John Calvin Commentary Psalms 88

O Jehovah! God of my salvation! Let me particularly call your attention to what I have just stated: although the prophet simply, and without hyperbole, describes the agony he suffered from his great sorrows, his purpose was also to provide the afflicted with a model for prayer so that they might not lose heart under any adversities, however severe, that might happen to them.

We will soon hear him bursting out into vehement complaints because of the severity of his calamities. However, he appropriately strengthens himself with this brief introduction, so that, not carried away by the intensity of his feelings, he might avoid being accused of complaining and murmuring against God, instead of humbly supplicating Him for pardon.

By calling Him the God of his salvation, as if putting a bridle on himself, he restrains his excessive sorrow, shuts the door against despair, and strengthens and prepares himself for the endurance of the cross. When he speaks of his crying and persistence, he indicates the deep sincerity with which he prayed.

He may not, indeed, have actually cried out loudly; but he uses the word cry, with much propriety, to denote the great earnestness of his prayers. The same thing is implied when he tells us that he continued crying days and nights. Nor are the words before thee superfluous.

It is common for everyone to complain when overwhelmed by grief, but few of them pour out their groanings before God. Instead, the majority of people seek solitude so that they can murmur against Him and accuse Him of excessive severity, while others cry out into the air aimlessly. From this we understand that it is a rare virtue to set God before our eyes so that we may address our prayers to Him.

For my soul is filled with troubles. These words contain the excuse that the prophet pleads for the excess of his grief. They imply that his continued crying did not proceed from softness or unmanly weakness of spirit; rather, a due consideration of his condition would show that the immense accumulation of miseries with which he was oppressed was such that it might justly extort these lamentations from him.

Nor does he speak of only one kind of calamity, but of calamities so heaped one upon another that his heart was filled with sorrow until it could contain no more. He next particularly affirms that his life was not far from the grave. He pursues this idea and expresses it in more significant terms in the following verse, where he complains that he was, as it were, dead.

Although he still breathed 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, in preference to the word that simply signifies man, — to show more emphatically that his distresses were so great and crushing that they were sufficient to bring down the strongest man.

Free among the dead, lie the slain who lie in the grave. The prophet intended to express something more distressing and grievous than common death. First, he says that he was free among the dead because he was rendered unfit for all the affairs that engage human life and, as it were, cut off from the world.

The refined interpretation of Augustine—that Christ is described here and is said to be free among the dead because he obtained victory over death by a special privilege, so that it might not have dominion over him—has no connection with the meaning of the passage. The prophet should rather be understood as affirming that, having finished the course of this present life, his mind had become disengaged from all worldly anxieties, his afflictions having deprived him of all feeling. Next, comparing himself with those who have been wounded, he laments his condition as worse than if, weakened by calamities, he were going down to death little by little, for we are naturally filled with horror at the prospect of a violent death.

What he adds—that he is forgotten by God and cut off from his hand or guardianship—is apparently harsh and improper, since it is certain that the dead are no less under Divine protection than the living. Even the wicked Balaam, whose purpose was to turn light into darkness, was nevertheless constrained to cry out:

Let me die the death of the righteous,
and let my last end be like his (Numbers 23:10).

To say, then, that God is no longer mindful of a person after death might seem to be the language of a pagan. To this it may be answered that the prophet speaks according to the common opinion of people, just as the Scriptures, similarly, when discussing God’s providence, adapt their style to the state of the world as it appears to the eye, because our thoughts ascend only slowly to the future and invisible world.

I, however, think that he was instead giving voice to those confused thoughts that arise in the mind of a person under affliction, rather than considering the opinion of the ignorant and uninstructed among humankind. Nor is it surprising that a man endowed with the Spirit of God was, as it were, so stunned and stupefied when sorrow overcame him that he allowed unadvised words to escape his lips.

Although faith in the truth that God extends his care to both the living and the dead is deeply rooted in the hearts of all his genuine servants, sorrow often so overclouds their minds as to temporarily exclude from them all remembrance of his providence. From studying the complaints of Job, we can perceive that when the minds of the godly are preoccupied with sorrow, they do not immediately penetrate to consider the secret providence of God, which has previously been the subject of their careful meditation and the truth of which they bear engraved on their hearts.

Although the prophet, then, was convinced that the dead also are under Divine protection, yet in the first outburst of his grief, he spoke less carefully than he should have. For the light of faith was, as it were, extinguished in him, although, as we shall see, it soon after shone forth. It will be particularly useful to observe this, so that if we are ever weakened by temptation, we may still be kept from falling into despondency or despair.

Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit. The Psalmist now acknowledges more distinctly that whatever adversities he endured proceeded from the Divine hand. Indeed, no one will sincerely turn to God to seek relief without a previous conviction that it is the Divine hand which strikes him, and that nothing happens by chance. It is observable that the nearer the prophet approaches God, the more his grief is embittered, for nothing is more dreadful to the saints than the judgment of God.

Some translate the first clause of the seventh verse, Thy indignation hath approached upon me; and the Hebrew word סמך, samach, is sometimes to be taken in this sense. But from the context of the passage, it must necessarily be understood here, as in many other places, in the sense of to surround, or to lie heavy upon. For when the subject being discussed is a man sunk into a threefold grave, it would be too weak to speak of the wrath of God as merely approaching him.

The translation I have adopted is particularly suitable to the overall meaning of the text. It views the prophet as declaring that he sustained the whole burden of God’s wrath, seeing he was afflicted with His waves. Furthermore, as so dreadful a flood did not prevent him from lifting up his heart and prayers to God, we may learn from his example to cast the anchor of our faith and prayers directly into heaven in all the perils of shipwreck to which we may be exposed.

You have 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 fail to fulfill the duties they owe us; 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 reach out their hand to help us.

The prophet, as an additional and still more grievous element in his distressed condition, tells us that his friends abhorred him. 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.