Psalms 88:1-18 - G. Campbell Morgan's Exposition on the Whole Bible

Reader Related Verse
Bible Comments

This is a song sobbing with sadness form beginning to end. It seems to have no gleam of light or of hope. Commencing with an appeal to Jehovah to hear, it proceeds to describe the terrible sorrows through which the singer is passing. He is whelmed with trouble, and nigh unto death. Moreover he is alone; his acquaintances are put away from him. Death is a terrible outlook, for the singer sees no light in it. Therein God Himself will be unknown, and unable to succour.

Again the song sings in yet profounder notes of sadness, which are like the breaking of great waves over the soul; which seem as though they must silence it utterly. The last declaration is a most terrible one of utter loneliness, “lover and friend” are put away from him, and the final word is “darkness.” One cannot help the consciousness that this psalm was a foreshadowing of realisation in the Messiah. The not of present value however, is that while, as we said at the beginning, there seems to be no light, there is light everywhere. The singer is in great sorrow, but he comes to Jehovah. He is afraid of going into death because there Jehovah cannot help him; but he has come there, and therefore still cries out for God. While the sense of God abides, darkness has not triumphed.

Related Commentaries of Psalms 88:1

Psalms 88:1-18

1 O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee:

2 Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry;

3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.

4 I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength:

5 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.

6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.

7 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.

8 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.

9 Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.

10 Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah.

11 Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction?

12 Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

13 But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.

14 LORD, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?

15 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted.

16 Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.

17 They came round about me dailya like water; they compassed me about together.

18 Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.