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a. David:
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In Psalm 30 the suggestion is made that, at the time
of God’s judgment on Uzzah (2 Sam. 6:6,7), during the transferal of the
Ark to Zion (cp. Psa. 87, Par. 1), David also came under the displeasure of God
and suffered a very serious illness (Psalms Studies, Psa. 30, notes).
Probably it is this which is so agonizingly referred to in the present psalm;
when studied against this background, these verses make a most moving
lament.
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b. Hezekiah:
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This man also experienced a similar affliction. With a
specific divine pronouncement: “Thou shalt die, and not live” (Isa.
38:1; 2 Kings 20:1), all hope should surely have been abandoned. But Hezekiah
knew his God, and did not pray in vain. The isolation of v. 18 suggests the
nature of his affliction — leprosy. And the encirclement (of enemies?) in
v. 17 may be an allusion to the other great trial which came on the king, and
his nation, at the same time as his sickness: i.e., the siege of Jerusalem by an
Assyrian army.
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1.
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O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night
before thee (22:1,2; 69:3). It is almost a paradox: Jesus, who is
God’s salvation, also needs God’s salvation!
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3-6.
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For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh
unto the grave (Sheol). I am counted with them that go down into the pit:
I am as a man that hath no strength (Psa. 22:15): Free among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave (keber = sepulchre), 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. It would seem that death is
very near, a grim horror, and apparently all is futile.
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8.
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Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me. It
must have been a very sickening experience when many disciples reacted with:
“This is an hard saying: who can hear it?” and then went back and
walked no more with him (John 6:60,66).
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Thou hast made me an abomination unto them, who
hitherto had been his close adherents! This was true of Judas, no doubt, when he
concluded bitterly that his Master was a false Messiah (John 6:70,71;
13:18-30).
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9.
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I have stretched out my hands unto thee, as Peter did
in turn to Jesus himself when failing to walk on the waters of Galilee: Matt.
14:22-36 / Mark 6:45-56 / John 6:15-21; cp. v. 7 here (“Thou hast
afflicted me with all thy waves”).
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10.
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Shall the dead arise and praise thee? No, unless there
be an acceptable, all-sufficient sacrifice. And the altar associations of
Selah here (vv. 7,10) give assurance that this is truly a Lamb of God to
take away the sin of the world.
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11.
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Thy lovingkindness... thy faithfulness. These terms
belong to God’s covenants of promise. Yet they are also linked here with
“Destruction” (Hebrew Abaddon, and so in RSV), the
name of Passover’s destroying angel (Exod. 12:23; Rev. 9:11; cp. Job 26:6;
28:22; 31:12; Prov. 15:11; 27:20).
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13.
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In the morning shall my prayer prevent (come before:
RSV) thee. A heartening phrase! There will be an awakening to
praise and petition.
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14.
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Why...? Faith often has to get by without a clear-cut
answer. Did Jesus have a clear answer (Psa. 22:25-31)?
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Why hidest thou thy face? The answer supplied by Isaiah
(= the salvation of the Lord) was: because this was “a people of unclean
lips” (Isa. 6:2,5). But there is no confession of sin by the speaker here;
so was the sin that of others?
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15.
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I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth. The
answers to the Passover question: “What mean ye by this service?”
(Exod. 12:26; Luke 2:46) had explained to the boy Jesus, even at the age of 12,
the meaning of his life. Even as a boy, he knew that he had been born for the
express purpose of dying!
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16.
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Thy fierce wrath — with whom? with what? —
goeth over me. Thy terrors have cut me off. The LXX uses almost the
identical word as in John 13:21, when Jesus was “troubled in
spirit”.
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17.
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They came round about me daily. John quotes these very
words concerning the Lord’s adversaries as their campaign against him
mounted to a crisis (John 10:24; cp. Matt. 22:15,16,23,34,35). And later, when
Jesus hung on the cross, the assembly of the wicked encircled and enclosed him
(Psa. 22:16; Matt. 27:41; Mark 15:31).
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18.
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Lover and friend hast thou put far from me (Psa.
38:11). Judas was estranged; others were overawed, or scared (Mark 15:40,41;
Luke 23:49).
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5.
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Free (forsaken: RSV) among the dead. The word is
commonly used of freedom from bondage; or, in the context of death, as having
all earthly ties abolished. But the s.w. also describes a leper’s house of
isolation (2 Kings 15:5; cp. sense of vv. 8,18 here).
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Whom thou rememberest no more. The writer for the
moment feels like the dead whom God does not remember (i.e., Psa.
49:12,20; Isa. 26:14; Jer. 51:39,57), but he is in reality not like them
at all! The word remember suggests God’s memorial — His
Covenant Name.
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And they are cut off from thy hand. That is,
“from thy care” (NEB). The Hebrew is yod, which means
the open hand, from which blessings are dispensed, as opposed to the closed fist
(egroph) of anger (Exod. 21:18; Isa. 58:4).
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8.
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I am shut up. The s.w. occurs in Lev. 13:4, regarding
the leper. This is David! And Hezekiah! And Jesus (Isa. 53:3)!
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10-12.
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What an accumulation of questions! And the answers? Always and
for each, an emphatic “No!”
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10.
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Shall the dead arise and praise thee? This
“dead” (but not the word in v. 5 and v. 10a) is rephaim.
The RV mg. and RSV, apparently following Gesenius, render this word by
“shades” — suggestive of ghosts and disembodied spirits and
the like! This is erroneous, as is John Thomas’ rendering of rephaim
as “healed ones” (Anastasis, p. 44). The Rephaim
were, in the first instance, an obscure race of Canaanites (Gen. 14:5; 15:20),
who seem to have perished early on in Old Testament history (Deut. 3:11). By the
distinct parallelism of Psa. 88:10-12, the word plainly signifies, not only
those who are dead, but especially those who have no hope of any future life.
What better name for such than that of an extinct tribe, whose memory is
practically lost in the mists of antiquity. Evidently this is all that is
intended by the Hebrew rephaim; such a definition is more or less
in accordance with the other usages of the word (Job 26:5; Prov. 2:18; 9:18;
21:16; Isa. 14:9; 26:14,19).
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11.
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Lovingkindness... faithfulness. See Psa.
89:1,2,5,8,14,24,33,49. Heman and Ethan were colleagues, and had the same
speech. And they both treasured God’s Promise to the line of David. Though
Heman in Psa. 88 speaks of despair, his story is not finished: Ethan in Psa. 89
supplies the joyous counterpoint.
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12.
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So death is a land of dark, and a land of
forgetfulness. What could be plainer? Compare Psa. 6:5; 104:33; 115:17;
146:3,4; Isa. 2:22; 38:18; Eccl. 9:5,6,10. Why do people not believe
this?
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15.
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I am distracted. The Hebrew is little used and thus
uncertain; the RSV has “helpless”.
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18.
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And mine acquaintance into darkness. NIV: “The
darkness is my closest friend.”
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