August 5, 2017

Tom Lowe

 

PSALM 88

(“A Maschil{1] of Heman the Ezrahite, a song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician upon Mahalath Leannoth{4]”). 

 

Title: THE LEPER’S CRY

Theme: Confidence in God in the midst of suffering.

Psalm 88 (KJV)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 daily like water; they compassed me about together.

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

 

Introduction to Psalm 88

 

 

This is the eleventh of thirteen Maschil{1]psalms written especially to instruct.  Universally acknowledged to be the saddest of all the psalms, there is scarcely a glimmer of hope anywhere.  It is full of dejection, despair, death.  The very last word of the psalm is the word “darkness.”

 

The key to understanding the psalm is to picture the poet as a leper; though the nature of his affliction is unknown.  In any event, it is clear that he is suffering from a loathsome, disfiguring, and dreadful disease which has afflicted him from his childhood; and which appears to be a consequence of God’s anger.

 

Some commentators give the song the title “Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite.” There were two Hemans known to the Hebrew historians.  There was Heman, the son of Joel, the grandson of Samuel, who was one of the leaders of the musical side of the temple worship as organized by David (1 Chronicles 6:33).The other Heman was one of four persons renowned for their wisdom and with whom Solomon is compared by the historian (1 Kings 4:31).

 

This is another of those psalms that the Lord Jesus could so easily have prayed in the hours of His terrible sufferings.  It is a psalm which the liturgical (ritualistic) churches have appointed for reading on Good Friday.  The church fathers had no difficulty in interpreting it as an utterance of the suffering Christ in the same manner as Psalm 22.

 

We can just as well lift the psalm out of its historical setting and apply it to the suffering remnant of Israel during the horrors of the great tribulation.  This is just such a psalm as they might sing when deemed the filth and debris of the earth, which they will be.

 

The psalm divides into four parts.

                                  I.          No Future Left (88:1-7)

The circumstances of life are closing in on the psalmist.  He is like a man wondering in a deep gorge with towering walls of rock on either side.  He cannot go back and would not if he could.  His past is full of unhappiness and misery.  He has to go on, but the gulf gets deeper and darker and he can hear the raging of a torrent ahead.

                                II.          No Friends Left (88:8)

                              III.          No Foundation Left (88:9-12)

He was like a man wallowing in the mire or walking on quicksand.  He gives expression to his wretched feelings.

                              IV.          No Faith Left (88:13-18)

          1. No expectation in his prayers (88:13)
          2. No expectation for his plight (88:14)
          3. He is fearful (88:15-17)
          4. He is friendless (88:18)

 

Commentary

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

 

“O lord God of my salvation,”

The psalmist’s spirit is gentle.  There are no reproaches because he has been made an outcast by society, no recriminations against God for His terrible circumstances.  Indeed, there is still one glimmer of light amidst the encircling gloom.  God is still God.  Better, God is still Jehovah!  Four times in the psalm, beginning with his opening cry, the psalmist addresses God as Jehovah, the God who keeps faith with His people.  And more!  He calls Him Jehovah Elohim of his salvation.  He is the God of covenant, the God of creation, My God, the God of my salvation!  That was the glimmer in the gloom.  The poet knew something about the salvation of God, because He had so often saved him from distresses in the past, and he hoped he will do so at this time.  He is the author both of physical and spiritual salvation (Psalm 18:46{6]); 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, 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―“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? (Psalm 22:1).

 

If he had been a pagan instead of a Hebrew believer, he would have shivered in the darkness with no light at all.  At least he had this to support him.  No matter how slender the hope, no matter how feeble the flicker of the candle, no matter how desperate everything was—there was still God and there was still a personal relationship with God.

 

“I have cried day and night before thee:”

Or “in the day I have cried, and in the night before thee”; but the despondent nature of the crying becomes more evident at once.  Prayer expressed by crying shows the person to be in distress, denotes the earnestness of it, and shows it to be vocal; and prayer both in the day and in the night, indicates that it was without ceasing. The same is said by Christ (Psalm 22:2{2]), and is true of Him, who in the days of His flesh was often in prayer, and especially in the night season (Luke 6:12{7]) and particularly His praying in the garden the night he was betrayed may be referred to here―“Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me" (Matthew 26:38).

 

The psalmist has a candle, but the flame is very feeble, and it is flickering as though it was about to go out.  “O lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee.” We have all known times like that, when even prayer seemed hopeless because nothing is changed.

 

 

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

 

“Let my prayer come before thee:”

“Let my prayer come before thee,” not before men, since that is what hypocrites desire, but before the Lord. Do not let it be shut out, but admit it and accept it. Let it ascend before God, out of the hands of the angel before the throne, perfumed with the incense of his mediation―“Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God's people, on the golden altar in front of the throne” (Revelation 8:3).

 

“incline thine ear unto my cry;”

The word he uses for “cry” means a shrill, piercing cry signifying intense emotion. “O lord God,”hearken to it, receive it, and answer it; Christ's prayers were accompanied with strong crying, and were always received and heard―“During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Hebrews 5:7).

 

 Picture the man: a leper since childhood, untouchable, banished from his home, excommunicated from the corporate gatherings of God’s people.  He is visibly mortifying, becoming increasingly disfigured as the disease advances.  We can imagine the kind of shrill, piercing cry he must have uttered, like an animal in pain.

 

 

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

(In verses 3-7, the wretched man becomes increasingly conscious of three things—his present weakness (88:3-4), his personal wretchedness (88:5-6), his past wrongfulness (88:7).

 

“For my soul is full of troubles:”

That is, I am full of trouble. He had so many “troubles” and was under so much stress that his mind almost boiled over from a sense of God’s wrath and the thought that He had left him. The word rendered “full” means properly to satiate (satisfy, fill, etc.) as with food; that is, when as much had been taken as could be. So he says here, that this trouble was as great as he could bear; he could sustain no more. He had reached the utmost point of endurance; he had no power to bear anymore.

 

“and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.”

The word for “grave” is “Sheol,” the gloomy netherworld, abode of the departed.  He cannot hope to hang on to life much longer, but life, even the life of a leper, is better than death.  We hang on with fierce tenacity, even when life itself is a horror.

 

“And my life draweth nigh unto the grave,” is a phrase expressive of a person's being ready to die (Job 33:22), as the psalmist now thought he was (Psalm 88:5). He thought of the danger his natural life was in, but He may also have thought of the trouble facing his spiritual and eternal life, which he might fear, since that meant eternal darkness and abandonment. He was near death, the presence of God is withdrawn, wrath entered into the conscience, and he became so apprehensive that he thought he was in hell, or near it. Jonah must have felt the same; listen to this―“…I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice” (Jonah 2:2).

 

 

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

 

“I am counted with them that go down into the pit{5]:

There are two ways to look at this clause:

  1. “I am counted” with the dead, with them that are worthy of death, with malefactors that are wisely put to death, and are not laid in a common grave, but put into a “pit” together. This is the way the Jews felt about Christ; the Sanhedrim counted Him worthy of death; and the common people cried out Crucify him; and they did crucify Him between two malefactors; and so He was numbered or counted with transgressors, and as one of them―“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
  2. I am so near to death that I may be considered as already among the dead. It is so obvious to others that I must die―that my disease is mortal―that they already speak of me as dead.  But why does he feel that way?  It is because he believes that he is suffering under the wrath of God, who has sent upon him calamity after calamity like successive breakers of the sea.

 

“I am as a man that hath no strength:”

For his "strength" was "dried up” like a garden during a drought―he has no power to resist disease, no vitality remaining; he is asweak as water, feels forsaken by God and thinks he is about to die.

 

 

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.

 

“Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more:”

He sees himself as a mere shadow of a man, as a corpse on the battlefield, as one who is left to rot in a nameless grave.  He feels forgotten by God as though he is among the profane dead who are denied honorable burial.  But he was wrong to say “thou rememberest no more,” for the Lord does not forget His people when they die, nor does He cease to care, for “to be absent from the body” means to be “present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).

 

We must remember that the author of this psalm was an Old Testament Hebrew.  He did not have the light which has been cast upon the grave by the resurrection of Christ and by the inspired writings of the New Testament.  What this psalmist needed was to have the prospect of resurrection injected into his thoughts.  Poor old Job found himself in a similar situation, but he was able to grasp this truth as a drowning man grasps a life jacket thrown to him from the shore.  He could say: “I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand in the latter days upon the earth.  And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

 

“and they are cut off from thy hand.”

This sad singer seemingly had no such hope.  He was held prisoner by the general gloom which surrounded an Old Testament grave.  His viewpoint was that of the typical Israelite whose covenants, promises, and hopes were earthly rather than heavenly.

 

 

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

 

“Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit{5]

Today we stand on the other side of Calvary.  Christ has blazed a trail for the believer right through the portals of the tomb and on out the other side.  He says “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore…  and have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18).  Death can never imprison a believer!  The keys of the netherworld are in the mighty, nail-scarred hands of the Redeemer.  This flings open the door to life!  The believer now marches right through death’s door into the presence of Jesus.  He is simply “absent from the body, present with the Lord.” The psalmist had no such floodlight upon the path.

 

“in darkness, in the deeps.”

This poor soul complains to God, “I am sinking and see no way of escape, I have reached the lowest point and I am ready to give it all up. Great men, even good men may be afflicted, and such dismal apprehensions they may have concerning their afflictions; and such dark conclusions they sometimes reach through the power of depression and the weakness of faith.

 

 

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

 

“Thy wrath lieth hard upon me,”

The Hebrews looked upon leprosy as the stroke of God, special punishment for special sin.  Uzziah was smitten with leprosy for a serious religious offense, as were Gehazi and Miriam. Since “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and doubtless the psalmist could go back in his past and accuse himself before God.  Perhaps he had been guilty of some particular sin, but since the leprosy had been with him since childhood it is hard to see that he could have done anything that dreadful.

 

With Uzziah it had been a sin against God’s sanctuary.  He had seized a censer, intruded into the priest’s office, and tried to unite church and state in his own person.  With Gehazi it was a sin against God’s salvation.  He lied to Naaman and left him with the impression that God’s salvation was for sale after all, when Elijah had clearly taught him it was without money and without price.  With Miriam it was a sin against God’s servant.  She and Aaron criticized Moses in the matter of his marriage, because the woman he had married did not please them and offended their racial prejudices.

 

It is hard to see how the child could have been guilty of anything like that.  Each of the three mentioned sinned against extraordinary light, privilege, and opportunity.  The psalmist, lamenting his light, privilege, and opportunity.  The psalmist, lamenting that he is exposed to the wrath of God, is thinking of past wrongs in a morbid way.  He may be excused, however, for there was such terror and tragedy in his circumstances as would lead him to imagine himself the special target of divine wrath. 

 

In these opening verses then, the psalmist is peering down into the grave.  Already he sees it yawning before him.  He is counted by his contemporaries as a man as good as dead.  He sees only wrath as his portion. There is no future left.  Selah!  There, what do you think of that? 

 

“and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves”

“Thy waves” are waves of wrath and judgment.  The writer does not say and may not know the reason why he had come under the wrath of God. The impressions of this wrath upon his spirits were God’s waves with which he afflicted him, which are 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 think of themselves as children of wrath, and no outward trouble can bear so hard upon them as that thought.

 

“Selah.”

“Selah” is a word used seventy-four times in the Old Testament—seventy-one times in the psalms and three times in Habakkuk. The meaning of the word is not known, though various interpretations are given below. (It should not be confused with the Hebrew word sela` which means "rock", or in an adjectival form, "like a rock", i.e.: firm, hard, heavy) It is probably either a liturgical-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like "stop and listen." Selah can also be used to indicate that there is to be a musical interlude at that point in the Psalm.  The Amplified Bible translates selah as "pause, and think of that." It can also be interpreted as a form of underlining in preparation for the next paragraph.

 

 

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.

 

I was hospitalized with cellulites at the age of 68.  I can say with no hesitation that it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I have had a triple bypass and both hips replaced; it was worse.  Cellulites is considered a communicable disease, and people infected with it are quarantined and kept away from everyone.  The only good thing was that I got a private room.  People were so afraid of me that housekeeping avoided my room and everyone entering my room wore a papergown and mask. I was considered a danger to everyone around me.  I could have said along with the psalmist: “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.” But cellulites was nothing compared with leprosy.  Every day or so a nurse would come in and unwrap my leg and examine it to see if the disease was still active.  There was one day I was pronounced cured.  My clothes were thoroughly sterilized; and I got dressed and went home.  A leper had no such hope.  If anyone approached near him, he was obliged to cover his lips and cry, “unclean, unclean!” His familiar acquaintances and even his loved ones looked upon him with horror.  Their only desire was to keep their distance from him.  He had no friends left unless there were others in his own wretched condition.  Worst of all, the affliction was from God.  That was the common verdict at the time.

 

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

 

“Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: Lord,”

This was the hardest part of it, and it exposed the psalmist’s hopeless attitude.  Only the most callous would turn away from such a despairing gesture, such an imploring appeal for help, but God often seems to be indifferent to our imploring cries.  The silence of God in the face of human suffering and woe is the great mystery, especially the sufferings of God’s own people.  Why is He silent?  Why does He apparently ignore our prayers why does He seem to leave us to our fate?

 

It is this that sharpens the barbs of the enemies of the Bible: “If God is all-powerful, then He is not all-loving; or, if He is all loving then He is not all-powerful.  For if He is all-powerful and at the same time all loving, then He must be a fiend because He just stands back and watches people suffer.” This psalmist had no answer to such thoughts.  With infinite sorrow he paints a picture of a poor wretch, with hands outstretched to One who is mighty to save but who simply leaves him to wallow in his misery and despair.

 

“Lord, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.”

There is no simple answer to the problem of pain.  The agonies of disease, disaster, and death are all part of a greater mystery—the mystery of injustice.  We are living in a fallen world.  But behind that explanation lies an even greater mystery—the mystery of human power of choice and God’s omnipotence.  It is evident that the freedom of a creature must mean freedom to choose.  By creating man as a moral being God brought other wills into existence besides His alone.  To a certain extent He has consequently limited His own sovereignty.  God cannot give a creature power of choice and at the same time withhold the power of choice.  To attribute omnipotence to God means that He is able to do all that is intrinsically possible, but not able to do the intrinsically impossible.  As C.  S.  Louis puts it, “You can attribute miracles to Him but not nonsense.” God cannot do two mutually exclusive things.  “Not,” says C.  S.  Lewis, “because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

 

The Bible clearly teaches that much of human suffering is the result of human sin, that we are living in a fallen world, that we are heirs to all kinds of miseries never planned by God for His creatures—miseries brought upon the race by Adam’s sin and or subsequent inheritance of a sin nature.

 

Such reasoning is all very well when we are strong and in good health.  The psalmist, however, felt like a child in the hands of a bully.  He was stretching out his hands in desperate appeal to a seemingly indifferent parent.

 

 

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

 

Verses 88:10-12 should be studied together as a unit.  Here the psalmist appeals to God as one who felt the foundations of life slipping away and saw the tomb opening up to receive him: “What do the dead know?  How can the dead respond to you?  What profit can there be to You in my death?”

 

It is an appeal common enough in several of the psalms, arising largely from the Old Testament saints’ ignorance of the true nature of death.  If death was not actually the end of everything, it certainly seemed to them to be the end of active memory and praise.  Most Old Testament saints were deficient in their comprehension of death because they failed to grasp the truth of a glorious life beyond.

 

The psalmist asks how the dead can respond to God’s power.

 


“Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead?”

The word used for “the dead” is Rephaim, translated seven times in the Old Testament as “the dead” (the shadowy, the weak, nerveless ghosts of the underworld).  It is transliterated ten times and as such refers to the Rephaim, the giants of Noah’s day, the corrupt seed of the sons of God and the daughters of men, and to the giant sons of Anak. The word is found in Isaiah 26:14 where it is translated “deceased,” but where it really refers to the Rephaim, the giant descendants of fallen angels who are kept “in prison” by God (1 Peter 3:19), and are “reserved unto judgment.” Their descendants will have no share in the resurrection.  They have already been “visited,” “destroyed,” and “perished.” The Rephaim are thus contrasted with Jehovah’s dead who will rise.  He follows his statement with Selah—“There, what do you think of that?”

 

“shall the dead arise and praise thee?”

Our sad poet, however, uses the word Rephaim as if implying that even God’s dead will have no life beyond the grave.  He challenges God: “How can the dead respond to Your mighty power?  Shall the dead arise and praise Thee?” One of the disabilities of the dead according to Hebrew thought is that they cannot worship God. Next, the psalmist asks how the dead can respond to God’s pity (11).

 

 

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

 

“Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?”

The afterlife is called by various names; “the grave,” “destruction” (used in Job 26:6 as another synonym four Sheol), “the dark” (12), “the land of forgetfulness” (12).

 

“or thy faithfulness in destruction?”

The word “destruction” is Abaddon, often used as a name for Sheol, the place of ruin, destruction, and termination.  In Revelation 9:11 the name Abaddon is given to the angel of the abyss, “the destroyer” (Apollyon in Greek).  The psalmist urges God to show His loving kindness to him now because it will be too late, he thinks, once he is dead and buried.

 

 

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

 

“Shall thy wonders be known in the dark?”

The psalmist directs four rhetorical questions to Yahweh.  Does he work wonders for the dead (10)? Can the ghosts of the departed rise up to sing praise? (10)  It is his unchanging love recounted in the grave, his faithfulness in destruction (11), the nether world?  Are his wonders made known in the place of black darkness (12), his righteousness in the place of oblivion (12)?

 

The answer in the mind of the psalmist for each of the questions is ‘no.’ He can see beyond this life to meaningful existence, and the questions are yet another expression of his request.  Only by the preservation of his life can he hope to do any of these things.

 

“and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?”

Again he urges God to act now, because in the grave it will be too late for Him to demonstrate His righteousness.  Down there in the land of oblivion, of what use will it be to any one that God is righteous and holy, a God motivated by inflexible principles of uprightness?

 

Such is the Psalmists hopeless appeal.  He feels there is no foundation left.  He resorts to arguments which make little sense because they are based upon ignorance, not fact.  All this leads him to his last whale of despair.

 

 

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

 

“But unto thee have I cried, O Lord;”

So the psalmist cries for help to Yahweh, the one source of any help for him.  “In the morning” he begins, his prayer goes early to Yahweh.  His isolation and his punishment are more dreadful than he can account for, and he asks, Why?.  Why has Yahweh rejected him?  Why has He hidden His Presence from him?  He is eager for the fellowship which could make his agony bearable and which, hopefully, would bring also some relief from it.

 

He is doggedly going to keep on praying even though his prayers have seemingly been of little avail.

 

“and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.”

He resolves to seek God early, “in the morning,” when his spirits were lively, and before the business of the day began to crowd him—“in the morning,” after he had tossed and turned in his bed from cares and sorrowful thoughts in the silence and solitude of the night. But how could he say, my prayer shall prevent thee?  It is not that he could wake sooner to pray than God to hear and answer; for He neither slumbers nor sleeps; but it implies that he would be up earlier than ordinary to pray, would prevent (that is, go before) his usual hour of prayer.

 

 

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

 

“Lord, why castest thou off my soul”

He writes down what he will say to God in prayer.  He will humbly reason with God concerning the hopeless afflicted condition he was now in, and inquire of Him: “Lord, why castest thou off my soul?  What is it that provokes Thee to treat me as one abandoned?  Show me why You assert Yourself against me.” He asks with wonder, why God should cast off an old servant, should cast off one that was resolved not to cast Him off: “no wonder men cast me off; but, Lord, why do You, whose gifts and doings are without repentance? Why?  The disease is running rampant through his veins.  Even the corruption of the grave cannot be worse than this living death.  Why?  There is no answer.

 

“why hidest thou thy face from me?”

Are You angry with me, have no love for me or will not let me know that You have?  Nothing grieves a child of God as much as God’s hiding His face from him, nor is there anything he dreads more than God casting off his soul.  If the clouds cover the sun, that darkens the earth; but if the sun should abandon the earth, what a dungeon it would be!  He will humbly repeat the same complaints he had made before, until God has mercy on him. 

 

 

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

 

“I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up:”

Perishing trouble. Paralyzing fear.  Prevailing tides of wrath—that is all his life has been since he was a youth.  What a catalog of catastrophes!  It is painful to think that he suffered all his life long and all day long.  He could not even look back to a time in his life when he enjoyed good health.

 

“while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted.”

God was a terror to him; “I suffer thy terrors.” He had continual frightful apprehensions of the wrath of God against him for his sins, and the consequences of that wrath.  It terrified him to think of God, of falling into His hands and appearing before Him to receive his doom from Him.

 

 

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

 

One can picture him as a teenager.  He comes home one day puzzled.  He was out with his friends, perhaps fishing or camping on the hills.  He tripped and fell, and his hand landed in the campfire—and it didn’t hurt!  He could barely believe it.  He looks at the place where the flames bit his flesh.  It didn’t hurt.  He goes home and tells his mother.  He sees the look of horror on her face.  It haunts him yet.  She whispers one word: “leprosy!”

 

 

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

He is hurried off to the priest.  But the priest makes the prescribed test required by law and confirms the dreaded suspicion: “Leprosy!” Outside the camp he must go.  His studies?  Of what use are studies to a leper?  His betrothal?  Who would want to marry a leper?  His support, he must beg.  Outside the camp with him!  And from that day to this he had lived with terror.  He lives with it still.  I am fearful, he says.

 

 

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

 

He feels it more now than he did at first, and then it was agony enough. The three circles of relationship are closed to him.  He has no lover—that’s the innermost circle; he has no friends—that’s the middle circle; he has no acquaintance—that’s the outer circle.  He has nobody!  And he attributes his utter loneliness to God—not in a spirit of recrimination, but in a spirit of mystified sadness.  He has no faith left.  His last word is “darkness,” which here may mean obscurity.  The Lord always has the last word, and it will not be “darkness.” We should never doubt in the darkness what God has taught us in the light. The “darkness” was his friend because it hid him from the eyes of those who observed his sufferings and may have said (as did Jobs friends), “He must have sinned greatly for the Lord to afflict him so much!”

 

We take leave of this sad psalm writer with his riddle still unsolved.  We hear his haunting wail as it echoes from the lonely hills far from the regular haunts of men.  We thank God that, if there has to be such a psalm in the Bible, there is only one of them.

 

Whether Heman the Ezrahite ever solved his problem we can only conjecture.  If, after all, he is that Heman whose wisdom rivaled that of Solomon, then we feel sure that he must have.  Even in this psalm we seem to see him solving it.  He is walled in on every side and at the end of the psalm even the way ahead is walled up in darkness.  Where can he look but up?

 

Perhaps that is what he did.  We can be almost sure he did, for the Holy Spirit has rescued this sad song and gave it a place in the literature of the world.  He has put it into the Bible itself.  There it will remain long after the sun has ceased to shine and the heavens rolled up like a worn-out dress.  This psalm will still be known, a constant reminder to us through the endless ages of the path that some souls had to tread to find their all in God. 

 

Scripture and Special Notes:

[1} “Maschil” has, at least, two meanings:

1)     “Instructing”; and it occurs in the title of thirteen Psalms (32,45,44,45,52-55,74,78,68,69,142). It denotes a song enforcing some lesson of wisdom or piety, an instructive song.

2)     “song of wisdom.” Some believe it is a musical term denoting a melody requiring great skill in its execution.

[2} “My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.” (Psalm 22:2)

[3} “Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3-5). 

[4} “Mahalath Leannoth”  means “the distress of oppression.”

[5} “Pit,” literally, a cistern, narrow at the top but deep and spacious at the bottom; a synonym for the grave, or Sheol.

[6} “The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted” (Psalm 18:46).

[7} “And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12).