Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 88:15

"I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: While I suffer thy terrors I am distracted." — Psalms 88:15 (ASV)

I am afflicted and ready to die - I am so afflicted - so crushed with sorrow and trouble - that my strength is nearly gone, and I can endure it only a little longer.

From my youth up - That is, for a long time; so long, that the remembrance of it seems to go back to my very childhood. My whole life has been a life of trouble and sorrow, and I do not have strength to bear it longer. It may have been literally true that the author of the psalm had been a man always afflicted; or, this may be the language of strong emotion, meaning that his sufferings had been of such long continuance that they seemed to him to have begun in his very boyhood.

While I suffer your terrors - I bear those things which produce terror or which fill my mind with alarm; namely, the fear of death and the dread of the future world.

I am distracted - I cannot compose and control my mind; I cannot pursue any settled course of thought; I cannot confine my attention to any one subject; I cannot reason calmly on the subject of affliction, on the divine government, or on the ways of God. I am distracted with contending feelings, with my pain, my doubts, and my fears - and I cannot think clearly of anything.

Such is often the case in sickness. Consequently, what we need to prepare us for sickness is a strong faith, built on a solid foundation while we are in health. This should be such an intelligent and firm faith that when the hour of sickness comes, we will have nothing else to do but to believe and to take the comfort of believing.

The bed of sickness is not the proper place to examine the evidences of religion; it is not the place to make preparation for death; not the proper place to become religious. Religion demands the best vigor of the intellect and the calmest state of the heart, and this great subject should be settled in our minds before we are sick - before we are laid on the bed of death.