10 Are the dead a live audience for your miracles? Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you? 11 Does your love make any difference in a graveyard? Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell? 12 Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark, your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory? 13 I'm standing my ground, God, shouting for help, at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak. 14 Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear? Why do you make yourself scarce? 15 For as long as I remember I've been hurting; I've taken the worst you can hand out, and I've had it. 16 Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life; I'm bleeding, black and blue. 17 You've attacked me fiercely from every side, raining down blows till I'm nearly dead. 18 You made lover and neighbor alike dump me; the only friend I have left is Darkness.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Psalm 88:10-18
Commentary on Psalm 88:10-18
(Read Psalm 88:10-18)
Departed souls may declare God's faithfulness, justice, and lovingkindness; but deceased bodies can neither receive God's favours in comfort, nor return them in praise. The psalmist resolved to continue in prayer, and the more so, because deliverance did not come speedily. Though our prayers are not soon answered, yet we must not give over praying. The greater our troubles, the more earnest and serious we should be in prayer. Nothing grieves a child of God so much as losing sight of him; nor is there any thing he so much dreads as God's casting off his soul. If the sun be clouded, that darkens the earth; but if the sun should leave the earth, what a dungeon would it be! Even those designed for God's favours, may for a time suffer his terrors. See how deep those terrors wounded the psalmist. If friends are put far from us by providences, or death, we have reason to look upon it as affliction. Such was the calamitous state of a good man. But the pleas here used were peculiarly suited to Christ. And we are not to think that the holy Jesus suffered for us only at Gethsemane and on Calvary. His whole life was labour and sorrow; he was afflicted as never man was, from his youth up. He was prepared for that death of which he tasted through life. No man could share in the sufferings by which other men were to be redeemed. All forsook him, and fled. Oftentimes, blessed Jesus, do we forsake thee; but do not forsake us, O take not thy Holy Spirit from us.