Psalm 88

Psalm 88  •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 8
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We hear in this Psalm one of the cries of Him who cried to Him that was able to save Him from death (Heb. 5:77Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; (Hebrews 5:7)). It was uttered, it may be, some moment between His being seized in the garden and His cross. For then all had forsaken Him, and He Himself could not go forth (Psa. 88:8,17-188Thou 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. (Psalm 88:8)
17They came round about me daily like water; they compassed me about together. 18Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. (Psalm 88:17‑18)). The sentence of death was then eminently in Him, though all through life He had been a dying one (Psa. 88:33For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. (Psalm 88:3)) or “dying daily,” as the Apostle speaks. But “free among the dead” He especially was during this interval. And then for three hours of darkness, closed by the shedding of His blood or life, He was sustaining the judgment of sin from the bruising hand of a righteous God. For we observe, that through life, the sorrows of Jesus came from man because He was righteous. But at last He was under the bruising of God, because He was made sin for us. And during the three hours of darkness, He was where no kindly ray of the Divine countenance could enter, for it was sin which occupied the place, the victim who was “made sin for us,” and God could only retire and leave it all in darkness.
Jesus here pleads (see also Psa. 6:5; 30:9; 115:175For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? (Psalm 6:5)
9What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth? (Psalm 30:9)
17The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence. (Psalm 115:17)) to be delivered from death, on the ground that the dead could not praise God, nor the grave declare Him. For God is not the God of the dead but of the living. “The living, the living, he shall praise thee,” says Hezekiah, instructed of the Spirit to open his lips as one consciously in resurrection. And so Jesus cries for deliverance on this most blessed plea, that God is known not in death but in life. “I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”