Psalms 88:1 This Psalm is written under feelings of affliction and deep heaviness of spirit. But its peculiarity is not that it is written under these feelings, but that these feelings are never once interrupted or relieved throughout it. Other psalms are expressions of grief, but they rise to joy e... [ Continue Reading ]
Psalms 88:5 The freedom of which the author of this Psalm writes so despairingly must have been, for him at least, a freedom of isolation, of solitariness, of exile and expulsion, rather than of release, independence, and joy. I. We are all conscious of the possibility of a freedom which should hav... [ Continue Reading ]
Psalms 88:15 What is it that the psalmist declares of himself in these words but that God's judgments have always and habitually possessed his mind; that the fear of them has hung like a weight upon him; that even from his youth it has been present with him? If we look into any books of prayers or... [ Continue Reading ]
Psalms 88:18 I. Look at the threefold loss bewailed in the text. There are, or ought to be, three circles round every man like the belts or rings round a planet: love, friendship, and acquaintanceship. Love is the nearest, while, at the same time, it lends its value to the other two. Friendship and... [ Continue Reading ]