nearer the beginning of things, closer to the fountain-head. In them the simple voice of Divine love speaks before man has yet added anything of his own strength and effort to it. The greatest victories of reason or of faith do not point so directly or so immediately to the one source of all consolation as that first stage and beginning of it which consists in the soul’s simple expression of its grief, and no more. And this Psalm reminds us of a great truth respecting this dispensation of things. The world does not contain much positive and pure happiness, and the satisfactions it does supply are rather of a secondary sort, remedial to dissatisfaction. Let us be content with moderate, with secondary, satisfactions. A remedial system, if it is solid and effective, is not to be underrated, as if it were not worth enjoying. Let us bear affliction with a single view to greater self-control, more resignation, more humility, ever strongly impressed with the great utility and serviceableness of it, the impossibility of growing in grace without it. Mozley.
1. The Psalmist finds himself in the gloomiest possible condition, but he does not despair; he remains turned with his complaints to Jehovah, and calls Him the God of his salvation. This direct resort in prayer to the God of salvation is the fundamental characteristic of all faith. D.—The writer has salvation, he is sure of that, and God is the sole author of it. While a man can see God as his Saviour, it is not altogether midnight with him. While the living God can be spoken of as the life of our salvation, our hope will not quite expire. S.
Cried day and night. No man knows what mercies or what miseries a day may bring forth; what good or what evil, what afflictions or what temptations a day may bring forth; and, therefore, a man need every day be in his closet with God, that he may be prepared and fitted to entertain and improve all the occurrences and emergencies that may attend him in the course of his life. T. Brooks.
5. His eye is looking down into the darkness, he sees himself already numbered with the dead. But what are the dead? Beings who “know not anything,” “clean forgotten, out of mind,” beings whom God Himself remembers not. “The living, the living, he shall praise Thee;” this was the feeling, not of Hezekiah only, but of all the Old Testament saints, in seasons of gloom and despondency. It could not be otherwise till the bright light of Christ’s resurrection was cast upon the grave and the world beyond. P.
Cut off from thy hand. Never look upon yourself as cut off from life and from enjoyment; you are not cut off, only taken apart, laid aside, it may be but for a season, or it may be for life; but still you are part of the body of which Christ is the Head. Some must suffer and some must serve. Your feet may be set fast; they may have run with great activity, and you sorrow now because they can run no more. But do not sorrow thus, nor envy those who are running; you have a work to do. It may be the work of lying still, of not stirring hand or foot, of scarcely speaking, scarcely showing life. Fear not; if He your heavenly Master has given it to you to do, it is His work, and He will bless it. Anon.
9. Mine eye mourneth, I have called.** Weeping must not hinder praying; we must sow in tears: “Mine eye mourns,” but “I cry unto Thee daily.” Let prayers and tears go together, and they shall be accepted together: “I have heard thy prayers, I have seen thy tears.” H.—As a little child stretches out its hands to its mother while it cries, so did this afflicted child of God. He prayed all over, his eyes wept, his voice cried, his hands were outstretched, and his heart broke. This was prayer indeed. S.
10. The language refers to what takes place in the unseen world, not at the resurrection. (Compare Isa. 14 : 9.) The expostulation is like that of Job: “If a man die, shall he live again?” There is no question of the general resurrection, but only the improbability that God should restore to life one who was already dead. P.
10-12. In these verses we find mention made of four things on the part of God: “wonders,” “lovingkindness,” “faithfulness,” and “righteousness.” These were four attributes of the blessed Jehovah which the eyes of Heman had been opened to see, and which the heart of Heman had been wrought upon to feel. But he comes, by Divine teaching, into a spot where these attributes seem to be completely lost to him; and yet (so mysterious are the ways of God!) that spot was made the very place where those attributes were more powerfully displayed, and made more deeply and experimentally known to his soul. J. C. Philpot.
11. Shall Thy lovingkindness.** The plea for prolonged life thus rests upon a deep feeling of God’s love; the answer, however, was reserved for a future revelation. The accumulation of expressions is noticeable, “the grave” or sepulchre; “destruction” or “Abaddon,” as in Job 26 : 6; 28 : 22 (the word occurs elsewhere only in Job, and in Prov. 15 : 11); “the dark,” as in Job 10 : 21; “the land of forgetfulness,” in the twofold sense, where the dead have no remembrance, and where they are wholly forgotten. Cook.
12. Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark, and Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? These are varied metaphorical descriptions of the state of death, considered negatively as the privation or the opposite of life. Darkness is here opposed to the light of life or of the living. The land of forgetfulness, where men forget (Eccl. 9 : 5, 6, 10), and are forgotten (Psalm 31 : 12). A.
13. But as for me, emphatic; though thus at the very edge of death, though bowed down with the heavy load of affliction, still I look to Thee. This unwearied “continuing instant in prayer” is the victory of faith in the midst of trials which, but for this, would end in despair. It had been one life-long suffering from his youth up, yet still his earnest pleading had never ceased. Such prayers are those “unutterable groanings” of which Paul speaks. P.
Go to prayer in the cold to get heat. Go to it in the dark to wait and watch for the light. Go to it without inclination, pleading the promise of God’s Spirit to give you inclination. All this in the rational conviction that as religion is your greatest practical concern, God will be waiting on His part to open the gate for you; to greet, accept, and bid you everlasting welcome. There is no person living who will not thus, after some due time, be established in the faith, and filled with the revelation of God. Bushnell.
14. We may put these questions to the Lord, nay, we ought to do so. It is not undue familiarity, but holy boldness. He cannot act toward us in other than a right and gracious manner, therefore for every stroke of His rod there is a sufficient reason in the judgment of His loving heart; let us try to learn that reason and profit by it.
16. Since Jesus bore my guilt as my substitute, my Judge cannot punish me, but my Father can and will correct me. Under a sense of the Father’s averted face the dear, broken-down child may be laid in the dust and covered with wretchedness, and yet for all that he may be accepted and beloved of the Lord all the while. S.
18. Look at the threefold loss bewailed in the text. There are, or ought to be, three circles round every man like the belts or rings round a planet—love, friendship, and acquaintanceship. Love is the nearest, while, at the same time, it lends its value to the other two. Friendship and acquaintanceship have no real pith, or sub-
stance, or value in them except as they are permeated by the spirit of the nearest circle. The three circles are needed by every man for the proper health and balance of his nature. No man suffices for himself. He needs others, as they need him. In proportion to the number and closeness of the ties in life is the pain in reserve for men. Strange life this, in which our best is the most subject to suffering, and pays a penalty as if it were the worst! The thinking of departed friends will help us to realize our own death. It is of the highest moment that we should realize death, for without this we do not realize eternity, sin, or God. Thinking of our departed will help to take away the bitterness of death. Death is but going as they have gone; it is just sharing with them. Death gets identified with the thought of father, or mother, or wife, or child; and we feel that we dare not and cannot shrink from going to them. Thinking of the departed will enable us to realize immortality. They live, these departed ones; if truth and love are real, they live. Death can no
more touch their souls than the stormy waves can quench the stars. Thinking of the departed will take away the besetting feeling of solitude connected with death. What a glow it sheds over the future! How rich and full it makes it to think of meeting again some who have gone before. Their horizon is wide now. They have had experience of which we cannot form even a conception; but we know that no distance of time, no range of knowledge, no height or depth of experience, can ever alter their love to us J. Leckie.