Psalm 88 -- The Sorrows of Our Lord Jesus Christ -- Verses 3 through 6

--continued from previous post

NIV Psalm 88:1 A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 
O LORD, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you.
2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.
3 For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah
8 You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah
11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.

Picking up from where we previously left off--

3 For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

These verses define the time frame in the life of Jesus to which the entirety of Psalm 88 points. It has been said by commentators that of all the psalms, this psalm is unique in the unmitigated intensity and duration of its lament--that is, from beginning to end--without hope, without light at the proverbial end of the tunnel. (1)

Once again, we are reminded of Christ's cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34)

Verse 3 would appear to be from the cross itself, just before death.

In verse 4a, the soldiers and bystanders have totally given up on Him as coming through this alive. They count, or reckon Him, as being dead. There was indeed counting, or reckoning, at Skull Hill that day, since there were three being crucified.

In verse 4b, there is nothing the man Jesus can do. He has no strength to save Himself from death. Indeed, hecklers molested Him with their jeers, recorded for us in the gospels--

Matthew 27:39-40 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

But the psalmist in 88:4b says, "I am like a man without strength." No, Jesus did not come down from the cross.

In verse 5a-b, we see Jesus being set apart with the dead, removed from the cross, wrapped in grave clothes.

5a-b I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave,...

5c...who are cut off from your care.

Verse 5c is very typical of the Old Testament attitude towards the dead. An immediate afterlife is not a strong theme in the Old Testament. Job's glorious statement below is in part made so glorious because it is a quick, extremely direct and unusual parting of the clouds for an ever-so-brief look at what lies beyond the grave in heaven.

Job 19:26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God;

But generally, in the Old Testament, the dead are dead. They are in a category all by themselves, separated and apart from those who are still alive, just as Psalm 88:5 says.

5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

[Interlinear Hebrew] 5 free among the dead, as pierced ones lying in the grave, whom You remember no more; yea, by Your hand they are cut off. (2)

Note: The verb "pierced" in the verse above is in large quantities of Old Testament scripture translated as "slain", as in our text here in Psalm 88. But, when we think about it, we can see why the Hebrew verb for "slain" is actually "pierced"--use of spears and swords were the most common means of fighting in Old Testament days. Enemies were slain by piercing them with a sword or spear. Jesus, however, was crucified on a cross, not killed with a spear (although His dead body was later pierced through by a Roman soldier to verify that He was already dead). The hands and feet of our Lord were pierced, however, by the nails of the cross. Indirectly, it was these piercings that led to His death.

The word "free" in the interlinear version above doesn't signify what we today think of as the positive value  "freedom". Rather, it signifies the concept of not having any ties, neither to friends and relatives among the living, nor to God Himself. The very next clause, "...whom You remember no more..." (5b) confirms this sense of the verb "free".

6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

Verse 6 seems to speak both of the metaphorical pit, the land of the dead, from which men do not return, and the actual pit, the hewn out cave in the rock in which Joseph of Arimathea placed the dead body of Jesus--

Mark 15:46 So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Jesus the man was very, very dead.

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Father, I am so very, very sorry for my sin. I know how I myself feel when I perceive myself to be cut off from You, from Your care and keeping of me. Sometimes I feel very close to You, but other times, I feel so very, very far away. Those times are so frightening to me, so very cold. Lord, this psalm tells me that Your Son felt Himself to be completely cut off from You. If that feeling is so bad for me, I can only imagine how excruciatingly painful it must have been for Your Son to feel that way, He being Your very special Son, one and only Son of God, at the same time being also very God of very God. Forgive me, O God Three in One, for my sin, and thank You for the death of Christ upon the cross. In Christ, Christina

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(1) Neale and Littledale, found in The Treasury of David, Volume Two, Part 2, Psalm the Eighty-Eighth, page 9, Hendrickson Publishers; "This Psalm stands alone in all the Psalter for the unrelieved gloom, the hopeless sorrow of its tone. Even the very saddest of the others, and the Lamentations themselves, admit some variations of key, some strains of hopefulness; here only all is darkness to the close."

(2) The Interlinear Hebrew-Greek-English Bible, Second Edition, copyright 1985, by Jay P. Green, Sr.

--to be continued

Psalm 88 -- The Sorrows of Our Lord Jesus Christ -- Verses 1 and 2

--continued from previous post 

NIV Psalm 88:1 A song. A psalm of the Sons of Korah. For the director of music. According to mahalath leannoth. A maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 
O LORD, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you.
2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.
3 For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah
8 You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Selah
11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.

I see an application of Psalm 88 as prophetic of our Lord Jesus Christ. Objectively, it is prophetic of the Messiah's death and burial in the grave; subjectively, it is prophetic of His suffering as a "man". 

Hebrews 2:17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 13:12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.

(See also Hebrews 5:8, 1 Peter 2:21 and 1 Peter 4:1-2)

NIV 1a...O LORD, the God who saves me...

Verse 1 opens with a blessing, "O LORD, the God who saves me,". The phrase identifies very specifically to whom the psalmist is speaking. He's speaking to God, but such a wonderful God! He's speaking to God, but such a personal God! Again, he's speaking to God, but to a God he knows so very well from all His interactions with himself, that he is filled with hope just by crying out to that blessed name--"O LORD, the God who saves me."

Other translations say, "O LORD, God of my salvation". I prefer the sense of the NIV for my own daily meditation, because of the verb nature of the psalmist's relationship with His God. "God of my salvation" is a cumbersome phrase to my ear. As a noun, it's abstract--I'm not sure at what moment in time the word "salvation" refers to--the past, when God first made Himself known in the psalmist's life? the future, when God will save again? or might it be the entire process of salvation from start to finish, like something of a theological concept? Most likely all of these are true.

But, "O LORD, the God who saves me," includes all of the above with the immediacy of the present strongly emphasized. There's action involved. God is active, neither idle nor passive. He's personal, as the subject of a strong verb, and He is now. The verb is present tense. God is He who saves me--right now! Now is when I need Him. In the past, at all those specific moments when God saved me, it was always "right now", though those moments are memory in my current present.

God is also the do-er of "my salvation". He is the actor, the perpetrator. One could say that He is the psalmist's friend. He is the God who saves the psalmist. There is a strong relationship of trust implied.

This is the God to whom the psalmist addresses his prayer--his cry. By addressing God as the one who saves, the psalmist implicitly excludes all others. God is his only hope, his only help. There is no one but God who can save him. All his hope is placed in God and God alone.

1b...day and night I cry out before you.

But something appears to be wrong as the psalmist continues his plea. Where is God now? "Day and night I cry out before you." The psalmist's suffering has continued for some time; he has been crying out for some time, constantly. But where is God? He hasn't answered. 

2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

Hebrews 5:7a During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death...

Verse 2 of Psalm 88 above continues by telling us that it is as though God is not hearing. It's as though the psalmist's prayers have not reached the ear of God, or that God's ear, his attention, his caring, is metaphorically turned away from the psalmist. We sometimes say that so-and-so turned a deaf ear to someone's pleading. So it seems here. But God is omniscient and sovereign. Any deafness of ear on God's part would be by choice. It's as though the psalmist were outside the presence of his LORD, His God, pounding on the door, screaming to get in. But God would not hear him. God would seem to be ignoring him. 

NAU Psalm 22:1 ...My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest.

How like the first two verses of Psalm 88 are the above two verses from Psalm 22. Psalm 22:1 is quoted in the New Testament, Matthew and Mark, as coming from the lips of Jesus Himself, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34)

So, here in the first two verses of Psalm 88 we see the suffering Messiah, in His Passion (the rest of the psalm identifies the time frame for us), crying out to God in His manhood. But God appears to not be listening. How terribly awesome this is. How needful of silent meditation on all the nuances of Christ's suffering, in particular on the differences between myself and Christ--He, the Son of God, son of man, suffering such rejection by God His Savior, His Father, His one true love--I, in my sinfulness, being the object of His suffering. He being willing, I receiving the blessing of His pain.

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Father, it is meaningless for me to write. My words are nothing, born of my nothingness. Your words are powerful. Your words are life. I pray, Lord, that the effect of my words here might be that some reader somewhere would pick up his or her Bible and read completely through Psalm 88 on their own. I pray, Lord, that You in Your Spirit would open their heart to hear the Christ who resides in this psalm. Thank-You, Abba, In Jesus' name, Amen.

to be continued

Psalm 88 -- The Sorrows of Our Lord Jesus Christ -- Introduction

One of the greatest recent blessings of my Christian life was a spiritual crisis I experienced over an extended period of time a few years back. The crisis brought about an intense dying of self infrequently experienced by me as a Christian. But it was what happened during the recovery from the crisis that brought me such great blessing.

Because my self-image had been so thoroughly slaughtered, I was in a state of extreme daily dependence upon God and His good comfort in my heart. One harsh word from Him would have shattered me completely, but He was very gentle and very kind. (See Psalm 119 A Meditative Prayer, verse 131, this blog: "Your hands are steady, Your knives and needles sharp and clean, Your poultices soaked in soothing balm. You are amazing, Lord. There is none like You. You inflict the deepest wounds with steady, compassionate hand. When morning comes, I see Your work is perfect, even from the beginning. I look but cannot find at all where the festered splinter had been.")

It was during this exact period, during my spiritual recovery, that I came upon a small copy of just Psalms and Proverbs, NIV, written with extremely few notes,  and no references. Just text. As the title of the book is "31 Days of Wisdom and Praise" (1), and the point of the book is to read through it all in one month, that's just what I did, repeatedly, many times over, in the course of a single year. The book is published by Zondervan, 1990. It was available on the web the last time I looked.

During the third straight through reading, a great blessing came. The Psalms began to open up in my heart. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God is good; He loves His people; and He loves me.

But during this time and since, I began to hear the voice of my Lord within the Psalms. I hear the voice of Christ, prophetically spoken through the psalmists, to the extent that I would agree with Robert Hawker, "the whole of the Psalms are of him, and concerning him, more or less, and he is the great object and subject of all". (2) I pray that the Holy Spirit would open the Psalms this way in the hearts of all believers.

This brings me now to the subject of this blog, Psalm 88. This is what Robert Hawker says of Psalm 88, "The Psalm hath this striking peculiarity in it, namely, that it not only hath reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, and him alone; but that he himself is the sole speaker from the beginning to the end." (3)

The above statement by Hawker is enormous, and it's one that we so very seldom, if ever, hear today.

Just by way of encouraging other readers of the Psalms, and hopefully not of vainglory (forgive me, Lord, for I know my eye is not yet single), I did not need Robert Hawker to tell me the above statement in order to enlarge for me this identical apprehension of Psalm 88, for I understood the same simply by reading the Psalm itself, well before I ever encountered the statement by Robert Hawker. I do so truly believe that the Holy Spirit in our days wants to recover for us what has been lost in the years since Robert Hawker. Hawker was a well known and dearly beloved vicar of an Anglican church in England, at the the turning of the 18th century. (4)

We tend to read the Psalms, as we also read other parts of scripture, from our study Bible editions, frequently glancing to the bottom of the page to see what the famous theologian has to say about this verse and that verse, and so often we miss the very plain and simple prophetic meaning of the text.

The study notes have been written, sometimes, with the theologian's peculiar doctrines in his heart, to which he must be faithful and consistent. We all of us have our own editorial biases through which we view scripture. But the famous theologian who writes the study notes doesn't blatantly say, "This is my overarching doctrinal bias, and all my notes must be consistent with that."

I say this with all humility, as a nobody--we need to read the Psalms not with our study notes, but in a quiet space of our own heart, with just the text before us, the Holy Spirit within us, and our hearts and minds fixed on Christ. "How does this relate to Christ?" should be the question we are ever asking the Lord to answer in us as we read.

We can always look at our study notes at some other time, for verification, correction if applicable, or further observation. But what happens when we see Christ in the Psalms in a way not verified by our study notes? Do we toss out as "incorrect interpretation" or "private interpretation" what we so blessedly received of Christ through what we thought was the hand of the Holy Spirit upon the understanding of our heart? Do we believe the word of scripture as opened by the Holy Spirit upon our heart, or do we believe the bias of our famous theologian, who perhaps believes that the Holy Spirit no longer interacts with believers as He did in the days the scriptures were written?

Do we believe the experiencing of the Holy Spirit blessedly opening scripture in our heart, or do we mistrust our intimate perception of Him whom we think is the Holy Spirit in favor of the highly educated, famous theologian with his authoritative voice in the notes of the well-known study Bible opened before us?

Yes, many people make many mistakes, especially nowadays, "The Lord told me such and such...", and "I heard the Lord tell me...". But, are we guilty of throwing out the proverbial baby with the proverbial bath-water? The two sets of verses below show us that one of Satan's greatest tactics is to try to drown the truth in a torrent of lies.

NAU Revelation 12:15 And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.

NAU Matthew 13:24 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 "But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 "But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 "The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' 28 "And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?' 29 "But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

Yet God Himself is ever faithful to Himself and to His people.

I am so extremely delighted with God as I mull over Jesus the Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. She was ever so sinful, ever so foolish, ever such a no-count, ever such a woman rather than a man. You could not find a more unlikely candidate as she for a great theological revelation from God Himself. And yet our precious Savior directly revealed more of Himself to her in a single conversation than He did to Nicodemus the erudite teacher in the previous chapter of John's gospel, or perhaps to anyone else in all the gospels.

When we approach God's word in prayer, with a beggar's heart, not pompously, but in simple, repentant submission to Him and to His word, we can expect that God the Holy Spirit will reveal Jesus Christ to us in just the way He did to the Samaritan woman at the well. 

NAU 1 John 2:27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

NAU Psalm 81:16 "But I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."

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Father, I am a nobody in the world's eyes. Even in Your kingdom, Lord, I am of the smallest sort. Yet, You have blessed me tremendously in the reading of Your Psalms. My prayer, Lord, is that You would bless many eager, hungry hearts through the word of Your Psalms, just as You have blessed me, but even more so. In Jesus' precious name, Christina, Amen.


1 31 Days of Wisdom and Praise, Copyright C 1990 International Bible Society, Zondervan, "with Special Thanks to R. Dean Jones"
2 Treasury of David, Volume Two (Part 2) Psalm LXXXVIII to CX, page 18, Hendrickson
3 Ibid.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hawker , Wikipedia


to be continued