Psalms 88

Section 3. (Psalms 88:1-18; Psalms 89:1-52.) Realization: “the holiness of truth.” The third section closes this part, and the whole book, by showing how, in the work of salvation; man is realized for what he is, lost and undone, and help only to be found in Another; accordant truths, in which nevertheless the usual contrast of subjects in these pairs of psalms is seen. The eighty-eighth is an awful picture of almost unrelieved despair. The eighty-ninth is strong and confident in its assurance of God’s fulfillment of His covenant with David, even though adverse circumstances seem to plead against it. And through this we can clearly read a better hope. The two together give us essentially the lesson of the dispensations -of all human history: setting aside all creature confidence to set this upon God alone. And in this true sanctification; the “holiness of truth,” is attained. Thus we have a fitting end to the third book.

Psalms 88:1-18

The outcome as to man; in righteousness. A psalm-song of the sons of Korah: to the chief musician; upon Mahalath Leannoth. Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. The title of the eighty-eighth psalm is peculiar: and its two parts have been pleaded as contradictory; Heman the Ezrahite being of the tribe of Judah, and not a Korahite Levite. There was, however, a Levite of the name of Heman, and it is contended that this is the same person; finding his place by intermarriage among the men of Judah. On the other hand. it has been suggested that while really the work of a Judahite, the psalm may have been written " for the sons of Korah," as we may read it. Such reasonings show, at least, that it is unsafe to reject even part of a title in an inspired book, without plainly confirmatory evidence; and that we are free at least to take it as it stands, and inquire as to its possible meaning. Mahalath Leannoth means “sickness for humiliation”: a very suitable and suggestive title, surely. We have need of such humbling, and therefore God permits such suffering as this psalm shows, that there may be truth in the inward parts before Him. Then, it is, with its fellow, a Maskil, or “instruction”; belonging to that series of such psalms to which the thirty-second introduces us. Most necessary truth here for the “wise” in Israel, or anywhere else, who is to be worthy of the name. And Heman was one of the special sages of Israel, compared with Solomon (1 Kings 4:31), and his name (“faithful”), according to its derivation, may well point out to us both wisdom and faithfulness to agree, in putting their “amen” to the sayings of God. The Ezrahite, again, is what is “indigenous,” or springs up from its native soil; and the experience that follows is indeed home-born; and natural enough to such as we are; nay, what is proper to the whole race outside of paradise; though, thank God, to face it is to find deliverance from it; and this connects once more these closing psalms.

1. But eighteen verses altogether in the one before us; and yet what misery is shut up in them! Not that God is not looked to; for it is to Him that all is poured out. It is when we begin to live that the meaning of death becomes possible to understand. He who cries cries to One in whose hands he knows himself to be, and in no other’s. God is the God of his salvation: nowhere else is salvation to be found.

He cries aloud for Him to hearken; baring to Him all the misery with which his soul is filled and bowed down even to Sheol; already to be reckoned among those going down to it, prostrate, nerveless, and impotent. Nay, he is like one for whom the business of life is over, discharged from it, “free among the dead,” like one cut off from God’s remembrance and His help. Not that he will say, this is so, but that so it seems. And God Himself has done this, laid him in the lowest pit, in the awful darkness of His prison-house -in the depths. Ah, it is all His anger: that is the utter misery from which there is no escape and no relief. Heat of anger and the overwhelming waves that break, wave after wave, upon him: all figures are used, and all figures fail to convey the dread reality, when it is God whose wrath is upon us. For “if God be for us, who can be against us?” and then conversely, if He be against us, where can be found help or hope? 2. But he turns to the Hand that afflicts him, -the Hand that has shut him up in isolation from all others, as a leper, an abomination to his acquaintance, -and he pleads his misery to the Heart that still he knows must be behind the Hand: how the eye wastes with its sorrow as it looks and sees not. “Jehovah, I have called upon Thee all the day long; I have stretched out my palms unto Thee.” God dwells among the praises of His people, amid the music of happy hearts tuned in accordance with His own: will He do wonders among the dead? he asks: “shall the shades arise? shall they praise Thee?” It is of course a Jew with his earthly hopes that speaks so: “shall thy loving-kindness be recounted in the grave? Thy faithfulness in destruction?” shall this be the experience of one who looks to Thee? “shall thy wonders be known in the darkness? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” It is clear that this is a Jew under the shadows of a law of which death was the penalty, and cut off from the earthly hopes of the nation: for whom death was a perplexity, a “land of darkness,” into which the light of life had not yet descended. Job, outside of Israel, utters the same wail; but the earthly promises by their very brightness only made it darker, as a gospel out of reach, a mockery of hopes which it raised and scattered. 3. Here accordingly, he turns to his sanctuary, to find but the veil unrent, and the One Face which has brightness for him hidden. Like Another Sufferer, but from a different stand-point, he asks “why?” but the answer is not here. He answers it who goes into the outside darkness to dispel it for others, and who asserts it to be the necessity of divine holiness in regard to sin. 4. The psalm ends without relief. The experience here is but a monotony of distress. From his youth up there has been nothing else -a living death, a distraction of terrors. Wrath gone over him; terrors around him, the undoing of every social bond even. Such is the hopeless misery of man as regards self-help, and apart from a Mediator.