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