A manual of the book of Psalms · Martin Luther
PSALM LXXXVIII.
_A prayer containing a grievous complaint._ 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. 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. Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise _and_ praise thee? Selah. Shall thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave? _or_ thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee. LORD, why castest thou off my soul? _why_ hidest thou thy face from me? I _am_ afflicted and ready to die from _my_ youth up: _while_ I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. They came round about me daily like water, they compassed me about together. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, _and_ mine acquaintance into darkness. This is a prayer, as in the person of Christ and of all the saints. It contains those mighty feelings and conflicts of heart, which no mortals but those who experience them, can either describe or conceive; I mean those pangs and pains, and that heavy sorrow of spirit, (above all natural distress of body or of mind, and above all natural fear and dread,) when the heart is filled with a sense of the majesty and anger of God, and is alarmed at the nature and end of sin; while God also, as yet, holds off all consolation; and the soul is shaken in the midst of darkness and terror, and, as Christ saith himself, “sifted by the devil like wheat in a sieve;” while the malicious Satan craftily augments the soul’s views of the anger of God, and drives out of sight all hope of mercy and grace.
David here calls these unspeakable terrors of soul, “hell,” “darkness,” “the shadow of death.” “Thou hast cast me (saith he) into the lowest pit, into darkness and the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me; and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.” And rightly does David describe these pains and terrors by the terms, “death,” “hell,” &c. because this anguish of soul is of the very nature, and power, and poison, and sting of hell and death; for no sooner is the darkness dispersed, by some shining in of divine consolation, than death is no longer death, but we die gladly. And indeed, where such fears and terrors of mind abound and continue, they extend to the body, bring on a paleness and emaciation, and affect the whole man. Paul calls them the “buffetting of Satan,” and “thorns in the flesh;” which has reference to a custom in certain nations of punishing criminals by transfixing their bodies with a certain sharp pointed conical instrument, in the shape of a thorn; and mocking and deriding them in their suffering. And just thus it is that the nations of the world contemptuously call Christ ‘that crucified fellow,’ and the Jews, ‘That fellow that was hanged.’ For the world, in their malice, not only persecute Christ, but also deride and mock his sufferings, and the sufferings of his members. And hence it is David complains thus in this Psalm, “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.”
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.