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.
7a Your wrath lies heavily upon me; ...
Have you ever wondered how we as Christians know that it was God's wrath which Jesus Our Lord suffered on the cross? I have wondered that. The gospels tell us of the mighty compassion and awesome deeds of our Savior, His zeal for all things that belonged to His Father. But in the gospels, doesn't it appear to be the Jewish authorities and Roman soldiers who crucified Him? How do we know that God was pouring out His wrath for our sins upon the Lamb of God? Could it be we have this knowledge, at least in part, because this and other psalms tell us?
"Wrath" is not an unusual word in the Old Testament, nor in the whole Bible. It is present many times over from Genesis to Revelation. Once in a while, human wrath is spoken of in the multitude of verses containing the word "wrath", but far and away the largest number of uses of this word refer to the intense anger of God in a judgmental sense against those who have offended Him. Here the psalmist is experiencing the judgmental wrath of God against sinners.
7b you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. Selah
The imagery of the words in this portion compare the wrath of God with strong billows of the sea breaking upon the psalmist in full force, weighing him down and keeping him low, afflicting him, repeatedly, again and again. This imagery of God's wrath being expressed as mighty billows of the sea is not unique to this psalm.
Why would the speaker of Psalm 88 say that the wrath of God and the waves of God were against him? Isn't the speaker a righteous man, a man who loves and worships God? He refers to God as, "O LORD, the God who saves me" in verse 1. In verse 9, he says, "O LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you." Verse 13--"But I cry to you for help, O LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you." We know from all the psalms that the wicked do not cry out to God for help; in their pride of heart they always reject God, no matter what their circumstances. Only the righteous humble themselves in turning to God to seek His help and mercy.
Clearly, this man speaks as the righteous in the Psalms do; yet, he has an extremely clear knowledge that it is God whose wrath is being poured out upon him. Why is God's wrath against him? The psalm does not say, nor even hint at any wrongdoing on the speaker's part. Contrast this with Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is the heart-cry of a righteous man (according to the portrait of such a one in all the Psalms--see footnote), who has grievously sinned and now knows it. He repeatedly confesses and asks for God's cleansing mercies.
This, however, is not the portrait of the man in Psalm 88, which gives us no hint of sin. So why was he suffering God's wrath? The Apostle Paul gives us the answer--
NAU 2 Corinthians 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Isaiah likens this "man of sorrows" to a sacrificial lamb--
NAU Isaiah 53:7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth.
Lambs chosen for sacrifice were innocent, clean, spotless, without blemish, and without fault. Yet they are sacrificed for the wrath of God, in place of people, whose sins are placed upon them.
NAU Numbers 6:14 'He shall present his offering to the LORD: one male lamb a year old without defect for a burnt offering and one ewe-lamb a year old without defect for a sin offering and one ram without defect for a peace offering,
NAU Leviticus 9:7 Moses then said to Aaron, "Come near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering, that you may make atonement for yourself and for the people; then make the offering for the people, that you may make atonement for them, just as the LORD has commanded."
NAU 1 Peter 1:19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
And concerning the breakers of the sea, we find the answer in Jonah and in Christ's own commentary upon that prophecy--
Jonah 2:1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2 He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry. 3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. 4 I said, 'I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.' 5 The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. 6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD my God.
Jonah in the verses above was being punished by God for his refusal to obey Him. And Jesus Himself likens His death and burial to the time Jonah spent in the belly of the whale--
Matthew 12:39 He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
But Jesus, as we just saw in Corinthians, had no sin. Therefore, as a sacrificial lamb, He was being punished for the sins of others.
In summary, the speaker in Psalm 88:7 was being overwhelmed and beaten down by the judgmental wrath of God against sinners. He experienced God's wrath as the crushing weight of myriads of waves beating him down, drowning him.
Verse 7 ends with the word, "Selah". Let us all stop, catch our breaths, pause, and prayerfully consider what it must have been like for our Savior, Jesus Christ, to experience God's wrath as He hung upon the cross for our sins.
1 See "Psalm 32 -- Who are the Righteous?", this blog, August 3rd and 5th, 2010
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Father, my interpretation of this psalm has been the most difficult of all for me to write down. I confess my complete and total inability to represent this most precious of all pictures of the mind of Christ with any skill at all. My words seem to me to be almost a profanity in the presence of Your holiness. I pray, Lord, by Your grace, that You would allow me to continue and to complete it, according to Your will, not my own. If I am at fault, Lord, I pray that You would reveal that to me as well.
Lord, as I was asking You the other day about this Psalm, I heard on the radio the song that has this line in it, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" None of us today, Lord, were there. Yet, You've given us such a picture in this psalm, that by contemplating it in the light of Your Holy Spirit upon our hearts, it's almost as though we were there.
Thank-You for scripture, Lord, all of it, both the Old and the New Testaments. Surely, Lord, You have not left us as orphans.
Thank-You for Your love,
In Jesus' name,
Amen
--to be continued
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