[PSALM LXXXVIII.]
1 Jehovah, God of my salvation,
By day, by night I cry before Thee.
2 Let my prayer come before Thy face,
Bow Thine ear to my shrill cry.
3 For sated with troubles is my soul,
And my life has drawn near to Sheol.
4 I am counted with those that have gone down to the pit,
I am become as a man without strength.
5 [I am] free among the dead,
Like the slain that lie in the grave,
Whom Thou rememberest no more,
But they are cut off from Thy hand.
6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the deeps.
7 Upon me Thy wrath presses hard,
And [with] all Thy breakers Thou hast afflicted [me]. Selah
8 Thou hast put my familiar friends far from me,
Thou hast made me an abomination to them,
I am shut up so that I cannot come forth.
9 My eye wastes away because of affliction,
I have called on Thee daily, Jehovah,
I have spread out my palms to Thee,
10 For the dead canst Thou do wonders?
Or can the shades arise [and] praise Thee? Selah.
11 In the grave can Thy loving-kindness be told,
And Thy faithfulness in destruction?
12 Can Thy wonders be made known in darkness,
And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, I have cried unto Thee, Jehovah,
And in the morning my prayer comes to meet Thee.
14 Why, Jehovah, dost Thou cast off my soul,
[And] hidest Thy face from me?
15 Afflicted am I and at the point of death from [my] youth,
I have borne Thy terrors [till] I am distracted.
16 Over me have Thy [streams of] wrath passed,
Thy horrors have cut me off.
17 They have compassed me about like waters all the day.
They have come round me together.
18 Thou hast put far from me lover and friend,
My familiar friends are—darkness.
A psalm which begins with "God of my salvation" and ends with "darkness" is an anomaly. All but unbroken gloom broods over it, and is densest at its close. The psalmist is so "weighed upon by sore distress," that he has neither definite petition for deliverance nor hope. His cry to God is only a long-drawn complaint, which brings no respite from his pains nor brightening of his spirit. But yet to address God as the God of his salvation, to discern His hand in the infliction of sorrows, is the operation of true though feeble faith. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is the very spirit of this psalm. It stands alone in the Psalter, which would be incomplete as a mirror of phases of devout experience, unless it had one psalm expressing trust which has ceased to ask or hope for the removal of lifelong griefs, but still clasps God's hand even in the "darkness." Such experience is comparatively rare, and is meant to be risen above. Therefore this psalm stands alone. But it is not unexampled, and all moods of the devout life would not find lyrical expression in the book unless this deep note was once sounded.
It is useless to inquire what was the psalmist's affliction. His language seems to point to physical disease, of long continuance and ever threatening a fatal termination; but in all probability sickness is a symbol here, as so often. What racked his sensitive spirit matters little. The cry which his pains evoked is what we are concerned with. There is little trace of strophical arrangement, and commentators differ much in their disposition of the parts of the psalm. But we venture to suggest a principle of division which has not been observed, in the threefold recurrence of "I cry" or "I call," accompanied in each case by direct address to Jehovah. The resulting division into three parts gives, first, the psalmist's description of his hopeless condition as, in effect, already dead (vv. 1-8); second, an expostulation with God on the ground that, if the psalmist is actually numbered with the dead, he can no more be the object of Divine help, nor bring God praise (vv. 9-12); and, third, a repetition of the thoughts of the first part, with slight variation and addition.
The central portion of the first division is occupied with an expansion of the thought that the psalmist is already as good as dead (vv. 3 b-6). The condition of the dead is drawn with a powerful hand, and the picture is full of solemn grandeur and hopelessness. It is preceded in vv. 1, 2, by an invocation which has many parallels in the psalms, but which here is peculiarly striking. This saddest of them all has for its first words the Name which ought to banish sadness. He who can call on Jehovah as the God of his salvation possesses a charm which has power to still agitation, and to flush despair with some light of hope as from an unrisen sun. But this poet feels no warmth from the beams, and the mists surge up, if not to hide the light, yet to obscure it. All the more admirable, then, the persistence of his cry; and all the more precious the lesson that Faith is not to let present experience limit its conceptions. God is none the less the God of salvation and none the less to be believed to be so, though no consciousness of His saving power blesses the heart at the moment.
Ver. 1 b is obscure. Psalm xxii. 2 and other places suggest that the juxtaposition of day and night is meant to express the continuity of the psalmist's prayer; but, as the text now stands, the first part of the clause can only mean "In the time (day) when I cry," and the second has to be supplemented so as to read "[My cry comes] before Thee." This gives a poor meaning, and there is probability in the slight emendation on the word for day, which is required in order to make it an adverb of time equivalent to "In the day," as in the passage already quoted. Another emendation, adopted by Graetz, Bickell, and Cheyne, changes "God of" into "my God," and "my salvation" into "I cry" (the same word as in ver. 13), and attaches "by day" to the first clause. The result is,—
Jehovah, my God, I cry to Thee by day,
I call in the night before Thee.
The changes are very slight and easy, and the effect of them is satisfactory. The meaning of the verse is obvious, whether the emendation is accepted or not. The gain from the proposed change is dearly purchased by the loss of that solitary expression of hope in the name of "God of my salvation," the one star which gleams for a moment through a rift in the blackness.