And mine acquaintance into darkness. — This is an erroneous rendering. Rather, My acquaintance is darkness, or, darkness is my friend, having taken the place of those removed. The feeling resembles Job 17:14; or we may illustrate by Tennyson’s lines: —
“O sorrow, wilt thou live with me,
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom friend, and half my life?
As I confess it needs must be.”
Verse Psalms 88:18. _LOVER AND FRIEND_] I have no comfort, and neither _friend_ nor _neighbour_ to sympathize with me. _MINE ACQUAINTANCE INTO DARKNESS._] All have forsaken me; or מידעי מחשך _meyudd...
LOVER AND FRIEND HAST THOU PUT FAR FROM ME - That is, Thou hast so afflicted me that they have forsaken me. Those who professed to love me, and whom I loved - those whom I regarded as my friends, and...
Psalms 88 The Deepest Soul Misery Poured Out _ 1. In deepest misery and distress (Psalms 88:1)_ 2. Crying and no answer (Psalms 88:8) This is a Maschil Psalm by Heman the Ezrahite. See...
LXXXVIII. A LEPER'S PRAYER. This Ps. has striking peculiarities. The suffering here portrayed has been long and terrible. The Psalmist has been tormented by sickness from his youth (Psalms 88:15). Yah...
PUT FAR FROM ME. Compare Psalms 88:8, the corresponding member....
Death brings no hope. Will not God then listen to his prayer and grant him some relief in his extremity of suffering and solitude?...
Cp. Psalms 88:8; Psalms 38:11; Job 19:13. and _mine acquaintance_into _darkness_ A difficult phrase. Another possible rendering is, my familiar friends are darkness: darkness takes the place of frien...
AND MINE ACQUAINTANCE INTO DARKNESS— _My acquaintance are not to be seen._ Literally, _My acquaintance a place of darkness;_ Lost in darkness; vanished out of sight. REFLECTIONS.—1. The prayer of the...
PSALMS 88 DESCRIPTIVE TITLE The Anguished Cry of one Smitten and Forsaken. ANALYSIS Stanza I., Psalms 88:1-2, Urgent Prayer to be Heard. Stanzas II., III., IV., V., Psalms 88:3-4;...
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. LOVER AND FRIEND HAST THOU PUT FAR FROM ME, AND MINE ACQUAINTANCES INTO DARKNESS - literally, 'mine acquaintances .....
This is the saddest and most despairing of all the Pss. The writer is apparently the victim of some incurable disease like leprosy, with which he has been afflicted from his youth (Psalms 88:15), and...
Psalms 73:89 _GORDON CHURCHYARD_ DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN PSALMS 88 Jesus went into a town called Nain. Many of his *disciples and a lot of people went with him. Now when he came near to the gate...
_[Psalms 88:19]_ הִרְחַ֣קְתָּ מִ֭מֶּנִּי אֹהֵ֣ב וָ רֵ֑עַ...
Psalms 88:1 A PSALM which begins with "God of my salvation" and ends with "darkness" is an anomaly. All but unbroken gloom broods over it, and is densest at its close. The psalmist is so "weighed upon...
A CRY FROM THE WAVES Psalms 88:1 Most of the psalms which begin in sorrow end in exuberant joy and praise. This is an exception. There seems to be no break in the monotony of grief and despair. In Ps...
This is a song sobbing with sadness form beginning to end. It seems to have no gleam of light or of hope. Commencing with an appeal to Jehovah to hear, it proceeds to describe the terrible sorrows thr...
_Horn. Power and kingdom. (Worthington) --- He speaks like a virtuous Levite, who acknowledges that all good came from the Lord. (Haydock) --- He cannot speak of temporal blessings alone. (Berthier)_...
There is a great degree of earnestness in the sorrows, again repeated, through these verses. Jesus, from the moment of his birth to the cross, sanctified and set apart as he was, a Nazarite from the w...
REFLECTIONS SHALL I not ponder over the contents of this plaintive Psalm, and reflect on the sad cause of human misery? Day and night may tears run down, when the soul reviews the melancholy source of...
Psalms 88 puts the remnant under the deep and dreadful sense of a broken law, and God's fierce wrath, which, in justice comes upon those who have done so. It is not now outward sorrows or oppression o...
LOVER AND FRIEND HAST THOU PUT FAR FROM ME,.... This is mentioned in Psalms 88:8, and is here repeated; and the account is closed with it, to show that this was a most aggravating circumstance of his...
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, [and] mine acquaintance into darkness. Ver. 18. _Lover and friend, &c._] See Psalms 88:8, and mark how mournfully he concludeth; as doth also the Church, L...
_In the morning shall my prayer prevent thee_ That is, shall be offered to thee early, before the ordinary time of morning prayer, or before the dawning of the day, or the rising of the sun. The sense...
Lover and friend, all those who formerly were nearest and dearest to him. hast THOU PUT FAR FROM ME AND MINE ACQUAINTANCE, those whose confidence he had enjoyed, INTO DARKNESS, so that they were no lo...
A LAMENT IN THE MIDST OF SUFFERING AND TRIBULATION. A song or psalm for the sons of Korah, written by a member of this illustrious family of musicians, to the chief musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, fo...
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...
SEE POOLE ON "PSALMS 88:8"....
Psalms 88:18 Loved H157 (H8802) friend H7453 far H7368 (H8689) acquaintances H3045 (H8794) darkness H4285...
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...
A Song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief Musician upon Mahaloth Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite. I think that this is the darkest of all the Psalms; it has hardly a spot of light in...
CONTENTS: Lamentation over trouble and pleading with God for mercy. CHARACTERS: God, Psalmist. CONCLUSION: Sometimes the best of God's saints are severely exercised with the sorest of inward troubles...
Dr. Lightfoot affirms that this, and the eighty ninth psalm, were written by Heman and Ethan, sons of Zerah, or the Ezrahites mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2:6. Consequently, they lived about the time whe...
_Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness._ ON SORROW FOR THE DEATH OF FRIENDS I. The sorrow which we naturally feel when we are bereaved of dear and worthy fri...
_O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee._ A PORTRAIT OF A SUFFERING MAN I. Depicting his wretched state. He speaks of himself as “full of troubles,” satiated with sufferi...
PSALM PSALM—NOTE ON PSALMS 88:1. This is an individual lament. It is suited for a person who is so overwhelmed with troubles that even his friends shun him, and who suspects that the Lord has shunned...
PSALM—NOTE ON PSALMS 88:13 DARKNESS is the last word in the psalm. Yet the faithful know that there is no alternative but to keep seeking the Lord in prayer....
INTRODUCTION _Superscription.—“A Song or Psalm,” i.e._, combining the properties of both a Psalm and a song. _“For the sons of Korah_,” see Introduction to Psalms 42. “The expression, ‘To the Chief Mu...
EXPOSITION THE most mournful of all the psalms. After one almost formal "word of trust" (_Psalms 88:1_), the remainder is a continuous bitter cry of complaint, rising at times into expostulation (Psal...
Psa 88:1-18 is just a sad psalm, all the way through. There just seems to be no hope; it's just miserable. When you really are feeling lower than low, and you think there is absolutely no way out, the...
Job 19:12; Psalms 31:11; Psalms 38:11; Psalms 88:8...