Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you.
Let my prayer enter into your presence. Turn your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles. My life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help,
set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand.
You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves.
You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can’t escape.
My eyes are dim from grief. I have called on you daily, Yahweh. I have spread out my hands to you.
Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you?
Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction?
Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
But to you, Yahweh, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you.
Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?
I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted.
Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off.
They came around me like water all day long. They completely engulfed me.
You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15 1 O Jehovah! God of my salvation! Let me…
1 O Jehovah! God of my salvation! Let me call upon you particularly to notice what I have just now stated, that although the prophet simply, and without hyperbole, recites the agony which he suffered from the greatness of his sorrows, yet his purpose was at the same time to supply the afflicted with a form of prayer that they might not faint under any adversities, however severe, which might befall them. We will hear him by and by bursting out into vehement complaints on account of the grievousness of his calamities; but he seasonably fortifies himself by this brief exordium, lest, carried away with the heat of his feelings, he might become chargeable with complaining and murmuring against God, instead of humbly supplicating Him for pardon. By applying to Him the appellation of the God of his salvation, casting, as it were, a bridle upon himself, he restrains the excess of his sorrow, shuts the door against despair, and strengthens and prepares himself for the endurance of the cross. When he speaks of his crying and importunity, he indicates the earnestness of soul with which he engaged in prayer. He may not, indeed, have given utterance to loud cries; but he uses the word cry, with much propriety’, to denote the great earnestness of his prayers. The same thing is implied when he tells us that he continued crying days and nights. Nor are the words before thee superfluous. It is common for all men to complain when under the pressure of grief; but they are far from pouring out their groanings before God. Instead of this, the majority of mankind court retirement, that they may murmur against him, and accuse him of undue severity; while others pour forth their cries into the air at random. Hence we gather that it is a rare virtue to set God before our eyes, that we may address our prayers to him.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18 Though many cry in their sorrows, yet they cry…
Though many cry in their sorrows, yet they cry not earnestly to God for remedy, as he did whom he confessed to be the author of his salvation.
That is, to humble. It was the beginning of a song, by the tune whereof this Psalm was sung.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–18 Psa 88:1 « A Song [or] Psalm for the…
Psa 88:1 « A Song [or] Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief Musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite. » O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day [and] night before thee:
A Psalm or Song] Psalmus totus luctuosus, a doleful ditty, beginning and ending with complaints; and therefore sung in the primitive times, among other penitential psalms, as the public confession of persons excommunicated.
Read full note →
Upon Mahalath Leannoth] A musical instrument sounding heavily as a shaulm doth, and therefore called infirmity, for humbling, or for antiphenies. A fit title.
Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite] i.e. The instruction of Heman, who was a very wise man, 1Ki 4:31, descended of Zerah, the son of Judah, 1Ch 2:4, and thence called the Ezrahite, brother to Ethan, who penned the next psalm, 1Ch 2:6. Nobile par fratrum.
Ver. 1. O Lord God of my salvation] This is the only one expression of his faith found in this whole psalm, and it nmst be understood that he thus believed and prayed, as here, Psa 88:2, when he was at worst, and most despairingly complained.
I have cried day and night unto thee] Though in such a state as they were, Act 27:20, when neither sun nor star appeared, yet he cast anchor, and prayed still for day.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 Mahalath seems to be the name of the tune…
Mahalath seems to be the name of the tune or instrument, as Psa 53.
Leannoth may be either the latter part of the proper name of the tune or instrument; or an appellative name, and so divers take it, and render it, to sing, or to be sung, to wit, alternately or by turns.
Read full note →
Heman; probably the same person who was famous in David’s time, both for his skill in music, and for general wisdom; of whom see 1Ki 4:31; 1Ch 6:33.
The Ezrahite; as Ethan also is called, 1Ki 4:31.
The psalmist declares his former practice of prayer to God Psa 88:1; beggeth present audience, Psa 88:2; acquainteth the Lord with his misery and frailty, Psa 88:3,4, which he suffereth by God’s wrath, and his friends forsaking him, Psa 88:5-8. His mourning and expostulation, Psa 88:9-18.
Who hast so often saved me from former distresses, and, I hope, wilt do so at this time.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 10 It should seem, by the titles of this and…
It should seem, by the titles of this and the following psalm, that Heman was the penman of the one and Ethan of the other. There were two, of these names, who were sons of Zerah the son of Judah, Ch1 2:4, Ch1 2:6. There were two others famed for wisdom, Kg1 4:31, where, to magnify Solomon's wisdom, he is said to be wiser than Heman and Ethan. Whether the Heman and Ethan who were Levites and precentors in the songs of Zion were the same we are not sure, nor which of these, nor whether any of these, were the penmen of these psalms. There was a Heman that was one of the chief singers, who is called the king's seer, or prophet, in the words of God (Ch1 25:5); it is probable that this also was a seer, and yet could see no comfort for himself, an instructor and comforter of others, and yet himself putting comfort away from him. The very first words of the psalm are the only words of comfort and support in all the psalm. There is nothing about him but clouds and darkness; but, before he begins his complaint, he calls God the God of his salvation, which intimates both that he looked for salvation, bad as things were, and that he looked up to God for the salvation and depended upon him to be the author of it. Now here we have the psalmist,
I. A man of prayer, one that gave himself to prayer at all times, but especially now that he was in affliction; for is any afflicted? let him pray. It is his comfort that he had prayed; it is his complaint that, notwithstanding his prayer, he was still in affliction. He was, 1. Very earnest in prayer: "I have cried unto thee (Psa 88:1), and have stretched out my hands unto thee (Psa 88:9), as one that would take hold on thee, and even catch at the mercy, with a holy fear of coming short and missing of it." 2. He was very frequent and constant in prayer: I have called upon thee daily (Psa 88:9), nay, day and night, Psa 88:1. For thus men ought always to pray, and not to faint; God's own elect cry day and night to him, not only morning and evening, beginning every day and every night with prayer, but spending the day and night in prayer. This is indeed praying always; and then we shall speed in prayer, when we continue instant in prayer. 3. He directed his prayer to God, and from him expected and desired an answer (Psa 88:2): "Let my prayer come before thee, to be accepted of thee, not before men, to be seen of them, as the Pharisees' prayers." He does not desire that men should hear them, but, "Lord, incline thy ear unto my cry, for to that I refer myself; give what answer to it thou pleasest."
Read full note →
II. He was a man of sorrows, and therefore some make him, in this psalm, a type of Christ, whose complaints on the cross, and sometimes before, were much to the same purport with this psalm. He cries out (Psa 88:3): My soul is full of troubles; so Christ said, Now is my soul troubled; and, in his agony, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death, like the psalmist's here, for he says, My life draws nigh unto the grave. Heman was a very wise man, and a very good man, a man of God, and a singer too, and one may therefore suppose him to have been a man of a cheerful spirit, and yet now a man of sorrowful spirit, troubled in mind, and upon the brink of despair. Inward trouble is the sorest trouble, and that which, sometimes, the best of God's saints and servants have been severely exercised with. The spirit of man, of the greatest of men, will not always sustain his infirmity, but will droop and sink under it; who then can bear a wounded spirit?
III. He looked upon himself as a dying man, whose heart was ready to break with sorrow (Psa 88:5): "Free among the dead (one of that ghastly corporation), like the slain that lie in the grave, whose rotting and perishing nobody takes notice of or is concerned for, nay, whom thou rememberest no more, to protect or provide for the dead bodies, but they become an easy prey to corruption and the worms; they are cut off from thy hand, which used to be employed in supporting them and reaching out to them; but, now there is no more occasion for this, they are cut off from it and cut off by it" (for God will not stretch out his hand to the grave, Job 30:24); "thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, as low as possible, my condition low, my spirits low, in darkness, in the deep (Psa 88:6), sinking, and seeing no way open of escape, brought to the last extremity, and ready to give up all for gone." Thus greatly may good men be afflicted, such dismal apprehensions may they have concerning their afflictions, and such dark conclusions may they sometimes be ready to make concerning the issue of them, through the power of melancholy and the weakness of faith.
IV. He complained most of God's displeasure against him, which infused the wormwood and the gall into the affliction and the misery (Psa 88:7): Thy wrath lies hard upon me. Could he have discerned the favour and love of God in his affliction, it would have lain light upon him; but it lay hard, very hard, upon him, so that he was ready to sink and faint under it. The impressions of this wrath upon his spirits were God's waves with which he afflicted him, which rolled upon him, one on the neck of another, so that he scarcely recovered from one dark thought before he was oppressed with another; these waves beat against him with noise and fury; not some, but all, of God's waves were made use of in afflicting him and bearing him down. Even the children of God's love may sometimes apprehend themselves children of wrath, and no outward trouble can lie so hard upon them as that apprehension.
V. It added to his affliction that his friends deserted him and made themselves strange to him. When we are in trouble it is some comfort to have those about us that love us, and sympathize with us; but this good man had none such, which gives him occasion, not to accuse them, or charge them with treachery, ingratitude, and inhumanity, but to complain to God, with an eye to his hand in this part of the affliction (Psa 88:8): Thou hast put away my acquaintance far from me. Providence had removed them, or rendered them incapable of being serviceable to him, or alienated their affections from him; for every creature is that to us (and no more) that God makes it to be. If our old acquaintance be shy of us, and those we expect kindness from prove unkind, we must bear that with the same patient submission to the divine will that we do other afflictions, Job 19:13. Nay, his friends were not only strange to him, but even hated him, because he was poor and in distress: "Thou hast made me an abomination to them; they are not only shy of me, but sick of me, and I am looked upon by them, not only with contempt, but with abhorrence." Let none think it strange concerning such a trial as this, when Heman, who was so famed for wisdom, was yet, when the world frowned upon him, neglected, as a vessel in which is no pleasure.
VI. He looked upon his case as helpless and deplorable: "I am shut up, and I cannot come forth, a close prisoner, under the arrests of divine wrath, and no way open of escape." He therefore lies down and sinks under his troubles, because he sees not any probability of getting out of them. For thus he bemoans himself (Psa 88:9): My eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Sometimes giving vent to grief by weeping gives some ease to a troubled spirit. Yet weeping must not hinder praying; we must sow in tears: My 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.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–18 O Lord God of my salvation,.... The author both…
O Lord God of my salvation,.... The author both of temporal and spiritual salvation; see Psa 18:46 from the experience the psalmist had had of the Lord's working salvation for him in times past, he is encouraged to hope that he would appear for him, and help him out of his present distress; his faith was not so low, but that amidst all his darkness and dejection he could look upon the Lord as his God, and the God of salvation to him; so our Lord Jesus Christ, when deserted by his Father, still called him his God, and believed that he would help him, Psa 22:1.
I have cried day and night before thee, or "in the day I have cried, and in the night before thee"; that is, as the Targum paraphrases it,
Read full note →
"in the night my prayer was before thee.''
prayer being expressed by crying shows the person to be in distress, denotes the earnestness of it, and shows it to be vocal; and it being both in the day and in the night, that it was without ceasing. The same is said by Christ, Psa 22:2 and is true of him, who in the days of his flesh was frequent in prayer, and especially in the night season, Luk 6:12 and particularly his praying in the garden the night he was betrayed may be here referred to, Mat 26:38.
(a) "pro infirmitate ad affligendum", so some in Munster; "de miseria ad affligendum", Tigurine version; "de infirmitate affligente", Piscator, so Gussetius, p. 622. (b) Works, vol. 1. p. 699. (c) Tractat. Theolog. Politic. c. 10. p. 184. (d) Apud Meor Enayim, c. 32. p. 106.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 17 This is the most melancholy of all the Psalms:…
This is the most melancholy of all the Psalms: it is all lamentation, and mourning, and woe. Here we have the pressure of spirit which the psalmist was under, ver. 1-9. His humble pleadings with God, ver. 10-14. A farther declaration of his affliction, ver. 15-18. A song or psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite. Title of the psalm. Leannoth - Which seems to be the name of the instrument. Heman - Probably the same person who was famous in David's time, both for his skill in musick, and for wisdom.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 The earnest prayer of a person in deep distress,…
PSALM LXXXVIII
The earnest prayer of a person in deep distress, abandoned by
Read full note →
his friends and neighbours, and apparently forsaken of God,
1-18.
NOTES ON PSALM LXXXVIII
Perhaps the title of this Psalm, which is difficult enough, might be thus translated: "A Poem to be sung to the conqueror, by the sons of Korah, responsively, in behalf of a distressed person; to give instruction to Heman the Ezrahite." Kennicott says this Psalm has three titles, but the last only belongs to it; and supposes it to be the prayer of a person shut up in a separate house, because of the leprosy, who seems to have been in the last stages of that distemper; this disease, under the Mosaic dispensation, being supposed to come from the immediate stroke of God. Calmet supposes it to refer to the captivity; the Israelitish nation being represented here under the figure of a person greatly afflicted through the whole course of his life. By some Heman is supposed to have been the author; but who he was is not easy to be determined. Heman and Ethan whose names are separately prefixed to this and the following Psalm, are mentioned as the grandsons of Judah by his daughter-in-law Tamar, 1Ch 2:6, for they were the sons of Zerah, his immediate son by the above. "And Tamar, his daughter-in-law, bare him Pharez and Zerah," 1Ch 2:4. "And the sons of Zerah Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara, (or Darda,") 1Ch 2:6. If these were the same persons mentioned 1Kg 4:31, they were eminent in wisdom; for it is there said that Solomon's wisdom "excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol," 1Kg 4:30-31. Probably Zerah was also called Mahol. If the Psalms in question were written by these men, they are the oldest poetical compositions extant; and the most ancient part of Divine revelation, as these persons lived at least one hundred and seventy years before Moses. This may be true of the seventy-eighth Psalm; but certainly not of the following, as it speaks of transactions that took place long afterwards, at least as late as the days of David, who is particularly mentioned in it. Were we sure of Heman as the author, there would be no difficulty in applying the whole of the Psalm to the state of the Hebrews in Egypt, persecuted and oppressed by Pharaoh. But to seek or labour to reconcile matters contained in the titles to the Psalms, is treating them with too much respect, as many of them are wrongly placed, and none of them Divinely inspired.
Verse 1. O Lord God of my salvation] This is only the continuation of prayers and supplications already often sent up to the throne of grace.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13 Psa 88:1-4. O Lord God of my salvation —…
Psa 88:1-4. O Lord God of my salvation — Who hast so often saved me in former distresses; I have cried day and night before thee — Thus God’s own elect are said, by Christ, to cry to him, Luk 18:7; and thus ought men always to pray and not to faint. Let my prayer come before thee — To be accepted of thee. For my soul is full of troubles — Troubles of mind, from a sense of God’s wrath and departure from him, as appears Psa 88:14-16. I am counted with them that go down into the pit — I am given up by my friends and acquaintance for a lost man.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–18 O Lord God of my salvation - On whom…
O Lord God of my salvation - On whom I depend for salvation; who alone canst save me. Luther renders this, “O God, my Saviour.”
I have cried day and night before thee - literally, “By day I cried; by night before thee;” that is, my prayer is constantly before thee. The meaning is, that there was no intermission to his prayers; he prayed all the while. This does not refer to the general habit of his life, but to the time of his sickness. He had prayed most earnestly and constantly that he might be delivered from sickness and from the dangers of death. He had, as yet, obtained no answer, and he now pours out, and records, a more earnest petition to God.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Psalms 88
Psalms 88
A song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief Musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite
Read full note →
2 O Lord God of my salvation,
I have cried day and night before thee:
3 Let my prayer come before thee:
Incline thine ear unto my cry:
4 For my soul is full of troubles:
And my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
5 I am counted with them that go down into the pit;
I am as a man that hath no strength.
6 Free among the dead,
Like the slain that lie in the grave,
Whom thou rememberest no more:
And they are cut off from thy hand.
7 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,
In darkness, in the deeps.
8 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me,
And thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.
9 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me;
Thou hast made me an abomination unto them:
I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.
10 Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction:
Lord, I have called daily upon thee,
I have stretched out my hands unto thee.
11 Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead?
Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah.
12 Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?
Or thy faithfulness in destruction?
13 Shall thy wonders be known in the dark?
And thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
14 But unto thee have I cried, O Lord;
And in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.
15 Lord, why castest thou off my soul?
Why hidest thou thy face from me?
16 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up:
While I suffer my terrors I am distracted.
17 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me,
Thy terrors have cut me off.
18 They came round about me daily like water;
They compassed me about together.
19 Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,
And mine acquaintance into darkness.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Contents and Composition. The superscription is a double one, the two parts of which are mutually contradictory, for Heman the Ezrahite was no Korahite. See Introd. § 2. The first part seems to have been inserted after the other, since the direction, “to the leader” is elsewhere found at the end. The explanation: to be performed mournfully with subdued voice, (Delitzsch) agrees with the mournful contents, whose tone is even more gloomy than that of Psalms 67. It is only the exclamation: Jehovah, God of my help, or of my salvation (Psa_88:2 a) which shows that the last cord, uniting the suppliant to God, even if worn down to the last thread, is not entirely severed. All that follows is a complaint as though from the depths of hell. (Lam_3:55). For it is a lamentation which after long and painful suffering under the oppression of the weight of God’s anger, sees nothing before it but death and hell (Flaminius, Hupfeld). The prayer of anguish arises from the greatness of the distress (Psa_88:2-4), which has brought the sufferer near to death (Psa_88:5-6), and is the effect of God’s wrath (Psa_88:7-8), and has cast him out from his acquaintance as an object of abhorrence (Psa_88:9-10). There then follows a succession of lamentations as to the condition after death (Psa_88:11-13), in connection with which is uttered the question which agitates him most deeply, why God should then turn away from him in the midst of his supplications (Psa_88:14-15). A return is then made to the lamentations over his miseries, which surround him like billows and darkness (Psa_88:16-18).
It is not, however, to be inferred from this that the conclusion of the Psalm has been lost (Muntinghe, Olshausen), or that it is to be united to the following so as to form one composition (Hengstenberg). Expressions of hope are not uttered, because the suppliant had not yet reached the victorious issue of the conflict. There is still less ground for putting these words in the mouth of the Messiah (the ancients). Nor is the particular kind of calamity here deplored definitely indicated, whether sickness (Aben Ezra, Ewald), or a particular form, leprosy (Venema, Köster, Delitzsch), or imprisonment (Venema as an alternative, Hitzig). And yet the expressions indicate personal experiences, thus opposing the notion that they form a national psalm of complaint of the period of the Babylonish Exile (Syriac, Rosenmüller, De Wette), or on account of its long continuance (Chald., the Rabbins) or of the approach of that catastrophe (Hengst.). Nor should any more weight be attached to the attempt to connect the Psalm with the prophet Jeremiah when in the pit (Venema) or during the captivity, Psalms 86 being assigned to the same author and period. Nor is it more probable that the composition was contemporaneous with that of the Book of Sirach (Hitzig), or with the plague in the time of Hezekiah (J. D. Michaelis), or with the leprosy of King Uzziah (Iken), or of Job, (Köster, Delitzsch). Yet it must be admitted, that we hear resounding through this psalm tones which are familiar in others, while some expressions are most strikingly similar to phrases and words occurring in the book of Job, and that the Ezrahite Heman was among the wise men of the age of Solomon (1Ki_5:11).
[Hengstenberg has advanced and defended at length the hypothesis alluded to above, that this Psalm and the following one constitute one double psalm. To this he was led by the length of the title, its composite appearance, and the title “song” prefixed. The supposition at first appears to be reasonable, but the conjectures and assumptions which it needs for support give it, when examined, a different appearance. For each of these psalms has a complete title, assigning it to an author different from the other. Hengstenberg, therefore, is led to assume that these so called authors were not the composers, but that the Korahites affixed their names to psalms of their own composition, in order to give weight to them, and also to honor the memory of the ostensible authors themselves. But apart from the above objection, there is this other, that the psalms are not only different in tone and feeling, but are evidently also distinct compositions; for, while the former records individual feelings, the latter records national ones. It would certainly have been much more natural to have combined the two titles. The idea of an actual Korahite authorship might not then be readily suggested, but an intimation of the unity of design would be given, which other circumstances certainly do not indicate. But it is not necessary to maintain that the superscription of this Psalm is not genuine, for there is no difficulty in supposing that after its composition by Heman the Ezrahite of the tribe of Judah (not the Korahite), for (ל) the Korahites, it was committed to their especial charge for its musical performance, or that it was in some other way connected with that body of singers, so as to form a part of their special literature.—The opinion of Delitzsch as to the authorship seems to me to be the most probable. Unless Heman was a Korahite adopted by an Ezrahite, as Hengst. supposes, which seems very unlikely, it is certain that the author was the wise man of that name at Solomon’s court. The date is, thus fixed also. For a full view of the expressions in the psalm resembling passages in the Book of Job, which is now almost proved to belong to the same period, see besides Delitzsch on this Psalm, the introduction to his Comm. on Job and his article Hiob in Herzog’s Real-Encykl.—Among Anglo-American commentators, the view of Hengstenberg as to the form of the Psalm is considered probable by Alexander. For the opinion of the latter as to the date of composition, see the introduction to Psalms 89. Wordsworth believes that this and the next psalm form a pair. He regards both as referring to some great affliction of David, probably the rebellion of his son Absalom. Perowne says that all the conjectures as to the author and the circumstances under which he wrote are worth nothing. And yet he claims in his critical note that Heman the Ezrahite was also the Levitical singer. Why then, on this supposition, might he not have been one of the Korahites, and the genuineness of the whole title, which Perowne denies, be thus established? In view of this coincidence, the anomalous position of לַמְנַצֵּחַ would not be sufficient to prove the spuriousness of either part. But the hypothesis given above affords a more satisfactory explanation.—J. F. M.].
Psa_88:2. In the day of my crying. [E. V. I have cried day]. As יֹומָם is not used, but יֹום, closely connected by Makkeph with the following word, there cannot be two parallel clauses: In the day have I cried, in the night am I before thee. Nor is it necessary to alter the division of the verse and render: O God of my salvation, on the day when I cried. Nor can we strike out יֹּום as a later gloss (Hupfeld). Instead of a contrast between day and night, it is allowable to consider the former as an indefinite mark of time (Hitzig, Del.) as in Psa_56:4; Psa_78:42; cf. Psa_18:1. [Dr. Moll accordingly renders: In the day of my crying—in the night before thee, let my prayer come, etc. The rendering of the Engl. Vers. is defective from a false arrangement. The following extract from Hengstenberg seems to present the true view: “The two clauses are to be supplemented from each other; in the first, before thee: in the second, I cry. The fundamental passage is Psa_22:2, ‘My God, I cry in the day time and thou answerest not, and in the night season and am not silenced.’ According to this passage the יֹום must here stand for יֹומָם or בְּיֹום It certainly does not occur in any other passage, but there are many analogies in its favor, and the short form might the more readily be used here, as בלילה follows.” The true rendering is therefore: “In the day-time I cry, in the night before Thee.” The Makkeph does not affect the connection of the words.—J. F. M.].
Psa_88:6. My couch (is) among the dead. [E. V. Free among the dead.] This rendering is in accordance with Eze_27:20, comp. Job_17:13 (Hitzig, Ewald, Böttcher, Köster and Maurer), following a kindred verb in Arabic meaning, to be stretched out (Iken, J. D. Mich.). It is possible also to view it as an adjective: prostrate (De Wette, Hupfeld), or according to another derivation: free, at large (Sept., Symmachus and other versions); not abandoned, neglected, (Luther, Venema and others), or shut out from human society and the enjoyments of this life (Geier, Clericus, Stier), but released from the performance of legal duties as one defunctus (Job_3:19; Job_39:5; Rom_7:2), from the primary idea of release from a master, Exo_21:3; Deu_15:12; Jer_34:9. (Chald., Isaaki, Aben Ezra, Calvin, J. H. Michaelis, Hengst., Del., Hupfeld as an alternative). But against these derivations, there is especially the term applied to a hospital for lepers in 2Ki_15:5. [Delitzsch: “In this passage (2Ki_15:5) the place to which the leprous king withdrew might mean a house for the convalescent as well as the sick, a sans souci as well as a lazaretto.” The common rendering as given in our version, as followed by most, and as explained above, is probably the most correct.—J. F. M.].
Psa_88:8-9. The words, “all thy waves” need not be separated from the following so that the verb be understood from the preceding clause (De Dieu), and the remaining words of the verse be construed as a relative clause by asyndeton (Hupfeld), according to which we would have the rendering: by which thou hast afflicted me. As the suffix is absent, it is, of course, not to be translated; with all thy waves thou afflictest me (Symmachus and the most). The accusative precedes the verb. [“All Thy waves Thou dost press down” (upon me). For the thought and fundamental passage see Psa_42:8.—J. F. M.]. So all the ancient translators but Symmachus, Aben Ezra, Ewald, Delitzsch. There is no ground for a substitution of צִוִּיתָ for עַנִּיתָ (Olshausen). Psa_88:9 c. need not be understood of imprisonment (Symmachus, Luther. Hitzig), or the seclusion of a leper (Del.). Still less, as the expression is passive, is it to be regarded as describing the condition of a man who withdraws of his own accord from mankind, who shuts himself up in his house, and will not show himself in public, whether from shame, or in order not to excite abhorrence (Clericus, Ewald, Hengst., Hitzig). It is quite sufficient to regard it as a figurative and biblical conception of distress, as a prison from which no way of escape is to be found, Lam_3:7; Lam_3:9; Job_3:23 and frequently (most).
Psa_88:11. The designation of the dead as רְפָאִים, is not the name of the Rephaim, a race of Canaanitish giants, transferred to the departed, as appearing to the imagination in gigantic forms, 1Sa_28:13 (Hengst.). It comes from a root which expresses what is weak and languid, and at the same time stretched out and long-extended, and which can accordingly be employed to describe the shadowy forms of the under world as well as the giants and heroes of the olden time. There is no reference here as there is in Isa_26:14 to a rising from the grave, or simply (Hengst., Hupfeld) to a rising from the recumbent position which results from prostration. For the expression includes the thought of a return to life, and therefore that of a reappearance, at all events, in the under world, which is here characterized (Psa_88:12) as destruction, (Abaddon) as in Job_26:6; Job_28:22; Pro_15:11; Pro_27:20, as darkness, Psa_88:13, (comp. Psa_88:7), and as the land of forgetfulness. These last words must be taken in a double sense: that God ceases to think of the dead (Psa_88:6), for they are forgotten (Psa_31:13), and that in the dead memory is extinct (Psa_6:6; Psa_30:10, et al.,Ecc_9:5-6; Ecc_9:10), for they forget.
Psa_88:16 ff. In Psa_88:16 we should perhaps read אָפוּגָה (Olsh., Hupf.) instead of אָפוּנָה. For the former indicates the cessation of physical and mental life, torpor, stupor (Psa_38:12). The latter does not occur elsewhere, and is not quite satisfactorily explained from the Arabic as mental weakness, helplessness. The optative is used to express inner necessity. [I am distracted (and cannot regain my powers). in the first member of the verse the rendering of the E. V. would be improved by substituting the words “dying away,” instead of “ready to die.” The former expresses better the force of continuance conveyed by the active participle, and describes better the condition of the sufferer.—J. F. M.] In Psa_88:17 the form צִמְתֻתוּנִי occurs, which is neither to be corrected according to Psa_119:139 (Hitzig), nor to be regarded as a monstrosity, an impossible form (Olsh., Hupfeld), but is an intensive form, employed intentionally (Del.), similar to those in Hos_4:18; Psa_149:6 (Ewald), with a play upon Lev_25:23 (Hengst.). The rendering of Heidenheim is probably correct: their terrors have made me inalienably their own. [Delitzsch expresses the design of the form well: vernicht—nichtigt. Our version retains the rendering which it usually gives to this word: hath cut me off. The idea is that of utter destruction.—J.F. M.] The last sentence of the Psalm could mean: my trusted friends are darkness, that is, an object which is not seen, Job_12:25 (Hitzig), therefore: invisible (Chald., the Rabbins, and most expositors). But the explanation according to Job_17:14; Job_19:14; Isa_53:3; Pro_7:4, is more expressive, namely: that darkness has become his companion, in the place of his former companions, (Geier, J. H. Mich., Schnurrer, Hengst., Hupfeld, Del.). “With this cry the harp drops from the poet’s hand. He is silent and waits until God shall solve the enigma of his suffering:” (Del.).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Members of the Church of God have not only to share here below the troubles and trials of this earthly life; they may also, by repeated sorrows, by an accumulation of afflictions, by an ever-rising deluge of cares, become outwardly and inwardly so distressed that they are utterly without prospect of escape. Avoided by their acquaintances, forsaken by their friends, abandoned by all the world, tortured in body, tempted in spirit, with nothing but darkness about their souls, they are driven to the verge of despair, and have before their eyes nothing but death, heart-rending destruction, and utter ruin. They should remember this, partly as a warning against security, when they are surrounded with peace and joy and prosperity, partly as a support for their souls in the hour of suffering and temptation.
2. For there is this difference between the people of God in their sorrows and other sufferers, that the former are united to the living God as the God of their help and salvation, by a tie which no temporal suffering, no earthly calamity, no outward power in the world can break, which, in a word, cannot be destroyed from without, but only loosed from within. But this cannot happen as long as the tempted one can pray, and raise his petition, not merely as a cry of anguish, by which, day and night, he makes his distress known unto God, but as an expression of his belief that God alone is his Helper and Saviour. “In so naming God, he puts a bridle and bit upon the attacks of insupportable pain, shuts the door in the face of despair, and strengthens himself to endure his cross.” (Calvin.)
3. As long as the assurance of immortality was not held fast by the soul, and the resurrection of the dead was not revealed to the Church, so long were death and the under-world not only the last but also the worst of enemies. And therefore in those times of old the prayers of believers were not poured forth for worldly treasures, earthly good, and carnal delight, but for the preservation and improvement of life, during their earthly pilgrimage, and for the manifestation of God’s glory within the sphere of the temporal, since they knew not how man could praise Him after death. The deliverance of the believer’s life, therefore, and the preservation of Israel, were not matters of individual interest and selfish desire; but the perpetuity of the Church in the world, and the salvation of the believer, were bound up with a righteous concern for God’s honor and His acknowledgment among men. “Although at first sight these complaints seem to evince suffering deprived of any consolation, yet they contain subdued tones of prayer. For the Psalmist addresses no proud recriminations to God, but, while he complains, asks for a remedy to heal his sorrows.” (Calvin).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
A pious man may lose everything, and yet be not lost.—How difficult soever it may be not to cease praying when God vouchsafes no answer, it is yet the best safeguard against despair.—Men may be overburdened with sorrow, and yet more still be laid upon them.—Where do we have our lasting residence after death? And what becomes of us then?—There is no greater calamity than the sense of abandonment by God.—Well for him, whose fear of death increases his fear of God.—The conflict of suffering in the case of a pious sufferer a wrestling in prayer with the prospect of the final victory of faith.—The night of trouble may be very dark, but as long as the man, who is pressed down by the chastening hand of God, can rise at once again to prayer, his lamp is not yet gone out.—Though the hand of God lie ever so heavily upon us, yet, as long as we can invoke God as our Saviour, we can never lose our last hope, or fail of help at last.—Death seems to many to be a deliverer, but it brings into still more dreadful straits those who will feel themselves shut out from the hand of God.
Starke: To cry and moan night and day racks body and soul; but remember, when thus oppressed, that God who brings down to hell, brings up again.—Grievous temptations are not to be viewed as tokens of God’s anger, but of His mercy.—Now is the time to pray. In hell it will be too late.—There is a difference between the anxious fear of believers in suffering, and the despair of the ungodly: the former cry to God in their fear; the latter cast all hope away, nor seek any help in God.—It is a double suffering, when a child of God is outwardly tormented, and has nothing but children of darkness around him, who aggravate by actions and words his inward suffering.
Arndt: How God brings, in this life, His children down to hell, and takes away all comfort from them, before He raises them to heaven, and satisfies them with eternal consolation.—None belong to the ranks of the saints in heaven, who on earth have not fought under the banner of the cross of Christ.—Frisch: The night of anguish is the time to pray. Prayer drives away distress from the heart, and God comes and takes its place.—Scriver: Temptations of the soul are the greatest affliction; for then the mind feels its darkness, the will seeks languidly after God, and is utterly dismayed, and the memory can give neither joy nor comfort. Instead of these the feeling of God’s anger overspreads the soul.—Tholuck: The darker the night of sorrow is, and the more its veil overspreads the sight, the more worthy of honor is that faith, which in the midst of the darkness does not cease to pray.—Guenther: It must be with us sinners as gloomy as this; no less strongly must we feel the depth of our ruin, no less truly recognize that God’s wrath, in the eternal death of our soul, is the due desert of our sin, before we can grasp in firm faith the hand of our Saviour who comes to redeem us.—Diedrich: It is indeed something great that we, in all distresses, have free access to the supreme, eternal, and only blessed God. Let no depth of suffering then keep us away from Him.—Taube: The midnight of distress is the soul’s time of trial.—That may be called faithful continuance in prayer, which, though the anguish of the soul lasts far into the night and returns with the morning, sends forth with every new day, the old complaint to the heart of God.
[Calvin: All men complain in their grief, but this is far from pouring out their woes in the presence of God; nay, they must seek some hiding-place, where they may murmur at God, and find fault with His severity; others utter openly their clamorous words. Hence we see what a rare virtue it is to place God before us, and to direct to Him our prayers.
Matth. Henry: Nothing grieves a child of God so much as His hiding His face from him; nor is there anything he so much dreads as God’s casting off his soul.—If the sun be clouded, that darkens the earth; but if the sun should abandon the earth and quite cast it off, what a dungeon would it be!—God often prevents our prayers with His mercies; let us prevent His mercies with our prayers.
Scott: If we are free from such dreadful trials, let us bless the Lord for it, and sympathize with and pray for our afflicted and tempted brethren.
Bishop Horne: In the solitary and awful hour of our departure hence, let us remember to think on the desertion, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of our Redeemer.
Barnes: It is well that there is one such description in Scripture of a good man thus suffering, to show us that when we thus feel, it should not be regarded as proof that we have no piety. Beneath all this, there may be true love to God; beyond all this, there may be a bright world to which the sufferer will come, and where he will forever dwell.—J. F. M.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–18 1. O Lord God of my salvation—A genuine outburst…
1. O Lord God of my salvation—A genuine outburst of holy trust in the faithfulness of God; but the sunshine is soon lost amid the blackest clouds.
Day and night—Unceasingly and for a long time. So David, Psa_22:2
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–18 1. O Lord God &c.] Jehovah, the God of…
1. O Lord God &c.] Jehovah, the God of my salvation. Cp. Psa_27:9.
I have cried day and night before thee] Parallels such as Psa_22:2 suggest that this is the meaning intended, but it is difficult to extract it from the Heb. text, even if we assume that “the broken language corresponds to the weakness of the gasping sufferer” (Kay). An ingenious and plausible emendation removes the difficulty thus:
Read full note →
Jehovah my God, I have cried for help in the day time,
And in the night hath my crying been before thee.
Cp. Psa_88:13; Psa_30:2; Job_19:7; Psa_42:8. Though God has forsaken him, he can still address Him as my God (Psa_22:1). Like Job, he must appeal to God even when God seems wholly alienated from him.
1–8. The Psalmist appeals for a hearing, supporting his appeal by a pathetic description of the chastisements by which God has brought him to the very edge of the grave.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 (3) Grave.—Sheôl. Here, as in Psa_6:4-5; Psa_33:19; Isa_38:10-11, there…
(3) Grave.—Sheôl. Here, as in Psa_6:4-5; Psa_33:19; Isa_38:10-11, there comes into prominence the thought that death severs the covenant relation with God, and so presents an irresistible reason why prayer should be heard now before it is too late.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–18 THE most mournful of all the psalms. After one…
THE most mournful of all the psalms. After one almost formal "word of trust" (ver. 1 a), the remainder is a continuous bitter cry of complaint, rising at times into expostulation (vers. 10-12), and almost into reproach (ver. 14). The tone is that of the earlier complaints of Job; and Job has been supposed by some to be the writer. But this is highly improbable. We may accept the statement of the title, that the monody was written by Heman the Ezrahite, who was a contemporary of. Solomon. (1Ki_4:31) It has no appearance of being composed at a time of national affliction. All the complaints are personal, and indicate long continued personal suffering. The writer seems to be without hope. Still, he does not fall away from God, but continues to call upon him and pray to him (vers. l, 2, 9, 13).
Metrically, the psalm is almost without divisions slow, unbroken wail," expressive of "the monotony of woe.
Read full note →
O Lord God of my salvation. This is the one "word of trust," which some get rid of by an emendation. But the Septuagint supports the existing Hebrew text; and it is in harmony with the rest of Scripture. The saints of God never despair. I have cried day and night before thee; literally, by day have I cried by night before thee; a trembling, gasping utterance (Kay).
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY Vers. 1-18. The saddest psalm in the Psalter.
For in well nigh all others, though there may be darkness of soul, a very night of darkness, yet we see the light arise; though we see "weeping endure for the night," yet we see also that "joy cometh in the morning." But in this psalm we do not see such coming of joy. The believer who wrote it was one who was called to "walk in darkness, and bad no light." But he is holding on; he prays, and perseveres in prayer; he recognizes the hand of God in his trouble. "Thou hast laid me," etc. (vers. 6-8). He confesses that God is the Lord God of his salvation (ver. 1); he attributes to God loving kindness, faithfulness, power, and righteousness (vers. 11, 12); and he declares his purpose (ver. 13) to continue in prayer. No doubt the light did come, though the psalm ends first. "The believer in his worst time still continues to pray; God"s rod flogs his child not from him, but to him. Our griefs are waves which wash us on to the rock. But nevertheless, the best child of God may be the greatest sufferer, and his sufferings may be, as those told of here, utterly crushing, killing, and overwhelming." Now let us inquire
I WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SUCH SUFFERING TO COME TO HIS PEOPLE? We may reply:
1. Suffering is the lot of an. The men of this world do not escape it more than the servant of God, and, all things considered, probably they suffer more, because the alleviations and consolations which belong to the child of God they know nothing of. But if suffering, which is the lot of all, did not come to the child of God; if faith were the passport to immunity from those varied ills which flesh is heir to, what a crowd of mere loaves and fishes seekers we should have!
2. For spiritual discipline. The soul needs training, exercise, and development as much as the body, and how but by trial can this be secured? There is not one fruit of the Spirit that can be fully perfected save in this way.
3. In self-revelation. Many men live continually in a perfect mist of mistake about themselves. How strong Peter thought himself! But his trial and his sad fall revealed him to himself as nothing else could.
4. For driving us nearer God. We do not wrench ourselves away from God, but we are perpetually in peril of drifting, and this unconsciously. Hence we need to be from time to time roused to this fact that we have got away from God, and that we must come back.
5. That we may give testimony. The world marks how the Christian bears trial; if meekly, patiently, both towards God and towards men, the world notes it, and confesses the grace of God.
6. And that we may learn to sympathize. How could we if we knew nothing of suffering?
II HOW ARE SUCH CONDITIONS BROUGHT ABOUT? Through:
1. Circumstances. The troubles of life, personal or relative losses, bereavements, sickness, etc.
2. Wrong thoughts of God. How many such there are in this psalm! A great deal that the psalmist has said is exaggerated and untrue. What he says existed not in reality, but in his own bewildered imagination.
3. Failure of hope for the future. What terrible things he says about death! To him the grave is all dark and dreadful. It is "the pit," a mere charnel house, blow, the Old Testament writers, though they had not our fulness of hope, yet had hope. But in this psalm the writer seems to have lost it. Perhaps there had been:
4. Neglect of communion with God. If we fail here, farewell to all joy in God, and when trouble comes it finds us all unprepared, and we go down before it into the depths.
5. Love. For that which touches the beloved touches the heart that loves. Christ loved us intensely, and became of necessity "the Man of sorrows;" for he saw and pitied our misery so much that it led him straight to Gethsemane and the cross. And all love links itself to pain.
III WHAT TO DO UNDER SUCH CONDITIONS.
1. Inquire of God as to the, cause of your trouble, if you do not know what it is.
2. Humble yourself beneath his hand. Say over and over again, until your heart assents, "Thy will be done.
3. Get nearer God than ever. This is what he desires to see you do.
4. Be careful to obey his every command.
5. Go and try to comfort other troubled ones.
6. Meditate much upon Christs Sufferings. Along such channels as these help, peace, rest, relict, will come. S.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1. Personal relations with God made a plea.
"O Lord God of my salvation." This has been called "the saddest of all the psalms." But it represents mental rather than spiritual distress. It belongs to such an age as that of Solomon, and classes with the Psalms of Asaph, the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Job. It is a psalm of Heman the sage; but his wisdom is spoiled by the pessimistic view he takes of his circumstances and surroundings. The man who believes in God does not see clearly unless he sees hopefully. Things never can be "going to the bad" if God is in them. Dr. S. Cox calls this psalm, "Heman"s Elegy," and he carefully marks its distinguishing feature, and this helpfully aids the pulpit treatment of it. "Its sadness is that of one who has wearied himself by much study of a large and varied experience, who has thought of all things till all things have grown doubtful to him, till he finds the trail of the serpent in all the fairest scenes of human life, till he doubts his very doubts. It is the intellectual sadness of one who, in long brooding over the wrongs and sorrows of time, the frailty of man, the limitations of human thought, the vanity of the ends which men commonly pursue, the cravings which importune a satisfaction which they never find, the mystery by which our being is encompassed, the impenetrability of a future which nevertheless we must try to penetrate, has lost touch with the warm and breathing activities of human life, and has sunk towards a pessimistic despair of the life which now is on the one hand, and, on the other, into a prying and credulous curiosity as to the conditions of the life which is to come. And that, happily, is a misery which is comparatively rare." The point proposed for illustration is the way in which a personal anchorage of the soul in God may keep it steady under all kinds of soul distress, and even the distress arising from mental perplexity.
I OUR PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH GOD MAY BE RECOGNIZED AND FELT. Illustrate from the expression, My God," in Psa_22:1, as repeated by the Lord Jesus when on the cross. See experience of Bible saints.
II THE PERSONAL RELATION BRINGS A SENSE OF SECURITY, BECAUSE IT IS BASED ON GOD"S RELATION TO US. We feel him to be our God only because he is graciously pleased to be our God. "We love him because he first loved us.
III THE SENSE OF PERSONAL RELATION WITH GOD STEADIES US AMID THE CHARGING SCENES OF LIFE.
IV THE SENSE OF PERSONAL RELATION WITH GOD KEEPS OUR MIND WHEN WRESTLING WITH DIFFICULTIES.
V THE SENSE OF PERSONAL RELATION WITH GOD GIVES US AN UNFAILING PLEA IN SEEKING DIVINE HELP. R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT Vers. 1-18. Light in the darkness.
This is the darkest, saddest psalm of all the Psalms.
I A PICTURE OF THE MOST DESPAIRING MISERY. Scarcely possible to think that such unalleviated misery ever existed.
1. Utter physical and mental weakness and prostration. (Ver. 6) As good as dead.
2. Utterly forsaken of all his friends. (Vers. 8, 18) And God had put them from him.
3. Cast off from God, by reason of is wrath. (Vers. 7, 14, 15, 16) He is abandoned utterly both of God and man; i.e. he thought so. But no one really is.
4. This misery had been nearly lifelong. (Ver. 13)
II RESOLUTE PRAYER IS THE LAST RESOURCE OF THE PROFOUNDLY MISERABLE.
1. His prayer was persistent. (Vers. 1, 13) Day and night, morning and evening.
2. He makes the greatness of his affliction an argument for being heard. (Vers. 2, 3)
3. He prays to know the "why" of God"s wrath towards him. (Ver. 14) The affliction is a mystery the reason of which he would have made clear. He makes no confession of sin as explaining the terrors of God from which he is suffering.
III SOME GLEAMS OF FAITH AND HOPE BREAKING THROUGH THE DARKNESS OF HIS DESPAIR.
1. God is the God of his salvation. (Ver. 1) Notwithstanding all he says of his abandonment.
2. God is worthy of praise for his loving kindness and faithfulness. (Vers. 10, 11) He could still believe in these.
3. He prays for the righteousness of God to be manifested to him. (Ver. 12) He cannot help uttering these deep-grounded faiths that made him still cling to God in the most despairing moments. None can abandon themselves to utter despair who have seen God in Christ as the Father. S.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain On vv1–18 The labour of compiling the notes of this volume…
The labour of compiling the notes of this volume may be judged of from the fact that upon my writing to one of the most scholarly men of this age for a little assistance in my researches upon that well-known Psalm, the 103rd I received a note commencing, " I have hunted through my books, and have been surprised to find that, with the exception of what is universally known, there is so little about Psalm 103." This most generous-hearted brother had the warmest zeal and love to stimulate his investigations, yet this was the result, and had I repeated the experiment upon other Biblical students, and changed the Psalm, I should in very few instances have received any other reply. Hence, gentle reader, your patience has been exercised in waiting for Vol. IV. of the Treasury, and my toil has been correspondingly increased. Here, however, is the volume, as portly as its fellows, and I hope not inferior to any of them; at least, I can honestly say, if it be so, it is not the fault of my endeavours, for I have bated no jot of energy, spared no cost, and withheld no time, though this last has been a very precious commodity with me, and has frequently been snatched from rest which fatigue demanded, and which prudence might have wisely yielded.
Nor is this the only reason for the time which this volume has occupied, though we judge it to be quite sufficient, but we have desired to complete this work at our best, and not to allow the close of it to exhibit signs of fatigue and decline. We have often sat down to write our comment upon a Psalm, and have risen from the task because we did not feel at home at it. It is of no use compelling the mind, its productions in such a case are like forced fruits, disappointing and devoid of flavour. We like to write after the manner of John Bunyan, who said, " As I pulled, it came," and we prefer that the pulling should be as gentle as possible. So it has happened that we have lingered for months over a Psalm, feeling quite unfit to enter upon it. Especially was this the case over the hundred and ninth Psalm, which we sometimes think we never should have been able to handle at all if it had not been for the Bulgarian massacres, which threw us into such a state of righteous indignation that while we were musing the fire burned, and we melted the sentences, and wished that we could pour them boiling hot upon the monsters. Later tidings make us feel that the other side might well be favoured with similar visitations. Other Psalms have had their difficulties, though none to be compared with CIX. The grand Cosmos of Psalm CIV. was not to be dismissed in a few days ; even now, after laying our best efforts at its feet, we feel dissatisfied with the poor result. However, we have done our best, and have grappled honestly with all hard places. We are so far through our labour, and look for a full deliverance. If some of our friends have had to wait, we hope they will be gainers by obtaining fruit all the riper and better from coming in due season. The book is finished, however, and with it two-thirds of my allotted task, for which may God be praised.
Read full note →
I am the more surprised at the general paucity of sermons and comments upon this portion of the book of Psalms, because it contains some of the more notable compositions, such as Psalms 84, 90, 91, 92, and 103. These and some of the others are so rich that, had several volumes existed illustrating any one of them, it would not have been a matter of wonder. When I have found one sermon upon a passage, it has generally been easy to collect a score upon the same; preachers evidently run so much in ruts that they leave a large portion of the Scriptures without exposition. This suggests many thoughts, which, as they will naturally occur to every thoughtful reader, I need not enlarge upon in a mere preface, but this much may be said, we trust, without giving offenceif the habit of expounding the passages of Scripture which are read in public worship should ever become more common, the preparation for doing this in an interesting and instructive manner would greatly tend to enlarge the range of texts discussed from the pulpit, and would almost inevitably lead to the people's receiving from their teachers more of God's word and less of man's, and this would be no small benefit.
In this volume, as in all the rest, we have had the indefatigable assistance of Mr. J. L. Keys, who, in addition to a vast amount of copying, has visited various libraries and museums to select from rare works which could not be found in any otherplaces. Our venerable friend, the Rev. George Rogers, has all along contributed his invaluable sermon-outlines, for which we are deeply grateful. Mr. Gracey, the classical tutor of the Pastors' College, assisted us through the earlier Psalms of this volume in making selections from the Latin authors, and when he was obliged to decline, owing to the pressure of his engagements, his place was ably filled by the Rev. E. T. Gibson, late of Crayford, to whom we also owe certain notes from German authors. I think it right to repeat the intimation that I am not to be understood as endorsing all the passages quoted from other authors. The names are given, and each writer bears his own responsibility.
Only one word of self-defence shall further delay the courteous reader. A critic has so greatly mistaken my meaning as to find in the title to the Sermon Notes a specimen of human vanity. I am amazed at his discovery. I do not pretend to be entirely free from that vice, but no trace of it is discoverable there by my keenest and most conscientious inspection; on the contrary, I called those outlines " Hints to the Village Preacher,"*because I did not think those of them which are my own to be good enough to offer to my brethren in the regular ministry, but hoped that they might aid those good men, engaged all the week in business, who are generally, but I think incorrectly, called lay-preachers, and are not supposed to have the facilities of time and books which fall to the lot of the regular ministry. I thought this somewhat modest on my part, and did not see how it could be misunderstood. Our village ministers are among the most thoughtful and useful of our brotherhood, and I never dreamed of casting a slur upon them ; as, however, I have been misunderstood, I will now, without altering the title, take higher ground, and say that I trust the hints may be useful to any preachers in city or country ; for the other day I met one of the most eminent metropolitan divines, and he most kindly thanked me for having suggested to him by a hint in the Treasury a sermon which he hoped had been most acceptable to his congregation, and he remarked that there was no need to be so very bashful about the aforesaid " hints." I have followed his advice, and may now, perhaps, be misunderstood again. It is a small matter to be unjustly censured, but still I would not even seem to despise brethren in more obscure spheres, for it is the last thing in my heart.
For the generous reviews which the former volumes have received on all hands I am deeply grateful. I commit this fourth volume to the press, praying that it may, according to the Lord's will, tend to the upbuilding of his church and his own glory.
C.H. Spurgeon.
A Song or Psalm for the sons of Korah. This sad complaint reads very little like a Song, nor can we conceive how it could be called by a name which denotes a song of praise or triumph; yet perhaps it was intentionally so called to show how faith "glories in tribulations also." Assuredly, if ever there was a song of sorrow and a Psalm of sadness, this is one. The sons of Korah, who had often united in chanting jubilant odes, are now bidden to take charge of this mournful dirge like hymn. Servants and singers must not be choosers. To the chief Musician. He must superintend the singers and see that they do their duty well, for holy sorrow ought to be expressed with quite as much care as the most joyful praise; nothing should be slovenly in the Lord's house. It is more difficult to express sorrow fitly than it is to pour forth notes of gladness. Upon Mahalath Leannoth. This is translated by Alexander, "concerning afflictive sickness", and if this be correct, it indicates the mental malady which occasioned this plaintive song. Maschil. This term has occurred many times before, and the reader will remember that it indicates an instructive or didactic Psalm: the sorrows of one saint are lessons to others; experimental teaching is exceedingly valuable. Of Heman the Ezrahite. This, probably, informs us as to its authorship; it was written by Heman, but which Heman it would not be easy to determine, though it will not be a very serious mistake if we suppose it to be the man alluded to in 1Ki 4:31, as the brother of Ethan, and one of the five sons of Zerah (1Ch 2:6), the son of Judah, and hence called "the Ezrahite": if this be the man, he was famous for his wisdom, and his being in Egypt during the time of Pharaoh's oppression may help to account for the deep bass of his song, and for the antique form of many of the expressions, which are more after the manner of Job than David. There was, however, a Heman in David's day who was one of the grand trio of chief musicians, "Heman, Asaph, and Ethan" (1Ch 15:19), and no one can prove that this was not the composer. The point is of no consequence; whoever wrote the Psalm most have been a man of deep experience, who had done business on the great waters of soul trouble.
This Psalm is fragmentary, and the only division of any service to us would be that suggested by Albert Barnes, viz. A description of the sick man's sufferings (Ps 88:1-9), and a prayer for mercy and deliverance (Ps 88:10-18). We shall, however, consider each verse separately, and so exhibit the better the incoherence of the author's grief. The reader had better first peruse the Psalm as a whole.
Ver. 1. O Lord God of my salvation. This is a hopeful title by which to address the Lord, and it has about it the only ray of comfortable light which shines throughout the Psalm. 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. It is one of the characteristics of true faith that she turns to Jehovah, the saving God, when all other confidences have proved liars unto her.
I have cried day and night before thee. His distress had not blown out the sparks of his prayer, but thickened them into a greater ardency, till they burned perpetually like a furnace at full blast. His prayer was personalwhoever had not prayed, he had done so; it was intensely earnest, so that it was correctly described as a cry, such as children utter to move the pity of their parents; and it was unceasing, neither the business of the day nor the weariness of the night had silenced it: surely such entreaties could not be in vain. Perhaps, if Heman's pain had not been incessant his supplications might have been intermittent; it is a good thing that sickness will not let us rest if we spend our restlessness in prayer. Day and night are both suitable to prayer; it is no work of darkness, therefore let us go with Daniel and pray when men can see us, yet, since supplication needs no light, let us accompany Jacob and wrestle at Jabbok till the day breaketh. Evil is transformed to good when it drives us to prayer. One expression of the text is worthy of special note; "before thee" is a remarkable intimation that the Psalmist's cries had an aim and a direction towards the Lord, and were not the mere clamours of nature, but the groanings of a gracious heart towards Jehovah, the God of salvation. Of what use are arrows shot into the air? The archer's business is to look well at the mark he drives at. Prayers must be directed to heaven with earnest care. So thought Heman his cries were all meant for the heart of his God. He had no eye to onlookers as Pharisees have, but all his prayers were before his God.
Title. Mahalath Leannoth I lean to the idea, that the words Mahalath Leannoth, are intended to denote some musical instrument of the plaintive order, and in this opinion Kimchi and other Jewish writers perfectly agree. They assert that it was a wind instrument, answering very much to the flute, and employed mainly in giving utterance to sentiments of grief, upon occasions of great sorrow and lamentation. With this view of the title, I should look for no new translation, but should just read it substantially as our translators here: "A Song or Psalm for the sons of Korah", to the giver of victory, upon Mahalath Leannoth, an instruction for Heman, the Ezrahite. John Morison.
Title. Leannoth is variously rendered, according as it is derived from hne, anah, to suffer, be afflicted, or from hne anah, to chant, sing. Gesenius, De Wette, Dr. Davies, and others take the latter view; while Mudge, Hengtenberg, Alexander, and others take the former. Mudge translates, to create dejection; Alexander renders, mahalath leannoth, concerning afflictive sickness; Hengstenberg reads, upon the distress of oppression. The Septuagint (apokriyhnai) and the Vulgate (respondendum) indicate a responsive song, and Houbigant translates the words in question, for the choirs, that they may answer. Many etymologists consider the primary idea of hne, anah, to sing, that of answering. The tone of the Psalm in question, however, being decidedly that of sadness and dejection, it appears more probable that leannoth denotes the strictly elegiac character of the performance, and the whole title may read therefore, "A Song or Psalm, for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician, upon the flutes (or the hollow instruments,)to afflict (or cause dejection,)a didactic Psalm of Heman, the Ezrahite." F.G. Hibbard, in "The Psalms chronologically arranged, with Historical Introductions." New York, 1856.
Title. The explanation: to be performed mournfully with subdued voice, agrees with the mournful contents, whose tone is even more gloomy than that of Ps 77:1-20. From "The Psalms, by C.B. Moll." (Lange's Series of Commentaries.)
Title. Heman.
1. David was not the only man acquainted with sad exercise and affliction of spirit, for here is another, to wit, Heman the Ezrahite, as deep in trouble of spirit as he or any other beside.
2. They are not all men of weak minds and shallow wit who are acquainted with trouble of spirit, and borne down with the sense of God's wrath; for here is Heman, one amongst the wisest of all Israel, (and inferior to none for wisdom, except to Solomon alone), under the heaviest exercise we can imagine possible for a saint.
3. When it pleaseth God to exercise a man of parts, of great gifts and graces, he can make his burden proportionable to his strength, and give him as much to do with the difficulties he puts him to, as a weaker man shall find in his exercise, as appeareth in the experience of Heman.
4. Wise men in their trouble must take the same course with the simpler sort of men; that is, they must run to God as others do, and seek relief only in his grace, who as he distributeth the measures of trouble, can also give comfort, ease, and deliverance from them, as the practice of Heman doth teach us.
5. What trouble of wounded spirit some of God's children have felt in former times, others dear to God may find the like in after ages, and all men ought to prepare for the like, and should not think the exercise strange when it cometh, but must comfort themselves in this, that other saints whose refines are recorded in Scripture, have been under like affliction; for the Psalm is appointed "to give instruction"; it is Maschil of Heman.
6. What is at one time matter of mourning to one of God's children, may become matter of joy and singing afterward, both to himself and to others, as this sad anguish of spirit in Heman is made a song of joy unto God's glory, and the comfort of all afflicted souls, labouring under the sense of sin and felt wrath of God, unto the world's end; it is A Song, a Psalm for the sons of Korah.
7. Such as are most heartily 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 wrath: for here is a saint who hath drunken of that cup (as deep as any who shall read this Psalm,)here is one so much loved and honoured of God, as to be a penman of Holy Scripture, and a pattern of faith and patience unto others; even Heman the Ezrahite.
David Dickson.
Whole Psalm. "We have in this Psalm the voice of our suffering Redeemer", says Horne; and the contents may be thus briefly stated
1. The plaintive wailing of the suffering one, Ps 88:1-2. It strongly resembles Ps 22:1-2.
2. His soul exceeding sorrowful even unto death, Ps 88:3-5. The word "free" in our version, is vpx, properly denoting separation from others, and here rendered by Junius and Tremellius, "set aside from intercourse and communication with men, having nothing in common with them, like those who are afflicted with leprosy, and are sent away to separate dwellings." They quote 2Ch 26:21.
3. His feelings of hell, Ps 88:6-7. For he feels God's prison, and the gloom of God's darkest wrath. And Selah gives time to ponder.
4. His feelings of shame and helplessness, Ps 88:8. "His own receive him not."
5. The effects of soul agony upon his body, Ps 88:9.
6. His submission to the Lord, Ps 88:9. It is the very tone of Gethsemane, "Nevertheless, not my will!"
7. The sustaining hope of resurrection, Ps 88:10 (with a solemn pause, "Selah"), Ps 88:11-12. The "land of forgetfulness", and "the dark", express the unseen world, which, to those on this side of the vail, is so unknown, and where those who enter it are to us as if they had forever been forgotten by those they left behind. God's wonders shall be made known there. There shall be victory gained over death and the grave: God's "lovingkindness" to man, and his "faithfulness", pledge him to do this new thing in the universe. Messiah must return from the abodes of the invisible state; and in due time, Heman, as well as all other members of the Messiah's body, must return also. Yes, God's wonders shall be known at the grave's mouth. God's righteousness, in giving what satisfied justice in behalf of Messiah's members, has been manifested gloriously, so that resurrection must follow, and the land of forgetfulness must give up its dead. O morning of surpassing bliss, hasten on! Messiah has risen; when shall all that are his arise? Till that day dawn, they must take up their Head's plaintive expostulations, and remind their God in Heman's strains of what he has yet to accomplish. "Wilt thou show wonders to the dead", etc.
8. His perseverance in vehement prayer, Ps 88:13-14.
9. His long continued and manifold woes, Ps 88:15-17.
10. His loneliness of soul, Ps 88:18.
Hengstenberg renders the last clause of this verse more literally "The dark kingdom of the dead is instead of all my companions." What unutterable gloom! completed by this last dark shadeall sympathy from every quarter totally withdrawn! Forlorn, indeed! Sinking from gloom to gloom, from one deep to another, and every billow sweeping over him, and wrath, like a tremendous mountain, "leaning" or resting its weight on the crushed worm. Not even Ps 22:1-31 is more awfully solemnising, there being in this deeply melancholy Psalm only one cheering glimpse through the intense gloom, namely, that of resurrection hoped for, but still at a distance. At such a price was salvation purchased by him who is the resurrection and the life. He himself wrestled for life and resurrection in our nameand that price so paid is the reason why to us salvation is free. And so we hear in solemn joy the harp of Judah struck by Heman, to overawe our souls not with his own sorrows, but with what Horsley calls "The lamentation of Messiah", or yet more fully, The sorrowful days and nights of the Man of Sorrows. Andrew A. Bonar.
Whole Psalm. This Psalm stands alone in all the Psalter for the unrelieved gloom, the hopeless sorrow of its tone. Even the very saddest of the others, and the Lamentations themselves, admit some variations of key, some strains of hopefulness; here only all is darkness to the close. Neale and Littledale.
Whole Psalm. The prophecy in the foregoing Psalm of the conversion of all nations is followed by this Passion Psalm, in order that it may never be forgotten that God has purchased to himself an universal church, by the precious blood of his dear Son. Christopher Wordsworth.
Whole Psalm. All the misery and sorrow which are described in this Psalm, says Brentius, have been the lot of Christ's people. We may therefore take the Psalm, he adds, to be common to Christ and his church. W. Wilson.
Ver. 1. My That little word "my" opens for a moment a space between the clouds through which the Sun of righteousness casts one solitary beam. Generally speaking, you will find that when the Psalm begins with lamentation, it ends with praise; like the sun, which, rising in clouds and mist, sets brightly, and darts forth its parting rays just before it goes down. But here the first gleam shoots across the sky just as the sun rises, and no sooner has the ray appeared, than thick clouds and darkness gather over it; the sun continues its course throughout the whole day enveloped in clouds; and sets at last in a thicker bank of them than it ever had around it during the day. "Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness." In what a dark cloud does the sun of Heman set! J.C. Philpot.
Ver. 1. Before thee. He had not recklessly poured forth his complaints, or cast them to the winds, as many are wont to do, who have no hope in their calamities; but he had always mingled with his complaining prayers for obtaining deliverance, and had directed them to God, where faith assured him his prayers would be seen again. This must be attentively noted, since herein is seen of what kind the complaints of the saints are. Mollerus.
Ver. 1. Before thee. Other men seek some hiding place where they may murmur against God, but the Psalmist comes into the Lord's presence and states his grievances. When a man dares to pour out his complaint before the Lord's own face, his woes are real, and not the result of petulence or a rebellious spirit. C.H.S.
Ver. 1-2. Before thee. Not seeking to be seen by human eye, but by God alone, therefore, let my prayer come before thee, that is, let it be acceptable before thee, after the similitude of ambassadors who are admitted to audience; and when my prayer has entered incline thine tar unto my cry, because thou hearest the desire of the afflicted. Richardus Hampolus.
Ver. 1.
1. Confidence in prayer, "God of my salvation."
2. Earnestness in prayer, "I have cried."
3. Perseverance in prayer, "Day and night." G.R.
Psalms 88:2*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18 O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried…
Psa_88:1-18
O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee.
Read full note →
A portrait of a suffering man
I. Depicting his wretched state. He speaks of himself as full of troubles, satiated with sufferings.
1. He represents himself as tottering on the grave and without power (Psa_88:2-5).
2. Crushed by agonies and conscious of the Divine displeasure (Psa_88:6-7).
3. Bereft of friends, and the subject of social contempt (Psa_88:8).
4. Deprived of liberty and exhausted with grief. I am shut up, etc. (Psa_88:8).
II. Supplicating his afflicting God. This he did--
1. With unremitting earnestness (Psa_88:1). To whom can human sufferers look for help, but to the God of salvation? And to look to Him with earnest constancy is at once our duty and our interest.
2. With profound inquiries (Psa_88:10-12). The living have a profound interest in the dead.
3. With pious determination (Psa_88:13).
4. With painful apprehension (Psa_88:14-18). (Homilist.)
Hemans sorrowful psalm
From this psalm--
I. Learn how to pray.
1. Tell the Lord your case.
2. Pray naturally.
3. Pray with this belief fixed in your mind, that your help must come from God, and pray expecting salvation from the Lord.
4. Pray often.
5. With weeping and mourning.
6. Pleadingly.
II. Resolve to pray in your very worst case. When you are full of troubles, go to God with them, that is the very time when you most need to pray. But, say you, Mr. Spurgeon, you do not know all that I have to think of. No, but I do know that, the more you have to think of, the more reason you have to go to God in prayer about it. The more loads you have to drag, the more horses you need; and the more work there is to be done, the more reason is there for crying to God to help you to do it. Do not, I pray you, stay away from the outward means Of grace when you are in trouble; but especially do not stay away from God Himself when you are tried and perplexed. When you are as full of trouble as ever you can be, then is the time to pray most. But I have nobody to speak to, says another. Never mind if you have not; that is all the more reason why you should pray to God, and plead with God, who will not leave you. But I am distracted, says another. Yes, and you will be distracted, unless you will go to God as you are, and implore Him to look at your distractions, and to lay His gentle hand upon you, and to restore you to yourself, and then to restore you to Himself.
III. Reasons why you should keep on praying.
1. You cannot lose anything by prayer.
2. It is not so great a thing, after all, to have to continue to ask. As a sinner I kept God waiting for me long enough, aye, far too long.
3. Cease not to pray, for He to whom thou prayest is a gracious God. Take good heart; thou wilt not plead in vain, for He loves to hear thy prayers. He must, He will, answer thee, for He is a God of grace.
4. He has heard others.
5. He has promised to hear thee. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
No trouble too great for God to lift
The tide was out. A great ocean steamer lay at the wharf, loaded to the line; by its side was a little boat that danced on top of the waves. The big iron ship grew worried, and said to the dancing, happy boat: I fear, when the tide comes in, Im so heavy it cant lift me, and Ill go to the bottom. Never fear, said the smaller one, it can lift thee as well as me. Oh but you are so light, while Im so heavy. Its easy enough to lift you, but me--oh, dear! Worry not, worry not, old ironsides. Its lifted the likes o you many a time, and will soon lift thee as well as me. And the tide came in; up and up they both rose on the bosom of the sea; one lifted as high and as easy as the other. Great heart, loaded to the line with thine own sorrows and others burdens, filled with fears and worried with doubt, thou wilt not go down. (The Advertiser.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Psalms 88
Psalms 88
A PSALM which begins with "God of my salvation" and ends with "darkness" is an anomaly. All but unbroken gloom broods over it, and is densest at its close. The psalmist is so "weighed upon by sore distress," that he has neither definite petition for deliverance nor hope. His cry to God is only a long-drawn complaint, which brings no respite from his pains nor brightening of his spirit. But yet to address God as the God of his salvation, to discern His hand in the infliction of sorrows, is the operation of true though feeble faith. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is the very spirit of this psalm. It stands alone in the Psalter, which would be incomplete as a mirror of phases of devout experience, unless it had one psalm expressing trust which has ceased to ask or hope for the removal of life-long griefs, but still clasps Gods hand even in the "darkness." Such experience is comparatively rare, and is meant to be risen above. Therefore this psalm stands alone. But it is not unexampled, and all moods of the devout life would not find lyrical expression in the book unless this deep note was once sounded.
Read full note →
It is useless to inquire what was the psalmists affliction. His language seems to point to physical disease of long continuance and ever threatening a fatal termination; but in all probability sickness is a symbol here, as so often. What racked his sensitive spirit matters little. The cry which his pains evoked is what we are concerned with. There is little trace of strophical arrangement, and commentators differ much in their disposition of the parts of the psalm. But we venture to suggest a principle of division which has not been observed, in the threefold recurrence of "I cry" or "I call," accompanied in each case by direct address to Jehovah. The resulting division into three parts gives, first, the psalmists description of his hopeless condition as, in effect, already dead (Psa_88:1-8); second, an expostulation with God on the ground that, if the psalmist is actually numbered with the dead, he can no more be the object of Divine help, nor bring God praise (Psa_88:9-12); and, third, a repetition of the thoughts of the first part with slight variation and addition (Psa_88:13-18).
The central portion of the first division is occupied with an expansion of the thought that the psalmist is already as good as dead (Psa_88:3-6). The condition of the dead is drawn with a powerful hand and the picture is full of solemn grandeur and hopelessness. It is preceded in Psa_88:1-2, by an invocation which has many parallels in the psalms, but which here is peculiarly striking. This saddest of them all has for its first words the Name Which ought to banish sadness. He who can call on Jehovah as the God of his salvation possesses a charm which has power to still agitation, and to flush despair with some light of hope as from an unrisen sun. But this poet feels no warmth from the beams, and the mists surge up, if not to hide the light, yet to obscure it. All the more admirable, then, the persistence of his cry; and all the more precious the lesson that Faith is not to let present experience limit its conceptions. God is none the less the God of salvation and none the less to be believed to be so though no consciousness of His saving power blesses the heart at the moment.
Psa_88:1 b is obscure. Psa_22:2 and other places suggest that the juxtaposition of day and night is meant to express the continuity of the psalmists prayer; but, as the text now stands, the first part of the clause can only mean "In the time (day) when I cry," and the second has to be supplemented so as to read "[My cry comes] before Thee." This gives a poor meaning, and there is probability in the slight emendation on the word for day; which is required in order to make it an adverb of time equivalent to "In the day," as in the passage already quoted. Another emendation, adopted by Graetz, Bickell, and Cheyne, changes "God of" into "my God," and "my salvation" into "I cry" (the same word as in Psa_88:13), and attaches "by day" to the first clause. The result is, -
Jehovah, my God,
I cry to Thee by day,
I call in the night before Thee.
The changes are very slight and easy, and the effect of them is satisfactory: The meaning of the verse is obvious, whether the emendation is accepted or not. The gain from the proposed change is dearly purchased by the loss of that solitary expression of hope in the name of "God of my salvation," the one star which gleams for a moment through a rift in the blackness.
With "For" in Psa_88:3 the psalmist begins the dreary description of his affliction, the desperate and all but deadly character of which he spreads before God as a reason for hearing his prayer. Despair sometimes strikes men dumb, and sometimes makes them eloquent. The sorrow which has a voice is less crushing than that which is tongueless. This overcharged heart finds relief in self-pitying depicting of its burdens, and in the exercise of a gloomy imagination, which draws out in detail the picture of the feebleness, the recumbent stillness, the seclusion and darkness of the dead. They have "no strength." Their vital force has ebbed away, and they are but as weak shadows, having an impotent existence, which does not deserve to be called life. The remarkable expression of Psa_88:5 "free among the dead," is to be interpreted in the light of Job_3:19, which counts it as one blessing of the grave, that "there the servant is free from his master." But the psalmist thinks that that "freedom" is loathsome, not desirable, for it means removal from the stir of a life, the heaviest duties and cares of which are better than the torpid immunity from these, which makes the state of the dead a dreary monotony. They lie stretched out and motionless. No ripple of cheerful activity stirs that stagnant sea. One unvarying attitude is theirs. It is not the stillness of rest which prepares for work, but of incapacity of action or of change. They are forgotten by Him who remembers all that are. They are parted from the guiding and blessing influence of the Hand that upholds all being. In some strange fashion they are and yet are not. Their death has a simulacrum of life. Their shadowy life is death. Being and non-being may both be predicated of them. The psalmist speaks in riddles; and the contradictions in his speech reflect his dim knowledge of that place of darkness. He looks into its gloomy depths, and he sees little but gloom. It needed the resurrection of Jesus to flood these depths with light, and to show that the life beyond may be fuller of bright activity than life here-a state in which vital strength is increased beyond all earthly experience, and wherein Gods all-quickening hand grasps more closely, and communicates richer gifts than are attainable in that death which sense calls life.
Psa_88:7 traces the psalmists sorrows to God. It breathes not complaint but submission, or, at least, recognition of His hand; and they who, in the very paroxysm of their pains, can say, "It is the Lord," are not far from saying, "Let Him do what seemeth Him good," nor from the peace that comes from a compliant will. The recognition implies, too, consciousness of sin which has deserved the "wrath" of God, and in such consciousness lies the germ of blessing. Sensitive nerves may quiver, as they feel the dreadful weight with which that wrath presses down on them, as if to crush them; but if the man lies still, and lets the pressure do its work, it will not force out his life, but only his evil, as foul water is squeezed from cloth. Psa_88:7 b is rendered by Delitzsch "And Thy billows Thou pressest down," which gives a vivid picture; but "billows" is scarcely the word to use for the downward rushing waters of a cataract, and the ordinary rendering, adopted above, requires only natural supplements.
Psa_88:8 approaches nearer to a specification of the psalmists affliction. If taken literally, it points to some loathsome disease, which had long clung to him, and made even his, friends shrink from companionship, and thus had condemned him to isolation. All these details suggest leprosy, which, if referred to here, is most probably to be taken, as sickness is in several psalms, as symbolic of affliction. The desertion by friends is a common feature in the psalmists complaints. The seclusion as in a prison house is, no doubt, appropriate to the lepers condition, but may also simply refer to the loneliness and compulsory inaction arising from heavy trials. At all events, the psalmist is flung back friendless on himself, and hemmed in, so that he cannot expatiate in the joyous bustle of life. Blessed are they who, when thus situated, can betake themselves to God, and find that He does not turn away! The consciousness of His loving presence has. not yet lighted the psalmists soul; but the clear acknowledgment that it is God who has put the sweetness of earthly companionship beyond his reach is, at least, the beginning of the happier experience, that God never makes a solitude round a soul without desiring to fill it with Himself.
If the recurring cry to Jehovah in Psa_88:9 is taken, as we have suggested it should be, as marking a new turn in the thoughts, the second part of the psalm will include Psa_88:9-12. Psa_88:10-12 are apparently the daily prayer referred to in Psa_88:9. They appeal to God to preserve the psalmist from the state of death, which he has just depicted himself as having in effect already entered, by the consideration which is urged in other psalms as a reason for Divine intervention {Psa_6:5; Psa_30:9, etc.} -namely, that His power had no field for its manifestation in the grave, and that He could draw no revenue of praise from the pale lips that lay silent there. The conception of the state of the dead is even more dreary than that in Psa_88:4-5. They are "shades," which word conveys the idea of relaxed feebleness. Their dwelling is Abaddon-i.e., "destruction,"-"darkness," "the land of forgetfulness" whose inhabitants remember not, nor are remembered, either by God or man. In that cheerless region God had no opportunity to show His wonders of delivering mercy, for monotonous immobility was stamped upon it, and out of that realm of silence no glad songs of praise could sound. Such thoughts are in startling contrast with the hopes that sparkle in some psalms (such as Psa_16:10, etc.), and they show that clear, permanent assurance of future blessedness was net granted to the ancient Church. Nor could there be sober certainty of it until after Christs resurrection. But it is also to be noticed that this psalm neither affirms nor denies a future resurrection. It does affirm continuous personal existence after death, of however thin and shadowy a sort. It is not concerned with what may lie far ahead, but is speaking of the present state of the dead, as it was conceived of, at the then stage of revelation, by a devout soul, in its hours of despondency.
The last part (Psa_88:13-18) is marked, like the two preceding, by the repetition of the name of Jehovah, and of the allusion to the psalmists continual prayer. It is remarkable, and perhaps significant, that the time of prayer should here be "the morning," whereas in Psa_88:1 it was, according to Delitzsch, the night, or, according to the other rendering, day and night. The psalmist had asked in Psa_88:2 that his prayer might enter into Gods presence; he now vows that it will come to meet Him. Possibly some lightening of his burden may be hinted at by the reference to the time of his petition. Morning is the hour of hope, of new vigour, of a fresh beginning, which may not be only a prolongation of dreary yesterdays. But if there is any such alleviation, it is only for a moment, and then the cloud settles down still more heavily. But one thing the psalmist has won by his cry. He now longs to know the reason for his affliction. He is confident that God is righteous when He afflicts, and, heavy as his sorrow is, he has passed beyond mere complaint concerning it, to the wish to understand it. The consciousness that it is chastisement, occasioned by his own evil, and meant to purge that evil away, is present, in a rudimentary form at least in that cry, "Why castest Thou off my soul?" If sorrow has brought a man to offer that prayer, it has done its work, and will cease before long, or, if it lasts, will be easier to bear, when its meaning and purpose are clear. But the psalmist rises to such a height but for a moment, though his momentary attaining it gives promise that he will, by degrees, be able to remain there permanently. It is significant that the only direct naming of Jehovah, in addition to the three which accompany the references to his prayers, is associated with this petition for enlightenment. The singer presses close to God in his faith that His hardest blows are not struck at random, and that His administration has for its basis, not caprice but reason, moved by love and righteousness.
Such a cry is never offered in vain, even though it should be followed, as it is here, by plaintive reiterations of the sufferers pains. These are now little more than a summary of the first part. The same idea of being in effect dead even while alive is repeated in Psa_88:15, in which the psalmist wails that from youth he had been but a dying man, so close to him had death seemed, or so death-like bad been his life. He has borne Gods terrors till be is distracted. The word rendered "I am distracted" is only used here, and consequently is obscure. Hupfeld and others deny that it is a word at all (he calls it an "Unwort"), and would read another which means to become torpid. The existing text is defended by Delitzsch and others, who take the word to mean to be weakened in mind or bewildered. The meaning of the whole seems to be as rendered above. But it might also be translated, as by Cheyne, "I bear Thy terrors, my senses must fail." In Psa_88:16 the word for wrath is in the plural, to express the manifold outbursts of that deadly indignation. The word means literally heat; and we may represent the psalmists thought as being that the wrath shoots forth many fierce tongues of licking flame, or, like a lava stream, pours out in many branches. The word rendered "Cut me off" is anomalous, and is variously translated annihilate, extinguish, or as above. The wrath which was a fiery flame in Psa_88:16 is an overwhelming flood in Psa_88:17. The complaint of Psa_88:8 recurs in Psa_88:18, in still more tragic form. All human sympathy and help are far away, and the psalmists only familiar friend is darkness. There is an infinitude of despair in that sad irony. But there is a gleam of hope, though faint and far, like faint daylight seen from the innermost recesses of a dark tunnel, in his recognition that his dismal solitude is the work of Gods hand; for, if God has made a heart or a life empty of human love, it is that He may Himself fill it with His own sweet and all-compensating presence.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Superscription.—“A Song or Psalm,” i.e., combining the properties of…
INTRODUCTION
Superscription.—“A Song or Psalm,” i.e., combining the properties of both a Psalm and a song. “For the sons of Korah,” see Introduction to Psalms 42. “The expression, ‘To the Chief Musician,’ amounts to a notice that we have before us a proper Church song.” “Upon Mahalath Leannoth.” On “Mahalath,” see Introduction to Psalms 53. “ ‘Leannoth’ is variously rendered, according as it is derived from עָנָה, to suffer, be afflicted, or from עָנָה, to chant, sing. Gesenius, De Wette, Dr. Davies, and others take the latter view; while Mudge, Hengstenberg, Alexander, and others take the former. Mudge translates, to create dejection; Alexander renders, mahalath leannoth, concerning afflictive sickness; Hengstenberg reads, upon the distress of oppression. The Septuagint (ἀποκριθήναι) and the Vulgate (respondendum) indicate a responsive song, and Houbigant translates the words in question, for the choirs that they may answer. Many etymologists consider the primary idea of עָנָה, to sing, that of answering. The tone of the Psalm in question, however, being decidedly that of sadness and dejection, it appears more probable that leannoth denotes the strictly elegiac character of the performance, and the whole title may read therefore, ‘A Song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician upon the flutes (or the hollow instruments) to afflict (or cause dejection) a didactic Psalm of Heman, the Ezrahite.’ ”—(F. G. Hibbard.) “Maschil,” an instruction, a didactic Psalm. “Of Heman the Ezrahite.” It is generally held that tins Heman is the son of Joel, and grandson of Samuel the prophet, a Kohathite, one of the famous musicians of the time of David, who is several times spoken of in connection with Asaph and Ethan or Jeduthun, 1Ch_6:33; 1Ch_15:17-19; 1Ch_25:1; 1Ch_25:3. “Ethan is the same as Jeduthun,” says Hengstenberg. But Lord A. C. Hervey in Smith’s Diet, of the Bible says, “Whether or no this Heman (i.e., the above-mentioned) is the person to whom the 88th Psalm is ascribed, is doubtful. The chief reason for supposing him to be the same is, that as other Psalms are ascribed to Asaph and Jeduthun, so it is likely that this one should be to Heman the singer. But on the other hand he is there called ‘the Ezrahite;’ and the 89th Psalm is ascribed to ‘Ethan the Ezrahite.’ But since Heman and Ethan are described in 1Ch_2:6, as ‘sons of Zerah,’ it is in the highest degree probable that Ezrahite means ‘of the family of Zerah,’ and consequently that Heman of the 88th Psalm is different from Heman, the singer, the Kohathite. In 1Ki_4:31, again we have mention, as of the wisest of mankind, of Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Chalcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol, a list corresponding with the names of the sons of Zerah, in 1Ch_2:6. The inference from which is, that there was a Heman, different from Heman the singer, of the family of Zerah the son of Judah, and that he is distinguished from Heman the singer, the Levite, by being called the Ezrahite.… If Heman the Kohathite, or his, father, had married an heiress of the house of Zerah, as the sons of Hakkoz did of the house of Barzillai, and was so reckoned in the genealogy of Zerah, then all the notices of Heman might point to the same person, and the musical skill of David’s chief musician, and the wisdom of David’s seer, and the genius of the author of the 88th Psalm, concurring in the same individual, would make him fit to be joined with those other worthies whose wisdom was only exceeded by that of Solomon. But it is impossible to assert that this was the case.”
Read full note →
There is nothing in the Psalm which marks clearly the time and occasion of its composition. The Psalm is very mournful and desponding in its character. There are other Psalms which are the utterance of the troubled heart, but they have in them some rays of light, some gleam of hope. But in this the darkness is unrelieved. It is, says Stier, “The most mournful of all the plaintive Psalms, yea, so wholly plaintive, without any ground of hope, that nothing like it is found in the whole Scriptures.”
PRAYER FROM THE DEPTH OF MISERY
(Psa_88:1-9)
I. A great depth of affliction. In a very expressive manner the Psalmist sets forth his distresses.
1 His troubles were spiritual. “My soul is full of troubles.” The Psalmist was probably suffering from some severe and painful physical disease. He was certainly suffering in spirit. There is no trouble so sore and hard to bear as trouble in the soul. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” The poet’s mind was troubled, his heart was sorrowful, he seems almost in despair. The severest anguish is not that of the body, but that of the spirit. When cherished hopes are blighted, and fond and worthy ambitions are destroyed, and those we trusted prove untrue, and those we love are summoned away leaving us to tread life’s pilgrimage without them, and our sins arise against us so many in number, so enormous in guilt, and God seems to have forsaken us, or to be smiting us in His wrath,—who shall describe the anguish of such experiences? Yet good men sometimes pass through them.
2. His troubles were many. “My soul is full of troubles.” He enumerates some of the many troubles with which his soul was full. His acquaintances were removed from him, he was afflicted and ready to die, and God was pursuing him as with the breakers of an angry sea. He was satiated with sorrows. The utmost limit of his endurance he seemed to have reached. The cup of his distresses would not contain one drop more.
3. His troubles were bringing him speedily to death. He uses various expressions setting forth this idea. “My life draweth nigh unto the grave,” unto Sheol, the abode of the dead. He felt that unless he obtained speedy relief he must die. “I am counted with them that go down unto the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength.” He was so near death, his case seemed so hopeless, that men reckoned him among the dead. And his strength had departed from him. “Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more.” There is a passage in Job (Job_3:17-19) which will help us to elucidate the first clause. “There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest; there the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor; the small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” The dead are emancipated from the cares and sorrows, the toils and burdens of life. “The comparison with the dead is followed by that with the slain, because the Psalmist was threatened with violent deprivation of life. ‘To be cut off from the hand of God,’ His helping and protecting hand is to be made away with in a violent manner.” … The idea which lies at the foundation of the whole verse is this, “that the dead are no longer the objects of the loving care of God.” Life and immortality were not brought to light in the days of the Psalmist as they are in the Gospel. Men shuddered at, and shrank from, that “land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is darkness.” “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.” “The lowest pit” is Sheol, deep under the earth. All these expressions are intended to set forth the idea that the Psalmist was on the very verge of the grave, that he was already as one dead, and that hope had almost or altogether forsaken him. Or, if it be held that the language is to be figuratively understood, then we have before us a good man in the most appalling trouble; the darkness which envelops his spirit is like that of the grave itself, his anguish is unsupportable, his griefs are overwhelming, and he is brought to the last extremity.
4. His troubles isolated him from human society. “Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.” In time of suffering and sorrow the presence and sympathy of a friend are very precious and helpful. But the poet in his great affliction was forsaken by his friends. Such desertions are among the sharpest sorrows of life. It would seem as though the Psalmist was either suffering from some infectious or defiling disease, or from the attacks of slander. Men shrank from him with loathing. In the Hebrew the word which is translated “abomination” is in the plural. Men regarded him as though he were an assemblage of abominations, or one great mass of abominations. Hengstenberg interprets “I am shut up, and I cannot come forth,” as “shut up by public reproach, which keeps me in the house like a prisoner, I do not go out, I stir not from the door.” Slander has been truly called “the foulest whelp of sin.” And “the worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as we usually find that to be the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.” Human friendships, or the things which so often degrade the high and holy name, are most unreliable and unsatisfactory things. True friendships are as rare as they are precious. Prosperity attracts to us a large number of so-called friends, but adversity tests them, and sometimes all fail in the trial, as did those of the Psalmist. His acquaintance all forsook him, and regarded him with abhorrence or loathing.
5. His trouble was from the hand of God. It seemed to the Psalmist that all his distresses came to him from the hand of God. “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,” &c. “Thou hast afflicted,” &c. “Thou hast put away,” &c. When faith is in lively exercise it is a relief in trouble to know that the trouble comes from God. Then the tried saint softly sings,
“It is Thy hand, my God;
My sorrow comes from Thee:
I bow beneath Thy chastening rod,
Tis love that bruises me.
My God, Thy name is love,
A Father’s hand is Thine;
With tearful eyes I look above,
And cry,—Thy will be mine I
I know Thy will is right,
Though it may seem severe;
Thy path is still unsullied light,
Though dark it may appear.”—Darby.
But not thus did the matter present itself to the mind of the Psalmist. That his troubles were from the hand of God seemed to him a sore aggravation of those troubles. Evil from so good a hand appeared quite intolerable to him. So deep was his depression, that while feeling acutely the adversity, he could not perceive any of its “sweet uses.” The bitterness of his draught he realised completely; its medicinal properties he entirely lost sight of. Everything seemed to aggravate his misery.
6. His trouble was an expression of the wrath of God. “Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves.” So far was the Psalmist from regarding his distresses as coming from the chastening hand of a Father, that he looked upon them as punishments from the hand of an angry God. Like a huge and insupportable burden, God’s wrath was crushing him to the earth; and as the breakers of the stormy ocean dash in thunder and fury upon the shore, so God in anger seemed to be afflicting the Psalmist. We have, indeed, a great depth of affliction here. The deep darkness of this picture of distress has not often been equalled in the history of suffering humanity. Before leaving this part of our subject we shall do well to lay to heart two facts.
(1) That the best of men in this life are exposed to severe sufferings and trials. Suffering is not necessarily a sign of the Divine displeasure. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” &c.
(2) That the best of men in this life are liable to misinterpret the meaning of suffering. Under the burden of severe distresses “even the children of God’s love may sometimes apprehend themselves children of wrath, and no outward trouble can lie so hard upon them as that apprehension.”
II. A great urgency of prayer. “O Lord God of my salvation, I hare cried,” &c. His prayer was—
1. Directed to God. “I have cried day and night before Thee: let my prayer come before Thee,” &c. With steady aim he directed his complaints and petitions to God. His appeal was intended to reach the ear, and move the heart, of God. The notice or approbation of men the Psalmist neither sought nor wanted; but his heart was set on obtaining the regard of God. He is the Hearer and Answerer of prayer. “He is, and He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” Moreover, the Psalmist sought the Lord as the God of his salvation. There is a tone of confidence in the address. Bad as things are with him, he is not without hope. He looks for salvation, and he looks for it to God. This is the only cheerful beam which shines in the Psalm.
2. Earnest. “I have cried,” &c. “I have stretched out my hands unto Thee.” The Psalmist’s application to God was not a half-hearted, listless thing. He uttered an earnest “cry” for help, and “stretched out his hands” in fervent prayer. Jeremy Taylor says: “When, in order to your hopes of obtaining a great blessing, you reckon up your prayers with which you have solicited your suit in the court of heaven, you must reckon, not by the number of the collects, but by your sighs and passions, by the vehemence of your desires and the fervour of your spirit, the apprehension of your need and the consequent prosecution of your supply.”
3. Unceasing. “I have cried day and night before Thee. I have called daily upon Thee.” Without intermission he sought the Lord in prayer. His afflictions prevented him from resting, and in his unrest he constantly sought God in supplication. “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” “Praying always with all prayer,” &c. “Pray without ceasing.” Such importunity, as the expression of earnest desire, is well-pleasing to God. Yet the author of this Psalm was like the Psalmist David in this respect, that for a time there seemed to be “neither voice nor any to answer, nor any that regarded;” and he might have adopted his words, “O my God, I cry in the day time, and Thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.” For a time no answer came to his earnest and unceasing cry. Yet God will speedily “avenge His own elect, who cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them.”
CONCLUSION. Let the distressed child of God be encouraged to persevere in prayer. In His own wise and good time the Lord will appear for thee, and “turn the shadow of death into morning,” and change thy mournful complaint into a joyful Psalm.
EXPOSTULATION FROM THE DEPTH OF MISERY
(Psa_88:10-18)
From complaint and prayer the Psalmist proceeds to very forcible expostulation with the Lord God. And in this expostulation he reveals—
I. His extreme distress. He speaks of himself as,
1. Cast off by God. “Lord, why castest Thou off my soul? Why hidest Thou Thy face from me?” Through suffering and sorrow he was unable to see the face of God. The tears of his distress had for the time blinded his eyes, so that he was unable to recognise the gracious presence of God. But He had not cast off his soul. “For the Lord will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance.” The mists and clouds which obscure the sun, and give to us dark and cheerless November days arise from the earth. The sun shines ever. And the hiding of God’s face from His people is by reason of their sins, and sorrows, and sufferings. His faithfulness and love are unchangeable. Nevertheless, when His people feel abandoned by Him, unspeakably sore is their suffering.
2. Almost deprived of reason. “I am distracted.” Pain and sorrow, doubt and fear, had so wrought upon him that he was unable to think or reason calmly. His suffering and anxiety and grief seemed to have disturbed the balance of his mind. Calmness he could not command. He was trembling on the brink of madness. As we know, there have been instances in which extreme suffering has led to insanity, and great spiritual depression and anxieties have issued in mental derangement. The Psalmist felt himself to be in danger of this.
3. Terrified by the wrath of God. “I suffer Thy terrors,” &c. The idea that God was pursuing him in wrath with His plagues is a deep conviction with him. That wrath seems to burn fiercely against him, and he cannot escape from it. Or, like an angry sea, it surrounds him, and its wild billows course over and beat upon him. Alas! for the child of God passing through experiences like unto these! Yet the Psalmist is not the only one who has travelled through this dark, distressing, dangerous valley. We rejoice, however, to know that One, whose “form is like the Son of God,” walketh with them, though they see Him not. While He is with them no real evil shall befall them.
II. His misconception of God. “Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; Thy terrors have cut me off.” What he regarded as the “fierce wrath” of God, was the loving though severe discipline of a wise and kind Father. When he thought that God had cast off his soul, God was educating and enriching his soul by means of suffering. When to him all things appeared sadly and sternly against him, God was causing all things to work together for his good. A sense of sin, and much and severe suffering, led him to misconceive the character and dealings of God. He spake hastily and unadvisedly as to God’s “fierce wrath.” God does not pour forth His fury upon His people. If He chasten us sorely, it is not in anger, but in love that He does so. It is the consciousness of sin and unscriptural theological notions that lead us in suffering to behold an angry God.
III. His nearness to death. “Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise Thee?” &c. “I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up.” In these verses, the Psalmist speaks of himself as almost dead, as on the very brink of the grave, as swiftly passing into the land of darkness and forgetfulness. He does this as a reason why God should speedily appear for his help. If deliverance came not quickly, he would be beyond the reach of it. (On his nearness to death, see our remarks in the preceding sketch.)
IV. His belief that there are duties and privileges, the discharge and enjoyment of which are limited to the present life. “Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead?” &c. (Psa_88:10-12). These verses have a despondent if not a despairing accent. Yet it would be rash to affirm that the Poet had no faith in a future life, or that he regarded death as the extinction of being. But to him Sheol was a dark and gloomy realm, where God’s wonders were not made known, where His praise was not celebrated, where remembrance had ceased, and where destruction seemed supreme. Such seem to have been the ideas which he then entertained of the state of the dead. In that day life and immortality were not revealed as they now are in the Gospel. The great truth for us to seize is this, that there are duties to be done now which cannot be done beyond this life, and privileges to be enjoyed now which probably cannot be enjoyed when we have passed hence and are no more seen. This is true,
1. Of our own salvation. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” There is nothing in the Scriptures to warrant the belief that God will show the wonders of His saving power to the dead—
“There are no acts of pardon past
In the cold grave to which we haste;”
wherefore, “seek ye the Lord while He may be found,” &c.
2. Of many ministries to others. It is our privilege now to lead the lost to the Saviour, to reclaim the wanderer, and raise the fallen, to comfort the sorrowful, and succour the distressed. Such Christ-like ministries are probably confined to this present world and life. Wherefore, “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for,” &c.
V. His faith in God. This is manifest—
1. In His expostulations, and especially in that of the fourteenth verse, “Lord, why castest Thou off my soul? why hidest Thou Thy face from me?” In these and in his other inquiries the Psalmist manifests his faith in
(1) the faithfulness, and
(2) the righteousness of God. Was He not a covenant-keeping God? Was He not righteous in all His ways? “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
2. In his prayers. The Psalmist would not have cried to God in prayer, and resolved to have anticipated Him in the morning with his supplications, if he had not believed in—
(1) The accessibility of God. Though on the brink of the grave, he knew that he could draw near to the mercy-seat of God.
(2) The power of God to save him. Extreme as his case was, he knew that the God of his salvation was able to meet and master it. He is “mighty to save.” He saves “unto the uttermost.”
(3) The mercy of God. Though it seemed that His fierce wrath was going over him, yet he knew that there was mercy in the Divine heart, or he would not have cried unto Him. Sad as was the case of the Psalmist, it might have been worse; for his faith had not utterly failed him. He still turned in prayer to the Lord as the God of his salvation.
CONCLUSION.—Let great sufferers and despondent souls take encouragement even from this most pensive of all the pensive Psalms. It teaches us that in the deepest distress and the greatest extremity—
1. The Lord is still the God of our salvation.
2. The way is still open to the throne of grace.
3. While faith and prayer are not utterly extinguished our case may be extreme, but it is not desperate. From above, the Lord saith, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 This Psalm is written under feelings of affliction and…
Psa 88:1
This Psalm is written under feelings of affliction and deep heaviness of spirit. But its peculiarity is not that it is written under these feelings, but that these feelings are never once interrupted or relieved throughout it. Other psalms are expressions of grief, but they rise to joy eventually. This Psalm never rises to joy. What is the reason of this peculiarity? 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.
Read full note →
I. Such a psalm is wanted, as being the representation of one particular stage and form of consolation in affliction.
II. 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.
III. 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.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 52.
References: Psa 88:1, Psa 88:3.—Bishop Alexander, Bampton Lectures, 1876, p. 133. Psa 88:7.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1090.
Psa 88:5
The freedom of which the author of this Psalm writes so despairingly must have been, for him at least, a freedom of isolation, of solitariness, of exile and expulsion, rather than of release, independence, and joy.
I. We are all conscious of the possibility of a freedom which should have nothing in it either of comfort or honour. (1) "Free among the dead" will have no cheerful sound if it be taken to mean, as probably the psalmist meant it, cast out of the sight of God, forsaken by the Divine superintendence, left to shift for himself in a world of shadowy forms and unsubstantial existences. Such freedom would be worse than any bondage. (2) There is a freedom, akin to the former, which is the loss of all employment and society, some one else filling your place and discharging your duties because an incurable sickness has stricken you, and that idleness which is the paradise of the dunce or the fool is put upon you, without and against your will, for the welfare of others, by the visitation of God. If this was the freedom of the dead as nature or fancy painted it to the psalmist, can we wonder that he used it as the synonym rather of misery than of repose?
II. Read now in the light of Jesus Christ, what shall the text become? (1) "He that is dead is freed from sin." Free among the dead is, first and above all, free from sin. (2) Jesus Christ said, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." The word "straitened" is the direct opposite of this "free among the dead." Freedom among the dead was His emancipation from the "straitness" of earth. We, too, may make the words our comfort as we think of the departed, and our hope in the anticipation of a state which shall be our own.
C. J. Vaughan, Temple Sermons, p. 288.
Psa 88:15-16
What is it that the psalmist declares of himself in these words but that God’s judgments have always and habitually possessed his mind; that the fear of them has hung like a weight upon him; that even from his youth it has been present with him? If we look into any books of prayers or meditations of good men, the same feeling presents itself; we meet with expressions of sorrow and uneasiness under the consciousness of sin, as if sin were an evil no less real to them than we would conceive of some severe and continued bodily pain. It is this feeling which appears to me to be so commonly wanting amongst us.
I. The feeling of thinking lightly of sin is one of the evils which seem to accompany naturally what is called a state of high civilisation. As all things about us are softened, so are our judgments of our own souls.
II. We all fancy that if we were to commit any great crime, we should feel it very deeply, that we should be at once ashamed and afraid and should be dreading God’s judgments. As it is our faults are mostly in what we call little things; that is, in things which human law would scarcely punish at all, and which do not produce serious worldly loss or suffering to any one. We seem to fancy that in God’s sight the actions of our lives are blank; that they are things altogether too trifling for Him to notice; that He does not regard them at all.
III. St. Paul says, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." It is no exaggeration, then, but the simple truth, that our sins are more in number than the hairs of our head; and it might well be the case that, looking at all this vast number, and remembering God’s judgments, our hearts, as the psalmist says of himself, should fail us for fear. Remember that so many waking hours as we have in each day, so many hours have we of sin or of holiness; every hour delivers in, and must deliver, its record: and everything so recorded is placed either on one side of the fatal line or on the other; it is charged to our great account of good or of evil.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 106.
Psa 88:18
I. 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 substance, 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!
II. Reflections. (1) The thinking of departed friends will help us to realise our own death. It is of the highest moment that we should realise death, for without this we do not realise eternity, sin, or God. (2) 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. (3) Thinking of the departed will enable us to realise immortality. One of the most effectual ways of bringing the unseen world before us as solid reality is to think of some loved and familiar one who has gone into the eternal state. 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. (4) 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. (5) Thinking of the departed cannot but fill us with regret and penitence. The place of death may be the birthplace of eternal life. Hearts that have been hard to every other plea may be conquered and melted here, and from this spot rise to heaven.
J. Leckie, Sermons Preached at Ibrox, p. 118.
References: Psalm 88—S. Cox, Expositions, 3rd series, p. 123. Psa 89:1, Psa 89:2.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1565; S. Cox, Expositions, 3rd series, p. 166. Psa 89:2.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 217; J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 99. Psa 89:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 674, and vol. xxii., No.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 The outcome as to man; in righteousness.
The outcome as to man; in righteousness.
A psalm-song of the sons of Korah: to the chief musician; upon Mahalath Leannoth.
Read full note →
Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.
The title of the eighty-eighth psalm is peculiar: and its two parts have been pleaded as contradictory; Heman the Ezrahite being of the tribe of Judah, and not a Korahite Levite. There was, however, a Levite of the name of Heman, and it is contended that this is the same person; finding his place by intermarriage among the men of Judah. On the other hand. it has been suggested that while really the work of a Judahite, the psalm may have been written "
for the sons of Korah," as we may read it. Such reasonings show, at least, that it is unsafe to reject even part of a title in an inspired book, without plainly confirmatory evidence; and that we are free at least to take it as it stands, and inquire as to its possible meaning.
Mahalath Leannoth means "sickness for humiliation": a very suitable and suggestive title, surely. We have need of such humbling, and therefore God permits such suffering as this psalm shows, that there may be truth in the inward parts before Him. Then, it is, with its fellow, a Maskil, or "instruction"; belonging to that series of such psalms to which the thirty-second introduces us. Most necessary truth here for the "wise" in Israel, or anywhere else, who is to be worthy of the name. And Heman was one of the special sages of Israel, compared with Solomon (1Ki 4:31), and his name ("faithful"), according to its derivation, may well point out to us both wisdom and faithfulness to agree, in putting their "amen" to the sayings of God.
The Ezrahite, again, is what is "indigenous," or springs up from its native soil; and the experience that follows is indeed home-born; and natural enough to such as we are; nay, what is proper to the whole race outside of paradise; though, thank God, to face it is to find deliverance from it; and this connects once more these closing psalms.
1. But eighteen verses altogether in the one before us; and yet what misery is shut up in them! Not that God is not looked to; for it is to Him that all is poured out. It is when we begin to live that the meaning of death becomes possible to understand. He who cries cries to One in whose hands he knows himself to be, and in no other’s. God is the God of his salvation: nowhere else is salvation to be found. He cries aloud for Him to hearken; baring to Him all the misery with which his soul is filled and bowed down even to Sheol; already to be reckoned among those going down to it, prostrate, nerveless, and impotent. Nay, he is like one for whom the business of life is over, discharged from it, "free among the dead," like one cut off from God’s remembrance and His help. Not that he will say, this is so, but that so it seems. And God Himself has done this, laid him in the lowest pit, in the awful darkness of His prison-house -in the depths.
Ah, it is all His anger: that is the utter misery from which there is no escape and no relief. Heat of anger and the overwhelming waves that break, wave after wave, upon him: all figures are used, and all figures fail to convey the dread reality, when it is God whose wrath is upon us. For "if God be for us, who can be against us?" and then conversely, if He be against us, where can be found help or hope?
2. But he turns to the Hand that afflicts him, -the Hand that has shut him up in isolation from all others, as a leper, an abomination to his acquaintance, -and he pleads his misery to the Heart that still he knows must be behind the Hand: how the eye wastes with its sorrow as it looks and sees not. "Jehovah, I have called upon Thee all the day long; I have stretched out my palms unto Thee." God dwells among the praises of His people, amid the music of happy hearts tuned in accordance with His own: will He do wonders among the dead? he asks: "shall the shades arise? shall they praise Thee?" It is of course a Jew with his earthly hopes that speaks so: "shall thy loving-kindness be recounted in the grave? Thy faithfulness in destruction?" shall this be the experience of one who looks to Thee? "shall thy wonders be known in the darkness? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?"
It is clear that this is a Jew under the shadows of a law of which death was the penalty, and cut off from the earthly hopes of the nation: for whom death was a perplexity, a "land of darkness," into which the light of life had not yet descended. Job, outside of Israel, utters the same wail; but the earthly promises by their very brightness only made it darker, as a gospel out of reach, a mockery of hopes which it raised and scattered.
3. Here accordingly, he turns to his sanctuary, to find but the veil unrent, and the One Face which has brightness for him hidden. Like Another Sufferer, but from a different stand-point, he asks "why?" but the answer is not here. He answers it who goes into the outside darkness to dispel it for others, and who asserts it to be the necessity of divine holiness in regard to sin.
4. The psalm ends without relief. The experience here is but a monotony of distress. From his youth up there has been nothing else -a living death, a distraction of terrors. Wrath gone over him; terrors around him, the undoing of every social bond even. Such is the hopeless misery of man as regards self-help, and apart from a Mediator.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 This is the saddest and most despairing of all…
This is the saddest and most despairing of all the Pss. The writer is apparently the victim of some incurable disease like leprosy, with which he has been afflicted from his youth (Psa_88:15), and which cuts him off from the society of men (Psa_88:8, Psa_88:18). His life is already a living death (Psa_88:3-6), and beyond death he has no hope (Psa_88:10-12). He traces his trouble to God's displeasure (Psa_88:7, Psa_88:14, Psa_88:16), yet it is to God that he turns in pathetic appeal for relief (Psa_88:1-2, Psa_88:9, Psa_88:13). Nothing is known as to his identity, or as to the date of the Ps.
Title.—Mahalath] see on Psalms 53. Leannoth] may mean 'for singing.' Heman] see 1Ki_4:31.
Read full note →
3. The grave] RV 'Sheol,' the under-world of the dead.
4 Strength] RV 'help.'
5. Free] RV 'cast off.'
6. Pit.. darkness (RV 'dark places').. deeps] expressions for Sheol.
9. Mourneth] RV 'wasteth away.'
11. In destruction] RV 'in Destruction.' The Heb. is Abaddon, used as a proper name for Sheol: see Job_26:6; Job_28:22; Job_31:12; Pro_15:11; Pro_27:20; Rev_9:11.
13. Prevent] RV 'come before.
17. Daily] RV 'all the day long.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 10 Or, M’holoth, meaning dancing with glad noises.
Mahalath
Or, M’holoth, meaning dancing with glad noises.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Psalm 88
Psalm 88
The Deepest Soul Misery Poured Out
Read full note →
1. In deepest misery and distress (Psa 88:1-7)
2. Crying and no answer (Psa 88:8-18)
This is a Maschil Psalm by Heman the Ezrahite. See 1Ki 4:31; 1Ch 6:33; 1Ch 6:44; 1Ch 25:4. It is a Psalm of deepest distress, picturing the darkest experience with no ray of light or word of comfort. That it describes the real experience of a saint no one would doubt. But in it we can hear again the voice of sorrow of Him who was the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. It is His testimony concerning that He passed through as the Great Sufferer. “Thou hast laid me into the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves.”--”Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, Thy terrors cut me off.” Such was His experience when on the cross. The Christ in humiliation and suffering is mentioned so frequently to remind His people of the costprice of deliverance and glory, and that His must be the glory and the praise.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 A Lament in the Midst of Suffering and Tribulation.
A Lament in the Midst of Suffering and Tribulation.
A song or psalm for the sons of Korah, written by a member of this illustrious family of musicians, to the chief musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, for use in public worship, but in a sorrowful manner, with muffled voices, Maschil, a didactic poem, of Heman, the Ezrahite, one of the four wise men at the time of Solomon, 1Ki 4:31, whose unusual musical gifts had caused him to be made a member of the Korahites, who were really more a guild than a family.
Read full note →
v. 1. O Lord God of my salvation, in whom alone there is salvation for all men, a fact which makes it necessary for every individual to cling to Him in faith, I have cried day and night, without ceasing, before Thee.
v. 2. Let my prayer come before Thee, placing no obstruction in its way, granting it a ready audience; incline Thine ear unto my cry, in the attitude of willing attention;
v. 3. for my soul is full of troubles, filled up, surfeited, with evil, with suffering, and my life, in consequence of these evils, draweth nigh unto the grave, on the boundary of the realm of death.
v. 4. I am counted with them that go down into the pit, those whose death is considered imminent. I am as a man that hath no strength, his utter loss of vitality contrasting with his former strength and energy;
v. 5. free among the dead, that is, set free, or released, from the bonds of the living, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more, they are no longer active in the history of men, apparently gone and forgotten for the time being; and they are cut off from Thy hand, no longer enjoying its guidance and help.
v. 6. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in the most remote parts of the realm of death, in darkness, in the deeps, for the kingdom of death was supposed to be in the depths below the ocean, in impenetrable darkness. All this is description of the almost indescribable affliction which had come upon the psalmist.
v. 7. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, pressing down upon him as with the force of mighty billows, and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves, bowing down His wrath upon him, like the breakers of the seashore, Selah.
v. 8. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me, his closest friends drawing back from him with suspicion, knowing no other explanation for his condition than that of the righteous punishment of God, as in the case of Job; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them, so that they loathe the very sight of him; I am shut up, and I cannot come forth, his distress being so great that no way of escape opens before his eyes.
v. 9. Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction, failing and decaying in utter exhaustion. Lord, I have called daily upon Thee, day after day, without ceasing; I have stretched out my hands unto Thee, in a gesture of urgent pleading, imploring His compassion.
v. 10. Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead? That is, Did God intend to wait till He had succumbed to death! Shall the dead arise and praise Thee? That is, God surely did not expect praise from ghosts. Selah. The thought is this, that the psalmist, while he was still alive, wanted to praise the Lord for his deliverance from all the misery afflicting him; therefore the Lord should not let his afflictions reach such a climax as to bring him to the realm of death; for then all opportunity for worshiping Him would be past.
v. 11. Shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave or Thy faithfulness in destruction, in the place of ruin?
v. 12. Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? in the darkness of the realm of death, and Thy righteousness, as He revealed and imparted it to the believers, in the land of forgetfulness? where the body, even of the believers, for the time being, loses the faculty of thinking, feeling, and acting. The question of a final resurrection is not broached here, the psalmist having before his eyes only the deliverance from the present troubles.
v. 13. But unto Thee have I cried, O Lord, deliberately shaking off the thoughts of despair which threatened to overwhelm his trust in Jehovah; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent Thee, going forth to meet, to intercept, the Lord, before He could think of doing anything else.
v. 14. Lord, why castest Thou off my soul? by apparently despising it with loathing. Why hidest Thou thy face from me? as though unwilling to help. Cf Psa 27:9; Psa 77:7.
v. 15. I am afflicted and ready to die, on the point of death on account of the many troubles laid upon him, from my youth up; while I suffer Thy terrors, I am distracted, in such extremes of anguish and despair that he could not regain his powers.
v. 16. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, the billows of God’s wrath submerging him; Thy terrors have cut me off, thereby crushing him.
v. 17. They, the terrors of God, which inspired such fears in his heart, came round about me daily like water, like an ocean flood; they compassed me about together, so that he saw no way of escape.
v. 18. Lover and friend, all those who formerly were nearest and dearest to him. hast Thou put far from me and mine acquaintance, those whose confidence he had enjoyed, into darkness, so that they were no longer visible to him. "With this cry the harp drops from the poet’s hand; he is silent and waits until God shall solve the enigma of his suffering. " (Delitzsch. ) As one commentator has it, this psalm may well be taken as typical of the immeasurable sufferings of Christ, the Messiah, when He became our Substitute in taking upon Himself the misery of humanity.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 General Information:
General Information:
Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry. (See: Poetry and Parallelism)
Read full note →
A song, a psalm of the sons of Korah
"This is a psalm that the sons of Korah wrote"
for the chief musician
"this is for the director of music to use in worship"
set to the Mahalath Leannoth style
This may refer to a style of music. (See: Copy or Borrow Words)
A maschil
This may refer to a style of music. See how you translated this in Psalms 32:1.
Heman
This is the name of a man. (See: How to Translate Names)
the Ezrahite
This is the name of a people group. It may refer to a son or descendant of Zerah. (See: How to Translate Names)
God of my salvation
The abstract noun "salvation" can be stated as a verb. AT: "you are the one who saves me" (See: Abstract Nouns)
day and night
The writer uses these words with opposite meanings to say that he cries out continually. (See: Merism)
translationWords
psalm
son
Korah
Yahweh
God
save
cry
pray
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 6, 8, 13, 18 Ps 88 In this lament, the psalmist sees himself…
Ps 88 In this lament, the psalmist sees himself as cast out from God’s presence. At first, he calls on the Lord. When he finds no relief from his suffering, he presents three charges against God (88:6-7, 8-12, 13-17).
88:title Heman the Ezrahite might be a sage from Solomon’s time (1 Kgs 4:31), a descendant of Judah (1 Chr 2:6), or a member of the Levitical family charged with singing at the Temple (1 Chr 15:17; 2 Chr 5:12).
Read full note →
88:1-5 The psalmist calls on the Lord for salvation.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.