Psalm 88
If we have read with profit the psalms which have been-bore us week by week, we have learned much of the experiences, the sorrows, dangers, persecutions and the hopes and prayers of those among the people of Israel who will seek God when they shall have gone in far greater numbers than now back to the land that He gave their fore-fathers.
Many of the psalms we have examined speak of the God-fearing Jews’ enemies, —enemies among their own people and the Gentiles, but Psalm 88 speaks of neither class. Every psalm and group or series of psalms was designed of God to foretell some part of the circumstances and feelings of those who will turn in heart to Him in the age to come.
Psalm 51 describes the sorrow and repentance of the Jews over the blood guiltless that is theirs through the cross of Christ, and Psalm 88 pictures their realization of the guilt of the whole nation on account of the broken law.
When God gave Israel the law (Exodus 20), and the statutes and judgments which occupy so much of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, they quickly turned to idols (Exodus 32), and not once only (see Amos 5:25, 26; Judges 2:12-19; Ezekiel 8, and many other passages). Thus they broke both the first and second commandments. And these early sins were quickly adopted by the nation; deer and deeper in transgression went Israel as is told out in such solemn scriptures as Isaiah 1; Amos 3 and 2 Kings 17:7-17. Other scriptures foretell the state of Israel in the future as worse than ever before.
Psalm 88 will have its season when the Lord has come to deliver the remnant of Judah and to set up His earthly kingdom. It will be then that the believing Jews will realize how the nation has offended God; their consciences will be thoroughly searched.
The ten commandments are “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not,” without any provision for passing over the transgressor. The great distance between themselves as Israelites and God, whose wrath they have incurred and whose severe judgment they deserve, must be realized bore they can enter into blessing.
Psalm 88 is addressed to the “Lord (Jehovah) God of my salvation,” so that there is a knowledge of and confidence in Him, but it is without a single word of comfort; for this we must look to the next-psalm.
ML05/17/1931