Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 88:8
Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: [I am] shut up, and I cannot come forth.
8. Like Job he is deserted even by his familiar friends (not merely acquaintance, as A.V.), and this is due to the act of God, Who has smitten him with a sickness which makes them loathe even the sight of him. Cp. Psa 31:11; Job 19:13 ff., Job 19:19. He seems to describe himself as a leper like Job. Leprosy was a living death (Num 12:12): more than any other disease it was regarded as the direct ‘stroke’ of God (Job 19:21). The leper was cut off from all society and even from taking part in the public worship of God, and was compelled to live alone (Lev 13:46; 2Ch 26:21). The reference is of course not to the temporary seclusion for the purpose of ascertaining whether a man was really a leper (Lev 13:4 ff.), but to the permanent separation from society, in which the leper was virtually a prisoner, not daring to expose himself to the public gaze (Job 31:34).
Possibly however the last line of the verse is not literal but metaphorical, describing the hopelessness of his condition as a prisoner who cannot escape. Cp. Job 3:23; Job 13:27; Job 19:8; Lam 3:7.
St Luke seems to allude to this verse in his narrative of the Crucifixion, ch. Luk 23:49.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me – The same ground of complaint, or expression of the depth of affliction, occurs elsewhere, Psa 31:11; Psa 38:11; Psa 69:8. See also Job 19:13-17.
Thou hast made me an abomination unto them – As something which they would avoid, or from which they would revolt and turn away – as we turn away from the body of a dead man, or from an offensive object. The word means properly an object to be detested or abominated, as things unclean, Gen 43:32; or as idolatry, 1Ki 14:24; 2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 23:13.
I am shut up – As in prison; to wit, by disease, as when one is confined to his house.
And I cannot come forth – I cannot leave my couch, my room, my house. Compare Job 12:14.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 88:8
I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.
The imprisoning power of suffering
I. Suffering always shuts us up to ourselves. It does this in two ways, it destroys both the disposition and the capacity to go out into society. Suffering isolates, it throws us back upon Ourselves, and makes us feel our absolute lonelihood. This is often–
1. Spiritually necessary.
2. Spiritually beneficent.
II. Suffering sometimes shuts us up to God. When shut up to ourselves, we are often urged into the conscious presence of God. God is better seen and heard in solitude than in society. I am not alone, the Father is with me. Enter into your closet, and shut your door, etc.
III. Suffering must shut us up to the grave. Elsewhere the writer says, My life draweth nigh unto the grave. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 8. Thou hast made me an abomination] This verse has been supposed to express the state of a leper, who, because of the infectious nature of his disease, is separated from his family – is abominable to all, and at last shut up in a separate house, whence he does not come out to mingle with society.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
I am so sad a spectacle of thy vengeance that my friends avoid and detest me, lest by conversing with me they should either be filled with terrors, which men naturally abhor, or be made partakers of my guilt or plagues.
I am shut up; either in the pit or deep, mentioned Psa 88:6, or in my own house or chamber, being afraid or ashamed to go abroad.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8. Both cut off from sympathyand made hateful to friends (Ps31:11).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me,…. His familiar friends, who were well known to him, and he to them: it is a mercy and privilege to have good acquaintance, and hearty faithful friends, to converse and advise with, whether about things civil or religious; and it is an affliction to be deprived of them; and oftentimes in distress and adversity they drop and fail, which is an additional trouble: this was the ease of Job and of David,
Job 19:13 and here of Heman, who attributes it to God, as done by him; as also Job does, in the place referred to; for as it is the Lord that gives favour in the sight of men, he can take it away when he pleases: this is true of Christ, and the like is said of him,
Ps 69:8, and by his “acquaintance”, familiars, and friends, may be meant his apostles, who, upon his being apprehended, forsook him, and fled; who, though they were not all alienated in their affections, yet stood at a distance from him; Peter, though he followed him, it was afar off, and at last he denied him; and others of acquaintance and intimates stood afar off, beholding was done to him on the cross; and his familiar friend, Judas, lifted up his heel against him, and basely betrayed him, Mt 26:50,
thou hast made me an abomination unto them; to some of them, as to Judas, and to many that hosanna’d him into Jerusalem, and within a few days cried “Crucify him, crucify him”, Mt 21:9 compare with this Isa 53:3.
I am shut up, and I cannot come forth; the Targum renders it,
“shut up in the house of prison,”
in a prison; and so some literally understand it of the author of the psalm being in a prison, or dungeon, in the time of the captivity: but it is rather to be understood of some bodily disease, by which he was detained a prisoner at home, and of his being bound in fetters, and held in the cords of affliction; which was as a prison to him, and in which when the Lord “shuts up a man, there can be no opening”,
Job 36:8, or else of soul troubles, being in great darkness and desertion; so that his soul was as in a prison, and could not come forth in the free exercise of grace, and needed the free Spirit of God to set him at liberty; see Ps 142:7, this may be applied to Christ, when in the hands of Judas, and the hand of soldiers with him, who took him, and bound him, and led him to the high priest; and when he was encompassed with bulls of Bashan, and enclosed by the assembly of the wicked, as he hung on the cross, Ps 22:12.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The octastichs are now followed by hexastichs which belong together in pairs. The complaint concerning the alienation of his nearest relations sounds like Job 19:13., but the same strain is also frequently heard in the earlier Psalms written in times of suffering, e.g., Psa 31:9. He is forsaken by all his familiar friends (not: acquaintances, for signifies more than that), he is alone in the dungeon of wretchedness, where no one comes near him, and whence he cannot make his escape. This sounds, according to Lev. 13, very much like the complaint of a leper. The Book of Leviticus there passes over from the uncleanness attending the beginning of human life to the uncleanness of the most terrible disease. Disease is the middle stage between birth and death, and, according to the Eastern notion, leprosy is the worst of all diseases, it is death itself clinging to the still living man (Num 12:12), and more than all other evils a stroke of the chastening hand of God ( ), a scourge of God ( ). The man suspected of having leprosy was to be subjected to a seven days’ quarantine until the determination of the priest’s diagnosis; and if the leprosy was confirmed, he was to dwell apart outside the camp (Lev 13:46), where, though not imprisoned, he was nevertheless separated from his dwelling and his family (cf. Job, at Job 19:19), and if a man of position, would feel himself condemned to a state of involuntary retirement. It is natural to refer the , which is closely connected with , to this separation. , Psa 88:10, instead of , as in Psa 6:8; Psa 31:10: his eye has languished, vanished away ( of the same root as tabescere , cognate with the root of , Psa 68:3), in consequence of (his) affliction. He calls and calls upon Jahve, stretches out ( , expandere , according to the Arabic, more especially after the manner of a roof) his hands ( palmas ) towards Him, in order to shield himself from His wrath and to lead Him compassionately to give ear to him. In Psa 88:11-13 he bases his cry for help upon a twofold wish, viz., to become an object of the miraculous help of God, and to be able to praise Him for it. Neither of these wishes would be realized if he were to die; for that which lies beyond this life is uniform darkness, devoid of any progressive history. With alternates (sing. ), the relaxed ones, i.e., shades ( ) of the nether world. With reference to instead of , vid., Ewald, 337, b. Beside (Job 10:21.) stands , the land of forgetfulness ( ), where there is an end of all thinking, feeling, and acting (Ecc 9:5-6, Ecc 9:10), and where the monotony of death, devoid of thought and recollection, reigns. Such is the representation given in the Old Testament of the state beyond the present, even in Ecclesiastes, and in the Apocrypha (Sir. 17:27f. after Isa 38:18.; Baruch 2:17f.); and it was obliged to be thus represented, for in the New Testament not merely the conception of the state after death, but this state itself, is become a different one.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
8 Thou hast removed my acquaintances from me. He was now destitute of all human aid, and that also he attributes to the anger of God, in whose power it is either to bend the hearts of men to humanity, or to harden them, and render them cruel. This is a point well worthy of our attention; for unless we bear in mind that our destitution of human aid in any case is owing to God’s withdrawing his hand, we agitate ourselves without end or measure. We may indeed justly complain of the ingratitude or cruelty of men whenever they defraud us of the just claims of duty which we have upon them; but still this will avail us nothing, unless we are thoroughly convinced that God, being displeased with us, takes away the means of help which he had destined for us; just as it is easy for him, whenever he pleases, to incline the hearts of all men to stretch forth their hand to succor us. The prophet, as an additional and still more grievous element in his distressed condition, tells us that his friends abhorred him. (512) Finally, he concludes by observing, that he could perceive no way of escape from his calamities: I am shut up that I cannot go forth. (513)
(512) This verse has been supposed to contain a reference to the condition of the leper under the law, which much resembled the picture here drawn. חפשי, chophshi, from חפש, chophash, “is free, ” says Hammond, (“in opposition to servitude,) manumitted, set at liberty The use of this word may more generally be taken from 2Ch 26:21, where of Uzziah, being a leper, it is said, that he dwelt, בית החפשית, ‘in an house of freedom, for he was cut off from the house of the Lord.’ The meaning is, that after the manner of the lepers, he was excluded from the temple, and dwelt, בר מן ירושלם, saith the Chaldee, there, in some place without Jerusalem, which is therefore called the ‘house of freedom,’ because such as were there were exempt from the common affairs, and shut up from the conversation of men. And in comparison with these, they that are, as it were, dead and laid in their graves, are here said to be free, i e. , removed from all the affairs and conversation of the world.”
(513) “This verse,” observes Dr Adam Clarke, “has been supposed to express the state of a leper, who, because of the infectious nature of his disease, is separated from his family, — is abominable to all, and at last shut up in a separate house, whence he does not come out to mingle with society.” “Heman means,” says Walford, “either that the character of his disease was such that men could not endure to be near him, or that the state of his mind was so disordered that he became wearisome and intolerable; perhaps he includes both.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(8) I am shut up.Not necessarily an actual imprisonment or incarceration on account of leprosy, but another figurative way of describing great trouble. Job. 19:8 seems to have been before the poet.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
8. Mine acquaintance The neighbouring nations. The psalmist is speaking from the soul of his people. The social aspect of his sufferings now appears.
An abomination unto them Abominations, the plural form, is intensive an assemblage of abominations. The hatred and loathing contempt of the neighbouring nations developed fearfully against the Hebrews at the time of their fall by the Chaldeans. See Psa 137:7; Eze 26:2; Zep 2:8-9; Lam 3:14.
I am shut up, and I cannot come forth An unquestionable description of prison life, fitly applying to King Jehoiachin, who passed thirty-six years of the captivity in a Babylonian prison. 2Ki 24:12 ; 2Ki 24:15; 2Ki 25:27-30; Jer 52:31-34. See Lam 3:6-9
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 88:8. I am shut up, and I cannot come forth This is the description of a person confined for leprosy, which causes him to be avoided, as a subject of abhorrence even to all his friends.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 88:8 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: [I am] shut up, and I cannot come forth.
Ver. 8. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance, &c. ] Job and David complain of the like misery. Optimum solatium sodalitium; but woe to him that is alone.
I am shut up
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
put: Psa 88:18, Psa 31:11, Psa 143:4, 1Sa 23:18-20, Job 19:13-19, Joh 11:57
made: Isa 49:7, Isa 63:3, Zec 11:8, Mat 27:21-25, Joh 15:23, Joh 15:24
I am shut: Job 12:14, Job 19:8, Lam 3:7-9
Reciprocal: Gen 37:24 – the pit Job 30:10 – abhor me Psa 22:6 – a reproach Psa 31:8 – shut me Psa 142:4 – but there was Pro 19:7 – the brethren Mar 14:50 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 88:8-9. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me I can have no more familiarity or intercourse with my friends than if I were in another world; for thy providence hath removed, or rendered them incapable, or disinclined, to be serviceable to me. Thou hast made me an abomination unto them They are not only shy, but weary of me; and I am looked upon by them, not only with contempt, but with abhorrence. Reader, do not think it strange if thou should be called to encounter such a trial as this, since Heman, who was so famed for wisdom, was thus neglected when the world frowned upon him, and despised as a broken vessel, in which is no pleasure. I am shut up A close prisoner under the arrest of the divine wrath; I cannot come forth There being no way of escape open. He therefore lies down and sinks under his troubles, because he sees not any probability of getting out of them. Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction But though I thus give vent to my grief, my troubled spirit receives no relief thereby: nevertheless, I have called daily upon thee My weeping has not hindered my praying. I have stretched out my hands unto thee For help and deliverance, though hitherto without effect, for thou dost not hear nor answer me.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
88:8 Thou hast put away mine {f} acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: {g} [I am] shut up, and I cannot come forth.
(f) He attributes the loss and displeasure of his friends to God’s providence by which he partly punishes and partly tries his.
(g) I see no end to my sorrows.