Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 88:18
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, [and] mine acquaintance into darkness.
18. Cp. Psa 88:8; Psa 38:11; Job 19:13.
and mine acquaintance into darkness ] A difficult phrase. Another possible rendering is, my familiar friends are darkness: darkness takes the place of friends: cp. Job 17:14.
We take leave of this sad singer with his riddle unsolved, with no ray of light piercing the gloom; yet believing in the fact of God’s love though he can only see the signs of His wrath, appealing, like Job, to God, though God seems utterly hostile to him; assured that if he has any hope at all, it is in God alone. His faith has met its reward.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me – That is, Thou hast so afflicted me that they have forsaken me. Those who professed to love me, and whom I loved – those whom I regarded as my friends, and who seemed to be my friends – are now wholly turned away from me, and I am left to suffer alone. See the notes at Psa 88:8.
And mine acquaintance into darkness – The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate render this, my acquaintance from my misery. Luther, Thou hast caused my friends and neighbors, and my kindred, to separate themselves far from me, on account of such misery. The literal rendering would be, my acquaintances are darkness. This may mean either that they had so turned away that he could not see them, as if they were in the dark; or, that his familiars now – his companions – were dark and dismal objects – gloomy thoughts – sad forebodings. Perhaps the whole might be translated, Far away from me hast thou put lover and friend – my acquaintances! All is darkness! That is, When I think of any of them, all is darkness, sadness. My friends are not to be seen. They have vanished. I see no friends; I see only darkness and gloom. All have gone, leaving me alone in this condition of unpitied sorrow! This completes the picture of the suffering man; a man to whom all was dark, and who could find no consolation anywhere – in God; in his friends; in the grave; in the prospect of the future. There are such cases; and it was well that there was one such description in the sacred Scriptures of a good man thus suffering – to show us that when we thus feel, it should not be regarded as proof that we have no piety. Beneath all this, there may be true love to God; beyond all this, there may be a bright world to which the sufferer will come, and where he will forever dwell.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 88:18
Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.
On sorrow for the death of friends
I. The sorrow which we naturally feel when we are bereaved of dear and worthy friends, and the bounds within which it ought to be restrained. If Christianity pronounces it the height of profligacy to be without natural affections, the tears which flow from such affections, Christianity cannot forbid. What nature hath implanted the religion of Jesus means not to extirpate, but to moderate and direct. Shall it not calm the soul tossed with tempests, and if not dry up, at least diminish, the flowing tears, that a voice from heaven, the voice of the spirit of truth, declares: Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord? They see God as He is. They are satisfied with His likeness.
II. The practical lessons which we ought to receive from the death of our Christian friends.
1. It should impress on our minds a deep and lasting sense of our own mortality.
2. It should teach us the vanity and nothingness of this world.
3. It demonstrates the worth and excellency of religion.
4. It teaches us how important it is to discharge our duty to friends who yet survive.
5. It should kindle Within us a longing desire for a blessed eternity. We naturally wish to be with those whom we love. When Jacob hears that his son Joseph is yet alive, and advanced to great honour in Egypt, he cannot rest till he goes down there to see him. And when our friends have left that land in which we are yet strangers and pilgrims, our affections should be more weaned from it, and our desires inflamed to get to that better land, whither they have gone before us. (John Erskine, D. D.)
The hand of God in removing our friends and acquaintances far from us
I. The heavy affliction with which the psalmist was visited. In the removal of his friends and relatives he had lost–
1. Their company.
2. Their counsel and advice.
3. The sight of their good works and examples.
4. Their prayers.
II. The psalmists devout acknowledgment of the hand of God in this affliction.
1. He removeth our friends, who hath a right to do it.
(1) They were our friends, but they are His creatures; and may He not do what He will with His own?
(2) They were our friends; but do we not hope and believe that, by repentance, faith in Christ, and sanctifying grace, they were become His friends too? dear to Him by many indissoluble ties? Hath He not then a superior claim to them, and a greater interest in them? Is it not fit that He should be served first? His knowledge is perfect and unerring: His goodness boundless and never-failing. Application
1. The cause here described is a very pitiable one. Let us weep with them that weep, and pray for them.
2. Let us bless God for the friends we have had, and all the comfort we enjoyed in them.
3. Let us humbly submit to the will of God when He putteth our friends far from us.
4. Let us be careful and diligent to make a due improvement of such afflictions.
(1) Let our departed friends still live in our memory, honour and affection.
(2) Let us carefully recollect and consider what was excellent and praiseworthy in them, as every good man hath some peculiar, distinguishing excellencies, and let us imitate them.
(3) Let us follow them in the path of Christian duty, obedience and zeal; endeavour to supply their lack of service, and be quickened to do so much the more good, because their time and opportunity are ended.
(4) Let us particularly learn from their removal to be dead to this world.
5. Let us be thankful for our friends yet living, and faithfully perform our duty to them.
6. Let us make sure of a friend who will never leave us: even the almighty and everlasting God. (Job Orton, D. D.)
The loss of connections deplored and improved
I. The connections which give a charm to life.
1. Lover. As this is distinguished from friend and acquaintance, it stands for the tender relative. The husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the child, the brother, the sister, and other dear ties of flesh and blood.
2. Friend. This is a sacred name, which many usurp, and few deserve. It cannot be applied to the confederate in sin; or to the mercenary, selfish wretch, that loves you because he wants to make use of you, as a builder values a ladder, or a passenger a boat. Friendship is founded in a community of heart. It supposes some strong congeniality, yet admits of great diversity.
3. Acquaintances are distinguished from friends. The former may be numerous; the latter must be limited. The one is for the parlour, the other is for the closet. We give the hand to the one, we reserve the bosom for the other.
II. Two ways by which we may be deprived of our connections.
1. By desertion. The highest degree of this crime is the want of natural affection. Perfidy is a vile thing, but not a very rare one. How many kiss in order to betray; and gain your confidence, to sting when you are lulled to sleep.
2. By bereavement. This is principally, if not exclusively here intended. Several things add poignancy to the loss.
(1) In some cases the bereaved are deprived of worldly support.
(2) We are deprived of their company.
(3) We can have no intercourse or correspondence with them.
(4) They cannot promote our welfare where they now are.
III. The agency of God in their removal. He has done it–
1. Who is almighty and irresistible (Job 9:12).
2. Who had a right to do it. If they were your friends, they were His creatures and servants; and was He obliged to ask your permission to do what He would with His own?
3. Who was too wise to err, and too kind to injure in doing it.
IV. Application. Improve such dispensations in a way of–
1. Sympathy.
2. Gratitude.
3. Precaution.
4. Resignation. (W. Jay.)
A loss bewailed
It is an extreme distress that is portrayed in this psalm.
I. The threefold loss.
1. There are, or ought to be, three circles round every man like the belts or rings round a planet,–love, friendship, and acquaintanceship.
(1) Love is the nearest, while, at the same time, it lends its value to the other two. Friendship and acquaintanceship have no real pith, or substance, or value in them, except as they are permeated by the spirit of the nearest circle. It is love that receives and nurtures us; it is love that knits the closest and tenderest bonds; it is love that is the sunshine and the strength of life; it is love by which we do good, by which we get good. Men learn to love by loving intensely a few. The heart is not a vessel of quantity which has only a certain amount to give. The more it gives, the more it has to give. It is filled by the effort to empty itself.
(2) Friendship comes next, and implies certain sympathies. Happy is the man who has right true-hearted friends to sustain him in good principles, to reflect and stimulate noble feelings, and to cheer him in sorrow. Many are the blessings of friendship, but the chief is a genial brotherliness, a certain unexplained understanding, an undefined sympathy, an easy, unconstrained, general harmony.
(3) Outside the circle of friendship is the larger but vague circle of acquaintance shading and thinning gradually off into the general world of humanity. Acquaintanceship broadens a man. It is some sort of bond between those who can have no close relation. It tends to cement and sweeten human society.
2. There is a period in life when ties are formed, but there comes a time when the breaking of ties is more frequent. That is a great part of the sadness of life, that, as one wears on in his journey, the friends of his early days drop off. Oh, strange life! It is a contradiction to our nature and to right, an enigma insoluble but for the light of another world, that we should be encouraged and impelled to throw our affections round men only to have the ties rudely snapt. Oh, strange; if there is nothing beyond this, that it should be our duty, our elevation, and our noblest impulse, to love strongly, to love as if we were never to part, all the while that parting lies but a little way before us.
II. Reflections.
1. Thinking of departed friends will help us to realize our own death. We need to realize death in order to be sober, in order to intensify all that is good, and to drive off vain thoughts. Yea, we need to realize death in order to conquer death, and live while we live.
2. Thinking of our departed will help to take away the bitterness of death. Death gets identified with the thought of father, or mother, or sister, or brother, or husband, or wife, or child, or friend, and we feel that we dare not, and cannot, shrink from going to them.
3. Thinking of the departed will enable us to realize immortality. Can you think of that friend, knowing all that was in him; and entertain the thought, even for a moment, that he has ceased to be? Is it not treachery and insult to his memory?
4. Thinking of the departed cannot but fill us with regret and penitence. To remember angry words or selfishness towards the departed is a bitter thing. It is good to be ashamed and blush before God for hardness, meanness, or selfishness. It is good to be brought to this lowly, contrite mood, though it be over the grave of the departed. That place of death may be the birthplace of eternal life. (J. Leckie, D. D.)
Our threefold relationship to Christ
1. Acquaintance–knowing about Him only;–His birth, His life, His words familiar, but Himself unknown. Familiar with His circumstances, but ignorant of His true life–that heart of love.
2. Friend how much nearer is this! Here is trust; here is fellowship; here is love. His claim is admitted and is responded to, and His company is welcomed with delight.
3. But there is another relationship, infinitely more tender and more complete, which we may venture to claim as ours–lover: to love Him with a love that possesses us, that masters us, that subdues and compels all that we are and all that we have for His service and pleasure: a love which finds its highest heaven in His joy, its deepest hell in His grief: a love which has and holds Him for its own, for ever and for ever. This He seeks as His solace; this He offers to us as our high privilege and joy. (M. G. Pearse.)
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Psa 89:1-52
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. Lover and friend] I have no comfort, and neither friend nor neighbour to sympathize with me.
Mine acquaintance into darkness.] All have forsaken me; or meyuddai machsach, “Darkness is my companion.” Perhaps he may refer to the death of his acquaintances; all were gone; there was none left to console him! That man has a dismal lot who has outlived all his old friends and acquaintances; well may such complain. In the removal of their friends they see little else than the triumphs of death. Khosroo, an eminent Persian poet, handles this painful subject with great delicacy and beauty in the following lines: –
[—Persic—]
[—Persic—]
[—Persic—]
[—Persic—]
Ruftem sauee khuteereh bekerestem bezar
Az Hijereh Doostan ke aseer fana shudend:
Guftem Eeshah Kuja shudend? ve Khatyr
Dad az sada jouab Eeshan Kuja!
“Weeping, I passed the place where lay my friends
Captured by death; in accents wild I cried,
Where are they? And stern Fate, by Echoes voice,
Returned in solemn sound the sad Where are they?”
J. B. C.
ANALYSIS OF THE EIGHTY-EIGHTH PSALM
There are four parts in this Psalm: –
I. A petition, Ps 88:1-2.
II. The cause of this petition, his misery, which he describes, Ps 88:3-9.
III. The effects produced by this miserable condition: 1. A special prayer, Ps 88:10-12; 2. An expostulation with God for deliverance, Ps 88:10-12.
IV. A grievous complaint, Ps 88:14-18.
The psalmist offers his petition; but before he begins, he lays down four arguments why it should be admitted, –
1. His confidence and reliance on God: “O Lord God of my salvation.”
2. His earnestness to prevail: “I have cried.”
3. His assiduity: “Day and night.”
4. His sincerity: “I have cried before thee.”
And then he tenders his request for audience: “Let my prayer come before thee, incline thine ear unto my cry.”
II. And then next he sets forth the pitiful condition he was in, that hereby he might move God to take compassion, which he amplifies several ways: –
1. From the weight and variety of his troubles; many they were, and pressed him to death. “For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh to the grave.”
2. From the danger of death in which he was.
Which is illustrated by three degrees: –
1. That he was moribundus, dying, no hope of life in him even by the estimate of all men: “I am counted with them that go down to the pit; I am as a man that hath no strength.”
2. That he was plane mortuus, nearly dead; but as a dead man, “free among the dead;” freed from all the business of this life; as far separate from them as a dead man.
3. Yea, dead and buried: “Like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberedst no more;” i.e., to care for in this life; and “they are cut off from thy hand,” i.e., thy providence, thy custody, as touching matter of this life.
And yet he farther amplifies his sad condition by two similitudes: –
1. Of a man in some deep dark dungeon: “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps;” as was Jeremiah, Jer 37:15-16; Jer 38:6.
2. Of a man in a wreck at sea, that is compassed with the waves, to which he compares God’s anger: “Thy wrath lieth hard upon me. and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.” One wave impels another. The recurrence of his troubles was perpetual; one no sooner gone but another succeeded.
And, to add to this his sorrow, his friends, whose visits in extremity used to alleviate the grief of a troubled soul, even these proved perfidious, and came not to him; he had no comfort with them; which was also God’s doing, and thus augmented his grief.
The auxesis or augmentation is here very elegant:
1. “Thou hast put away mine acquaintance from me.” THOU.
2. “Thou hast made me an abomination to them.” No less; an abomination.
3. “I am shut up, I cannot come forth.” As a man in prison, I cannot come at them, and they will not come to me.
III. The effect of which grievous affliction was threefold: 1. An internal grief and wasting of the body; 2. An ardent affection in God; and 3. An expostulation with God.
1. “My eye mourns by reason of affliction.” An evidence that I am troubled and grieved to the heart, that my eye droops and fails; for when the animal and vital spirits suffer a decay, the eye will quickly, by her dimness, deadness, and dulness, discover it.
2. It produced an ardent affection, a continuance and assiduity in prayer, which is here made evident by the adjuncts.
1. His voice: “I have called daily upon thee.” It was, 1. A cry; 2. It was continual.
2. By the extension of his hands: “I have stretched out my hands to thee.” Men used to do so when they expected help; when they looked to receive; whence we sometimes say Lend me thy hand.
3. The third effect was, an expostulation with God, in which he presseth to spare his life from the inconvenience that might thereby happen, viz., that he should be disabled to praise God and celebrate his name, as he was bound and desired to do, among the living: an argument used before, Ps 6:3. This argument, though it savours too much of human frailty, yet he thought by it to move God, who above all things is jealous of his own glory, which by his death he imagines will suffer loss; and therefore he asks, –
1. “Wilt thou show wonders among the dead?” That is, thy desire is to set forth thy honour, which cannot be done if I go to the grave, except by some miracle I should be raised from thence.
2. “Shall the dead arise again and praise thee?” It is the living that shall show forth thy praise, thy power, and goodness; thy fidelity in keeping thy promises to the sons of men. The dead, as dead, cannot do this; and they return not from the grave, except by miracle.
3. “Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction? shall thy wonders be known in the dark, or thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?’ Such is the grave, a place of oblivion; for Abraham is ignorant of us. The goodness and faithfulness of God, which he makes known to us in this life, are not known nor can be declared by the dead: the living see them; they have experience of them; and therefore he desires that his life may be spared to that end, lest if he die now that faculty should be taken from him; he should no longer be able to resound the praise of God, which is the end for which men ought to desire life.
IV. He returns to his complaint; and again repeats what he had said before, and almost in the same words, and gives three instances: –
1. In his prayer: “But unto thee have I cried, O Lord; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.” He prayed earnestly, early, not drowsily; for he did prevent God: he prayed, and would continue in prayer; and yet all in vain.
2. For God seems to be inexorable, of which he complains: “Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?” Even the best of God’s servants have sometimes been brought to that strait, that they have not had a clear sense of God’s favour, but conceived themselves neglected and deserted by him, and discountenanced.
His second instance is, his present affliction, mentioned before, Ps 88:4-7: “I am afflicted and ready to die,” which he here exaggerates: –
1. From the time and continuance of it; for he had borne it “even from his youth up.”
2. From the cause. It did not proceed from any outward or human cause; that might have been borne and helped: but it was an affliction sent from God: “Thy terrors have I suffered;” it came from a sense of God’s wrath.
3. From an uncomfortable effect. It wrought in this soul amazement, unrest, a perpetual trouble and astonishment: “Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled mind: “I am distracted with them.”
He amplifies this wrath by the former similes, Ps 88:7; waves and water.
1. “Thy fierce wrath goes over me;” as waves over a man’s head at sea. “Thy terrors have cut me off,” as a weaver’s thrum.
2. “They came round about me like water; daily like water.”
3. “They compassed me about together,” as if they conspired my ruin: “all thy waves,” Ps 88:7.
His third instance, which is the same, Ps 88:8. The perfidiousness and desertion of friends: a loving friend is some comfort in distress; but this he found not: “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.” They appear no more to me to give me any counsel, help, or comfort, than if they were hidden in perpetual darkness. His case, therefore, was most deplorable.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
See Poole “Psa 88:8“.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
18. into darknessBetter omit”into””mine acquaintances (are) darkness,” thegloom of death, c. (Job 17:13Job 17:14).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me,…. This is mentioned in Ps 88:8, and is here repeated; and the account is closed with it, to show that this was a most aggravating circumstance of his affliction, and which bore exceeding hard upon him; and this must be a very uncomfortable case, to be in distress, whether of body or mind, and to have no kind friend near to yield the least help, relief, and comfort; so Christ’s lovers and friends, his disciples, who loved him and he loved them, and reckoned them as his friends, and was a friend to them, when he was taken by his enemies, they all forsook him, and fled, Mt 26:56,
and mine acquaintance into darkness; either by death into the dark grave, which Job calls the land of darkness and shadow of death,
Job 10:21, or being removed from him, so that he could not see them, it was all one to him as if they had been put into darkness, into some dark dungeon, or into the grave itself: or the words may be rendered, mine acquaintance are darkness i: this was the case of Christ, when on the cross; he had none near him, no acquaintance about him, but darkness; and darkness was over all the land for the space of three hours; and a darkness was on his soul, being forsaken by his Father; and the prince of darkness, with all the fiends of hell, were throwing their fiery darts at him, Mt 27:45. Thus ends this sorrowful and mournful song; a joyful one follows.
i “noti mei sunt tenebrae”, Cocceius, Schmidt, Michaelis; “amici mei sunt caligo”, Gejerus.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(18) And mine acquaintance into darkness.This is an erroneous rendering. Rather, My acquaintance is darkness, or, darkness is my friend, having taken the place of those removed. The feeling resembles Job. 17:14; or we may illustrate by Tennysons lines:
O sorrow, wilt thou live with me,
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom friend, and half my life?
As I confess it needs must be.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
18. Lover and friend The removal of these may well form the climax of his misery. All lost; not even the sympathy of friendship left to alleviate the horror of his despair.
Mine acquaintance into darkness Hebrew, My acquaintances darkness. “Into,” is not in the text. The idea is, not that God had put his acquaintances (plural) “into” darkness, but that with darkness, henceforth, should be his intimate and only companionship. The complaint has now reached its climax, as in Job 17:14: “I called to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister.” Such complaints, like Ecclesiastes, seem designed to suggest what human sorrow is, and must be, apart from the hope of divine favour and eternal life. See Psa 143:3; Lam 3:6.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 88:18. And mine acquaintance into darkness My acquaintance are not to be seen. Literally, My acquaintance a place of darkness; Lost in darkness; vanished out of sight.
REFLECTIONS.1. The prayer of the Psalmist is fervent and importunate. O Lord God of my salvation, from whom alone I can expect relief, I have cried day and night before thee, long and often, and still continue to look up, though my troubles are unabated. Let my prayer come before thee, and incline thine ear unto my cry; thus in the days of his flesh the Redeemer poured out his prayers, with strong crying and tears, unto him who was able to save him from death, Heb 5:7 and, in all our trials, must we continually fly to a throne of grace, and never faint, or be weary of praying or waiting upon God, till he is pleased to visit us with his salvation, and say to our tempestuous souls, Peace, be still.
2. His sorrows are enlarged. For my soul is full of troubles, and the troubles of the soul are the severest of all; and my life draweth nigh unto the grave, unable to support the burden; so dreadful were his apprehensions, now that the light of God’s countenance was withdrawn. The Son of God repeated these deep complaints, and with a bitterness which never any soul but his tasted, Mat 26:38; Mat 27:46.
3. He is reduced to the brink of despair. I am counted with them that go down into the pit, as a dead man; or among malefactors, whose dead bodies were cast into the pit together. I am as a man that hath no strength, helpless and hopeless: free among the dead, of that ghastly family, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more, no longer the objects of his providential care, and they are cut off from thy hand, no more stretched out to feed them, or by thy hand, and that is of all deaths the most miserable, which is sent as a judgment from God. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, sunk under the most deplorable distress, in darkness, both with regard to the concerns of body and soul; and in the deeps, lower he can hardly be, but in the belly of hell. Among those who go down to the lowest pit, yea, among the vilest malefactors was the Son of God reckoned; and, though the mighty God, as if unable to help himself, he yielded up his body to be nailed to the tree: with the slain he lay down, and visited the mansions of the dead, cut off by the hand of justice, under the sins of a world, 1Jn 2:2.
4. A sense of divine wrath was the bitterest part of his sufferings. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, such were then his gloomy fears: and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves, one dark providence and distressing fear succeeding another, as if God was about to overwhelm him in the abyss of misery. What he feared, really fell on Jesus, our substitute, who bore our sins, and the wrath due to them, in his own body on the tree; and over him every wave of justice broke terrible, till in death he paid the dreadful debt.
5. His friends deserted him in his troubles; but he saw God’s hand in the affliction. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; to find a kind and compassionate friend is an alleviation to our sorrows, but he had none; or by divine Providence they were removed from him, or incapacitated for serving him; thou hast made me an abomination unto them; perhaps, like Job’s friends, they misinterpreted his sufferings, as if they proved him a wicked man, and shunned him as such, which made it the more grievous; thus was Jesus also betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, and forsaken of all. Let no follower of his therefore wonder, if dearest friends forsake, slight, or abhor him; he is then but as his Lord.
6. His case appeared remediless. I am shut up, confined with bodily affliction, or in a prison of spiritual darkness, and I cannot come forth, see no door open, have no power to help myself, and can only vent my disconsolate sorrows. The agonizing prayers of Jesus spoke his deep apprehensions of the Divine wrath, from which the Humanity shrunk, and wished the cup to pass from him.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
REFLECTIONS
SHALL I not ponder over the contents of this plaintive Psalm, and reflect on the sad cause of human misery? Day and night may tears run down, when the soul reviews the melancholy source of this world’s afflictions. But, my soul, when in Jesus thou beholdest such sorrow, to what a height of increased lamentation doth the subject arise? That man, who is a child of sin, should be the child of sorrow, is what might well be supposed, and is to be expected in a state like the present. But when we hear his holy soul, who knew no sin, and in whose mouth was found no guile, thus crying out under the water-spouts of Divine wrath, sore amazed and distracted; what a horrible idea doth this awaken of the baleful malignity of sin and man’s fallen estate? To have been present at the destruction of the old world by the flood; to have seen Sodom destroyed by fire, or Korah and his company swallowed up by the earthquake; these would all have given lively ideas of God’s irreconcilable hatred of sin. But to view sin in all its horrors, no representation can come up to the cries of the Son of God. If, my soul, thou wouldest see sin exceedingly sinful, go to Gethsemane, or to Golgotha; there hear the holy Jesus uttering strong cries, and learning obedience by the things which he suffered. And shall I not, precious Lamb of God, shall not my soul be drawn, out in love to thee, in delight in thee, in affection towards thee, and dependence upon thee, when I behold thee, in these unequalled sufferings, and when I am constrained to say, Lo, all this, and more, did Jesus suffer and endure when he knew no sin, that his people might be made the righteousness of God in him? Oh Lord, in the contemplation of thee and thy sufferings, enable me to go on and find confidence in all the trifling difficulties and sorrows with which thou wast fit to exercise me here below. Thou art still the God of my salvation and thou will bear me up, and carry me through, and lighten all my pressure, until thou shalt bring me home to behold thy glory and to dwell with thee forever.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 88:18 Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, [and] mine acquaintance into darkness.
Ver. 18. Lover and friend, &c. ] See Psa 88:8 , and mark how mournfully he concludeth; as doth also the Church, Lam 5:22 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
put far from me. Compare Psa 88:8, the corresponding member.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Lover: Psa 88:8, Psa 31:11, Psa 38:11, Job 19:12-15
mine acquaintance: A figurative expression to denote that he now never saw them.
Reciprocal: 2Sa 16:3 – where is Job 6:15 – My brethren Job 19:13 – put my brethren Psa 142:4 – but there was Pro 19:7 – the brethren Isa 51:18 – none Mat 26:31 – and the Mar 14:50 – General Luk 23:49 – acquaintance