Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 88:3
For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
3. For &c.] He pleads the urgency of his need as the ground for a hearing.
draweth nigh &c.] Hath drawn nigh unto Sheol, the gloomy nether world which is the abode of the departed. Cp. Psa 6:5; Psa 107:18.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For my soul is full of troubles – I am full of trouble. The word rendered as full means properly to satiate as with food; that is, when as much had been taken as could be. So he says here, that this trouble was as great as he could bear; he could sustain no more. He had reached the utmost point of endurance; he had no power to bear anymore.
And my life draweth nigh unto the grave – Hebrew, to Sheol. Compare the notes at Isa 14:9; notes at Job 10:21-22. It may mean here either the grave, or the abode of the dead. He was about to die. Unless he found relief he must go down to the abodes of the dead. The Hebrew word rendered life is in the plural number, as in Gen 2:7; Gen 3:14, Gen 3:17; Gen 6:17; Gen 7:15; et al. Why the plural was used as applicable to life cannot now be known with certainty. It may have been to accord with the fact that man has two kinds of life; the animal life – or life in common with the inferior creation; and intellectual, or higher life – the life of the soul. Compare the notes at 1Th 5:23. The meaning here is, that he was about to die; or that his life or lives approached that state when the grave closes over us; the extinction of the mere animal life; and the separation of the soul – the immortal part – from the body.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 88:3
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
Heman: a child of light walking in darkness
(with 1Ch 25:5):–A seer is just a man who sees. Other men also have eyes indeed, but, then, they do not see with their eyes as a seer sees. Now, Heman was a seer. Heman saw constantly a sight that to most men even in Israel was absolutely invisible. Heman saw, and saw nothing else, but his own soul.
1. My soul is full of troubles, says this great seer, speaking about himself. What led Heman to speak and to publish abroad this most melancholy of all the psalms we are not told. It was not Hemans actual sin, like Davids. Neither was this terrible trouble, like Davids, among his large family of sons and daughters. Heman had brought up his sons and daughters more successfully than David had done. For all Hemans children assisted their father in sacred song in the house of the Lord. At the same time Heman cannot take a happy fathers full joy cut of his talented and dutiful children because of the overwhelming trouble of his own soul. It is a terrible baptism into the matters of God to have a soul from his youth up so full of inconsolable troubles as that.
2. My soul is full of troubles, says Heman, till I am driven distracted. Every day we hear of men and women being driven distracted through love, and through fear, and through poverty, and through pain, and sometimes through ever-joy, and sometimes, it is said, through religion. It was thought by some that the Apostle Paul was quite distracted in his day through his too much thought and occupation about Divine things. But be not too much cast down. Comfort My people. Say to them, and assure them, that this is the beginning in them of the wisdom, and the truth, and the love, and the salvation of their God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
3. Now, with all that, this is not to be wondered at that Heman says next (Psa 88:18). Anything else but this is not to be expected from Heman. Heman makes it an additional complaint, but it is a simple and a necessary consequence of his troubled and distracted soul. Friends and lovers, the oldest, and the warmest, and the bests–they all have their several limits. Most men are made with little heart themselves, and they are not at home where there is much heart, and much exercise of heart. They flee in a fright from the heights and the depths of the high and deep heart. It needs a friend that sticketh closer than a brother to keep true to a man who has much heart, and who sees and feels with all his heart. Heman, besides being the Kings seer, was also an eminent type of Christ, both in the distracting troubles of his soul, and in the fewness and in the infidelity of his friends.
4. Now, all that, bad as it is, would have been easily borne had it been a sudden stroke and then for ever over. Had it been a great temptation, a great fall, a great repentance, a great forgiveness, and then the light of Gods countenance brighter than ever all Hemans after days. But Hemans yoke from his youth up has been of that terrible kind that it has eaten into his soul deeper and deeper with every advancing year. Had Heman lived after Pauls day he would have described himself in Pauls way. He would have said that the two-edged sword had become every year more and more spiritual, till it entered more and more deep every year into his soul.
5. There are these four uses out of all that.
(1) The first is to justify such a proceeding as to take a text like this for a Communion evening. What could be more comely in a worthy communicant, who has been stayed with flagons and comforted with apples all day than to say to the outcasts of Israel ere this day closes (Isa 43:1; Isa 43:25).
(2) And then for the use of all Heman-like, all distracted communicants–do not despair. Do not give way to distraction.
(3) Are you quite sure that this deep darkness of yours is quite unaccountable to you short of Gods sovereignty–short of His deep, hidden, Divine will? I doubt it, and I would have you doubt it. I would have you make sure that there is no other possible explanation of this darkness of His face. All the chances are that it is not Gods ways that are so distractingly dark, but your own.
(4) There is a singular use in Heman for ministers. When God is to make a very sinful man into a very able, and skilful, and experimental minister, He sends that man to the same school to which He sent Heman. Now, who can tell what God has laid up for you to do for Him and for mens souls when you are out of your probationer-ship of trouble and distraction, and are promoted to be a comforter of Gods troubled and distracted saints? He may have a second David, and far more, to comfort and to sanctify in the generation to come; and you may be ordained to be the Kings seer in the matters of God. Who can tell? Only, be you ready, for the stone that is fit for the wall is not left to lie in the ditch. (A. Whyte, D. D.)
Hemans elegy
Two Hemans attained eminence in Israel. One was a singer, the other was a sage (1Ch 15:16-22; 1Ch 25:5; 1Ki 4:31). The two facts which filled Hemans soul with trouble were by no means unusual facts. They were–
1. The growing infirmities, the frailties and Sicknesses, of age (verse7); and–
2. The loss of friends, or the supposed alienation of friends, which often accompanies age, especially when it is sick and weary of the world (Psa 88:8-18). These are common facts, but they are none the more welcome for being common when they come home to us personally. Our sage broods over them, resents them, as we all do at times, and laments his feebleness and isolation. Nay, as he traces all the facts and events of human life to the hand of God, he charges God with all the responsibility, all the pains and bitterness of them, and concludes that even this great Friend has forgotten him; or has turned against him. With all his wisdom he has been, as he confesses (Psa 88:5). Of a sceptical and misgiving temperament from his youth up. Two ways in which we may view the contents of the psalm–either making the best of them, or making the worst of them, in so far at least as they bear on the character and aim of the author of the psalm. We are not bound to adopt Hemans views, or even to sympathize with them. Much in the Bible was written for our warning and admonition. If we bring a generous spirit to the interpretation of this song, or elegy, we may recall the familiar maxim: In much wisdom is much sorrow. A thoughtful mind is a pensive mind. The more a man sees of human life, the more he feels how much there is in it which is wrong, foolish, base, disappointing, if not hopelessly corrupt and bad. So we shall begin to make excuse for Heman. Let us remember also that in much sorrow there is much discipline, and discipline by which a wise man should profit. Do you, do all men, resent the wrongs of time? Remember that resentment, then, as well as the wrongs which provoke it; and consider what a happy omen lies in the fact that men do hate and resent that which is wrong, and both love and demand that which is just and right. Those who decry mere human wisdom are very likely to conclude that Heman the sage was punished for his largeness and freedom of thought, that he was abandoned to the guidance of his own wisdom in order that he might learn how little it could do for him in the greatest emergencies of life, how little, therefore, it was worth. I see no reason to judge him thus harshly. I find much in this psalm to lead us to a more kindly judgment. But, doubtless, there are many among us to whom such a description would apply. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
My soul, properly so called; for that he was under great troubles of mind from a sense of Gods wrath and departure from him, is evident from Psa 88:14-16.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
3. graveliterally, “hell”(Ps 16:10), death in widesense.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For my soul is full of troubles,…. Or “satiated or glutted” e with them, as a stomach full of meat that can receive no more, to which the allusion is; having been fed with the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, so that he had his fill of trouble: every man is full of trouble, of one kind or another, Job 14:1 especially the saint, who besides his outward troubles has inward ones, arising from indwelling sin, the temptations of Satan, and divine desertions, which was now the case of the psalmist: this may be truly applied to Christ, who himself said, when in the garden, “my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”, Mt 26:38, he was a man of sorrows all his days, but especially at that time, and when upon the cross, forsaken by his Father, and sustaining his wrath: “his soul” was then “filled with evil things” f, as the words may be rendered:
innumerable evils compassed him about, Ps 40:12, the sins of his people, those evil things, were imputed to him; the iniquity of them all was laid upon him, as was also the evil of punishment for them; and then he found trouble and sorrow enough:
and my life draweth nigh unto the grave: a phrase expressive of a person’s being just ready to die, Job 33:22 as the psalmist now thought he was, Ps 88:5, it is in the plural number “my lives” g; and so may not only denote the danger he was in of his natural life, but of his spiritual and eternal life, which he might fear, being in darkness and desertion, would be lost, though they could not; yea, that he was near to “hell” itself, for so the word h may be rendered; for when the presence of God is withdrawn, and wrath let into the conscience, a person in his own apprehension seems to be in hell as it were, or near it; see Jon 2:2. This was true of Christ, when he was sorrowful unto death, and was brought to the dust of it, and under divine dereliction, and a sense of the wrath of God, as the surety of his people.
e “saturata”, Pagninus, Montanus, Musculus, Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius “satiata”, Tigurine version. f “in malis”, Pagninus, Montanus; “malis”, Junius Tremellius, c. g “vitae meae”, Montanus, Michaelis. h “ad orcum”, Cocceius “inferno”, Gejerus “ad infernum”, Michaelis; so Ainsworth.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
3 For my soul is filled with troubles. These words contain the excuse which the prophet pleads for the excess of his grief. They imply that his continued crying did not proceed from softness or effeminacy of spirit, but that from a due consideration of his condition, it would be found that the immense accumulation of miseries with which he was oppressed was such as might justly extort from him these lamentations. Nor does he speak of one kind of calamity only; but of calamities so heaped one upon another that his heart was filled with sorrow, till it could contain no more. He next particularly affirms that his life was not far from the grave. This idea he pursues and expresses in terms more significant in the following verse, where he complains that he was, as it were, dead. Although he breathed still among the living, yet the many deaths with which he was threatened on all sides were to him so many graves by which he expected to be swallowed up in a moment. And he seems to use the word גבר , geber, which is derived from גבר , gabar, he prevailed, or was strong, (509) in preference to the word which simply signifies man, — the more emphatically to show that his distresses were so great and crushing as to have been sufficient to bring down the strongest man.
(509) See volume 2, page 320, note 2. Some consider the words מחלת לענות, Machalath Leannoth, which Calvin renders “Machalath, to make humble,” as together denoting an instrument of music. “For my part,” says Dr Morison, “I lean to the idea that these words are intended to denote some musical instrument of the plaintive order; and in this opinion Kimchi and other Jewish writers perfectly agree. They assert that it was a wind-instrument, answering very much to the flute, and employed mainly in giving utterance to sentiments of grief, upon occasions of great sorrow and lamentation.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(3) Grave.Shel. Here, as in Psa. 6:4-5; Psa. 33:19; Isa. 38:10-11, there comes into prominence the thought that death severs the covenant relation with God, and so presents an irresistible reason why prayer should be heard now before it is too late.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
3. For my soul is full of troubles Life can endure no more. From this to Psa 88:9, the author urges his great distress as an argument for the divine interposition.
My life draweth nigh unto the grave My life reacheth to, or toucheth, sheol. This proximity to death is called “gates of death,” Psa 9:13; Psa 107:18
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
It is impossible for a child of God, one should think, to have any doubts as to whom these expressions peculiarly and principally belong. To whom can they so properly belong, as to the blessed Jesus? Who that reads of his soul-agony in the garden, and his cries on the cross, can fail to behold the striking application? Who that recollects Christ bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, can need to be told, that then the divine wrath lay hard upon him for our sins, and all the billows and waves of God’s displeasure at sin were poured out upon him? And who that recollects the removal of Christ’s disciples from him in Gethsemane, their desertion of him in the hour of danger, and the offense his cross was unto them all, before the Holy Ghost had descended upon them after Christ’s resurrection, can require any farther evidence as to when the whole points, but to Jesus? Yes, thou Lamb of God, it is thou of whom the prophet speaks, and not of any other man. Oh, may my soul delight to put away all acquaintance far from me, that I may often follow thee, in silent and sacred meditation, through the hallowed walks of Gethsemane!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 88:3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
Ver. 3. For my soul is full of trouble ] Hypotyposis hominis luctuosissime affecti. Here we have the lively picture of a man under bitter affliction. Extraordinary wise he was, and extraordinary troubles he had. None out of hell suffer more than God’s dearest children. This good man felt himself in the suburbs of hell, as it were.
And my life draweth nigh unto the grave
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
soul. Hebrew. nephesh (App-13), for emphasis.
the grave. Hebrew. Sheol.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
grave
Heb. “Sheol,” (See Scofield “Hab 2:5”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
soul: Psa 88:14, Psa 88:15, Psa 22:11-21, Psa 69:17-21, Psa 77:2, Psa 143:3, Psa 143:4, Job 6:2-4, Isa 53:3, Isa 53:10, Isa 53:11, Lam 3:15-19, Mat 26:37-39, Mar 14:33, Mar 14:34
life: Psa 107:18, Job 33:22
Reciprocal: Gen 44:29 – And if Job 13:26 – writest Job 17:1 – the graves Psa 18:5 – The sorrows Psa 31:9 – my soul Psa 55:4 – My Psa 77:3 – I complained Psa 119:143 – Trouble Eze 26:20 – in places Joh 12:27 – is
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
a
Evidently the psalmist’s suffering had resulted in his friends separating from him. God, too, had apparently abandoned him. Heman felt very close to death. He viewed his condition as coming directly from God. He felt alone and miserable.
"One of the first steps toward revival is to be completely transparent when we pray and not tell the Lord anything that is not true or that we do not really mean." [Note: Wiersbe, The . . . Wisdom . . ., p. 250.]