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.
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: Psalms 88:1; Psalms 88:3. Bishop Alexander, Bampton Lectures,1876, p. 133.Psalms 88:7. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1090.