Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Psalms 88:5

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Psalms 88:5. Free among the dead — במתים צפשי bammethim chophshi, I rather think, means stripped among the dead. Both the fourth and fifth verses seem to allude to a field of battle: the slain and the wounded, are found scattered over the plain; the spoilers come among them, and strip, not only the dead, but those also who appear to be mortally wounded, and cannot recover, and are so feeble as not to be able to resist. Hence the psalmist says, "I am counted with them that go down into the pit; I am as a man that hath no strength," Psalms 88:4. And I am stripped among the dead, like the mortally wounded (חללים chalalim) that lie in the grave. "Free among the dead," inter mortuos liber, has been applied by the fathers to our Lord's voluntary death: all others were obliged to die, he alone gave up his life, and could take it again, John 10:18. He went into the grave, and came out when he chose. The dead are bound in the grave; he was free, and not obliged to continue in that state as they were.

They are cut off from thy hand. — An allusion to the roll in which the general has the names of all that compose his army under their respective officers. And when one is killed, he is erased from this register, and remembered no more, as belonging to the army; but his name is entered among those who are dead, in a separate book. This latter is termed the black book, or the book of death; the other is called the book of life, or the book where the living are enrolled. From this circumstance, expressed in different parts of the sacred writings, the doctrine of unconditional reprobation and election has been derived. How wonderful!

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Psalms 88:0 Darkness and despair

Overcome with trials and seeing no way out of the situation, the writer prays desperately to God (1-2). He sees himself as being close to death, with no way of being rescued (3-5). He feels as if he has been left to die by both God and friends (6-8). He wants to experience God’s saving power now, while he is still alive, for it will be too late when he is dead (9-12).
Looking back, the writer sees that all his life he has had nothing but suffering, yet God still seems to ignore him. In fact, it seems that God deliberately attacks him, crushing him with sorrow and taking away from him even the comfort of friends. In spite of this, he does not turn away from God, but brings his burden to him daily (13-18).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

THE PSALMIST’S CRY TO GOD

“Oh Jehovah, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee. Let my prayer enter into thy presence; Incline thine ear unto my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, And my life draweth nigh unto Sheol. I am reckoned with them that go down into the pit; I am as a man that hath no help, Cast off among the dead, Like the slain that lie in the grave, Whom thou rememberest no more, And they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, In dark places in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, And thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. (Selah) Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction.”

We have never read a passage describing the approach of death any more impressive than this one. “Sheol” (Psalms 88:3); “the pit” (Psalms 88:4); “among the dead” (Psalms 88:5); “the grave” (Psalms 88:5); “the lowest pit” (Psalms 88:6); “dark places” (Psalms 88:7); and “the deeps” (Psalms 88:7) are seven synonyms for the realm of the dead, or Hades; and the mind of the psalmist seems utterly overcome with the gloom of approaching death.

“O God of my salvation” Surely this is an exclamation of faith in God, and the very fact of the psalmist’s turning to God in prayer is an indelible mark of trust and devotion.

“I am reckoned with them that go down into the pit” The psalmist here says that people have already written him off as a dead man. In the sixty-four years of the ministry of this writer, he has often called upon terminally ill persons who had indeed been “accounted as already dead” by members of their family and the community. This psalmist was in such a tragic condition.

“Whom thou rememberest no more… cut off from thy hand” The attitude here is that even God will remember him no more when death comes, and that God Himself will not do anything for him in the grave. The vast difference between the near-hopelessness of the Old Testament saint and the New Testament believer in Christ is dramatically emphasized by such statements as these.

“Thy wrath lieth hard upon me” Although the psalmist ascribes his condition to the wrath of God, he makes no mention of sins and does not ask forgiveness.

“Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me… made me an abomination unto them” This is one of the lines in the psalm that seems to picture the repulsiveness of lepers. When this writer visited a leper compound near Pusan, Korea, in 1953, it exhibited the most repulsive and pitiful spectacle of human misery and wretchedness that the mind can imagine. One looked in horror upon wretched human bodies with lips, eyelids, nose, ears, fingers, etc. missing because of disease, the horrible odor of the “compound,” the terribly inadequate tent-shacks built by the lepers themselves from cardboard, tin, brush, scrap lumber, anything, and the “water supply” nothing but a polluted ditch nearby. The food supply was from an occasional garbage truck that dumped all kinds of waste near the camp. The soul-chilling memory of that experience still remains with this writer almost forty years afterward!

Did any of the inmates of that “compound” have loved ones who visited them? My host chaplain assured me that they were already accounted as dead by both family and the community. The verses of this psalm bring vividly to memory what was seen in that dreadful “compound.”

“I am shut up, and cannot come forth” “These words have been interpreted to mean that the psalmist was a leper, and therefore cut off from society and the public worship of God (Leviticus 13:1-8; Leviticus 13:45-46).”The Layman’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, p. 125.

“Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction” This also describes what happens in the disease of leprosy. The loss of eyelids exposes the eye, not only to all kinds of atmospheric debris, but also to harsh sunlight with the eventual loss or drastic reduction of eyesight.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Free among the dead - Luther renders this, “I lie forgotten among the dead.” DeWette renders it, “Pertaining to the dead - (den Todten angehorend) - stricken down, like the slain, I lie in the grave,” and explains it as meaning, “I am as good as dead.” The word rendered “free” - חפשׁי chophshı̂y - means properly, according to Gesenius (Lexicon),

(1) prostrate, weak, feeble;

(2) free, as opposed to a slave or a captive;

(3) free from public taxes or burdens.

The word is translated “free” in Exodus 21:2, Exodus 21:5,Exodus 21:26-27; Deuteronomy 15:12-13, Deuteronomy 15:18; 1 Samuel 17:25; Job 3:19; Job 39:5; Isaiah 58:6; Jeremiah 34:9-11, Jeremiah 34:14; and at liberty in Jeremiah 34:16. It occurs nowhere else except in this verse. In all these places (except in 1 Samuel 17:25, where it refers to a house or family made free, and Job 39:5, where it refers to the freedom of the wild ass), it denotes the freedom of one who had been a servant or slave. In Job 3:19, it has reference to the grave, and to the fact that the grave delivers a slave or servant from obligation to his master: “And the servant is free from his master.” This is the idea, I apprehend, here. It is not, as DeWette supposes, that he was weak and feeble, as the spirits of the departed are represented to be (compare the notes at Isaiah 14:9-11), but that the dead are made free from the burdens, the toils, the calamities, the servitudes of life; that they are like those who are emancipated from bondage (compare Job 7:1-2; Job 14:6); that death comes to discharge them, or to set them at liberty. So the psalmist applies the expression here to himself, as if he had already reached that point; as if it were so certain that he must die that he could speak of it as if it had occurred; as if he were actually in the condition of the dead. The idea is that he was to all appearance near the grave, and that there was no hope of his recovery. It is not here, however, the idea of release or emancipation which was mainly before his mind, or any idea of consolation as from that, but it is the idea of death - of hopeless disease that must end in death. This he expresses in the usual language; but it is evident that he did not admit any comfort into his mind from the idea of freedom in the grave.

Like the slain that lie in the grave - When slain in battle. They are free from the perils and the toils of life; they are emancipated from its cares and dangers. Death is freedom; and it is possible to derive solace from that idea of death, as Job did Job 3:19; but the psalmist here, as remarked above, did not so admit that idea into his mind as to be comforted by it.

Whom thou rememberest no more - As if they were forgotten by thee; as if they were no longer the object of thy care. They are suffered to lie and waste away, with no care on thy part to restore them to life, or to preserve them from offensiveness and decay. So the great, the beautiful, and the good lie neglected in the grave.

And they are cut off from thy hand - Margin, “by.” The Hebrew is literally “from thy hand,” but still the idea is that it was by the agency of God. They had been cut down, and were forgotten - as if God regarded them no more. So we shall all moulder in the grave - in that deep, dark, cold, silent, repulsive abode, as if even God had forgotten us.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

5Free 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 business which engages human life, and, as it were, cut off from the world. The refined interpretation of Augustine, that Christ is here described, and that he is said to be free among the dead, because he obtained the victory over death by a special privilege, that it might not have dominion over him, has no connection with the meaning of the passage. ⁽⁵¹⁰⁾ The prophet is rather to be understood as affirming, that having finished the course of this present life, his mind had become disengaged from all worldly solicitude; his afflictions having deprived him of all feeling. ⁽⁵¹¹⁾ In the next place, comparing himself with those who have been wounded, he bewails his condition as worse than if, enfeebled by calamities, he were going down to death by little and little; for we are naturally inspired with horror at the prospect of a violent death.

What he adds, that he is forgotten of 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 the Divine protection than the living. Even wicked Balaam, whose purpose it 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 man after he is dead, might seem to be the language of a heathen. To this it may be answered, That the prophet speaks according to the opinion of the generality of men; just as the Scriptures, in like manner, when treating of the providence of God, accommodate their style to the state of the world as presented to the eye, because our thoughts ascend only by slow degrees to the future and invisible world. I, however, think, that he rather gave utterance to those confused conceptions which arise in the mind of a man under affliction, than that he had an eye to the opinion of the ignorant and uninstructed part of mankind. Nor is it wonderful that a man endued with the Spirit of God was, as it were, so stunned and stupified when sorrow overmastered him, as to allow unadvised words to escape from his lips. Although faith in the truth that God extends his care both to the living and the dead is deeply rooted in the hearts of all his genuine servants, yet sorrow often so overclouds their minds as to exclude from them for the time all remembrance of his providence. From perusing the complaints of Job, we may perceive, that when the minds of the godly are preoccupied with sorrow, they do not immediately pierce to the consideration of the secret providence of God, which yet has been before the subject of their careful meditation, and the truth of which they bear engraven on their hearts. Although the prophet, then, was persuaded that the dead also are under the Divine protection, yet, in the first paroxysm of his grief, he spoke less advisedly than he ought to have done; for the light of faith was, as it were, extinguished in him, although, as we shall see, it soon after shone forth. This it will be highly useful particularly to observe, that, should we be at any time weakened by temptation, we may, nevertheless, be kept from falling into despondency or despair.

(510) גבר geber, therefore, denotes a man “when in vigorous manhood; who is neither a boy nor an old man, yet it is applied to Balaam, when old, in Numbers 24:4.” — Bythner

(511) “‘Free among the dead,’ inter mortuos liber, ” says Dr Adam Clarke, “has been applied by the Fathers to our Lord’s voluntary death: all others were obliged to die; He alone gave up his life, and could take it again, (John 10:18.) He went into the grave and came out when he chose. The dead are bound in the grave: He was free, and not obliged to continue in that state as they were.”

Smith's Bible Commentary

Psalms 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, there's no answer, this is it, this is the end, then you can read Psalms 88:1-18 . And you can, you know... it'll say, well, yes, that's right. I have, man, that's... I'm there, you know.

O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; For my soul is full of trouble: and my life draws near to the grave. I am counted with them that go down to the pit: I am as a man that has no strength: Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom you remember no more: and they are cut off from your hand. You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, and in the deeps. Your wrath lies hard upon me, and you've afflicted me with all the waves. You have put away my acquaintance far from me; you have made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. My eye mourns by reason of the affliction: LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto you. Will you show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall your lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or your faithfulness in destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee. LORD, why do you cast off my soul? why do you hide your face from me? I am afflicted, I'm ready to die from my youth up: and while I suffer your terrors I am distracted. Your fierce wrath goes over me; your terrors have cut me off. They came round about me daily like water; they encircled me all about together. Lover and friend have you put far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness ( Psalms 88:1-18 ).

Not even a glimmer of hope. Most of the psalms that start out like this at the last it says, "But I know, Lord, that You will deliver Your servant, you know. And those that call upon Thee," and all. And usually the last verse, even in some of these dismal psalms, there's a little light at the end of the tunnel, but not here. This thing starts in the dark and ends in the dark. It just he's down and he's not going to come out of it during this psalm. It's just one of complete... it's a total downer. So you might just inscribe that one, "the total downer."

But you come out into the next psalm and you're singing. "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

1. The sufferer’s affliction 88:1-9a

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Psalms 88

This is one of the saddest of the psalms. One writer called it the "darkest corner of the Psalter." [Note: R. E. O. White, "Psalms," in the Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, p. 388.] It is an individual lament. It relates the prayer of a person who suffered intensely over a long time yet continued to trust in the Lord.

"Psalms 88 is an embarrassment to conventional faith. It is the cry of a believer (who sounds like Job) whose life has gone awry, who desperately seeks contact with Yahweh, but who is unable to evoke a response from God. This is indeed ’the dark night of the soul,’ when the troubled person must be and must stay in the darkness of abandonment, utterly alone." [Note: Brueggemann, p. 78.]

Heman was a wise man who was a singer in David’s service and a contemporary of Asaph and Ethan (1 Kings 4:31; 1 Chronicles 15:19; 1 Chronicles 16:41-42; 1 Chronicles 25:1; 1 Chronicles 25:6). The sons of Korah arranged and or sang this psalm.

"The emotions and suffering expressed by the psalmist are close in spirit to those of Psalms 22. In the tradition of the church, these psalms were linked together in the Scripture reading on Good Friday." [Note: VanGemeren, p. 564.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

a

Evidently the psalmist’s suffering had resulted in his friends separating from him. God, too, had apparently abandoned him. Heman felt very close to death. He viewed his condition as coming directly from God. He felt alone and miserable.

"One of the first steps toward revival is to be completely transparent when we pray and not tell the Lord anything that is not true or that we do not really mean." [Note: Wiersbe, The . . . Wisdom . . ., p. 250.]

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Free among the dead,.... If he was a freeman, it was only among the dead, not among the living; if he was free of any city, it was of the city of the dead; he looked upon himself as a dead man, as one belonging to the state of the dead, who are free from all relations, and from all business and labour, and removed from all company and society; he thought himself quite neglected, of whom there was no more care and notice taken than of a dead man:

like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more; in a providential way, as in life, to clothe them, and feed them, and protect and preserve them; in which sense God is said to be mindful of men, Psalms 8:4, who when dead have no need to be minded, and remembered in such a manner; otherwise God does remember the dead, and takes care of their dust, and will raise them again; and especially he remembers his own people, those that sleep in Jesus, who will be thought of in the resurrection morn, and will be raised first, and brought with Christ; see Job 14:13,

and they are cut off from thy hand; that is, the slain that lie in the grave, the dead that are buried there; these are cut off from the hand of Providence, they needing no supplies from thence as in the time of life. The Targum is,

"and they are separated from the face of thy majesty.''

or "they are cut off by thine hand" i; by the immediate hand of God, in a judicial way; so Christ in his death was like one of these, he was cut off in a judicial way, not for his own sins, but for the transgressions of his people, Isaiah 53:8.

i מידך "manu tua", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Amama.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

A song or psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief musician

upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite.

      1 O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee:   2 Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry;   3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.   4 I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength:   5 Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.   6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.   7 Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.   8 Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.   9 Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.

      It should seem, by the titles of this and the following psalm, that Heman was the penman of the one and Ethan of the other. There were two, of these names, who were sons of Zerah the son of Judah, 1 Chronicles 2:4; 1 Chronicles 2:6. There were two others famed for wisdom, 1 Kings 4:31, where, to magnify Solomon's wisdom, he is said to be wiser than Heman and Ethan. Whether the Heman and Ethan who were Levites and precentors in the songs of Zion were the same we are not sure, nor which of these, nor whether any of these, were the penmen of these psalms. There was a Heman that was one of the chief singers, who is called the king's seer, or prophet, in the words of God (1 Chronicles 25:5); it is probable that this also was a seer, and yet could see no comfort for himself, an instructor and comforter of others, and yet himself putting comfort away from him. The very first words of the psalm are the only words of comfort and support in all the psalm. There is nothing about him but clouds and darkness; but, before he begins his complaint, he calls God the God of his salvation, which intimates both that he looked for salvation, bad as things were, and that he looked up to God for the salvation and depended upon him to be the author of it. Now here we have the psalmist,

      I. A man of prayer, one that gave himself to prayer at all times, but especially now that he was in affliction; for is any afflicted? let him pray. It is his comfort that he had prayed; it is his complaint that, notwithstanding his prayer, he was still in affliction. He was, 1. Very earnest in prayer: "I have cried unto thee (Psalms 88:1; Psalms 88:1), and have stretched out my hands unto thee (Psalms 88:9; Psalms 88:9), as one that would take hold on thee, and even catch at the mercy, with a holy fear of coming short and missing of it." 2. He was very frequent and constant in prayer: I have called upon thee daily (Psalms 88:9; Psalms 88:9), nay, day and night,Psalms 88:1; Psalms 88:1. For thus men ought always to pray, and not to faint; God's own elect cry day and night to him, not only morning and evening, beginning every day and every night with prayer, but spending the day and night in prayer. This is indeed praying always; and then we shall speed in prayer, when we continue instant in prayer. 3. He directed his prayer to God, and from him expected and desired an answer (Psalms 88:2; Psalms 88:2): "Let my prayer come before thee, to be accepted of thee, not before men, to be seen of them, as the Pharisees' prayers." He does not desire that men should hear them, but, "Lord, incline thy ear unto my cry, for to that I refer myself; give what answer to it thou pleasest."

      II. He was a man of sorrows, and therefore some make him, in this psalm, a type of Christ, whose complaints on the cross, and sometimes before, were much to the same purport with this psalm. He cries out (Psalms 88:3; Psalms 88:3): My soul is full of troubles; so Christ said, Now is my soul troubled; and, in his agony, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death, like the psalmist's here, for he says, My life draws nigh unto the grave. Heman was a very wise man, and a very good man, a man of God, and a singer too, and one may therefore suppose him to have been a man of a cheerful spirit, and yet now a man of sorrowful spirit, troubled in mind, and upon the brink of despair. Inward trouble is the sorest trouble, and that which, sometimes, the best of God's saints and servants have been severely exercised with. The spirit of man, of the greatest of men, will not always sustain his infirmity, but will droop and sink under it; who then can bear a wounded spirit?

      III. He looked upon himself as a dying man, whose heart was ready to break with sorrow (Psalms 88:5; Psalms 88:5): "Free among the dead (one of that ghastly corporation), like the slain that lie in the grave, whose rotting and perishing nobody takes notice of or is concerned for, nay, whom thou rememberest no more, to protect or provide for the dead bodies, but they become an easy prey to corruption and the worms; they are cut off from thy hand, which used to be employed in supporting them and reaching out to them; but, now there is no more occasion for this, they are cut off from it and cut off by it" (for God will not stretch out his hand to the grave,Job 30:24); "thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, as low as possible, my condition low, my spirits low, in darkness, in the deep (Psalms 88:6; Psalms 88:6), sinking, and seeing no way open of escape, brought to the last extremity, and ready to give up all for gone." Thus greatly may good men be afflicted, such dismal apprehensions may they have concerning their afflictions, and such dark conclusions may they sometimes be ready to make concerning the issue of them, through the power of melancholy and the weakness of faith.

      IV. He complained most of God's displeasure against him, which infused the wormwood and the gall into the affliction and the misery (Psalms 88:7; Psalms 88:7): Thy wrath lies hard upon me. Could he have discerned the favour and love of God in his affliction, it would have lain light upon him; but it lay hard, very hard, upon him, so that he was ready to sink and faint under it. The impressions of this wrath upon his spirits were God's waves with which he afflicted him, which rolled upon him, one on the neck of another, so that he scarcely recovered from one dark thought before he was oppressed with another; these waves beat against him with noise and fury; not some, but all, of God's waves were made use of in afflicting him and bearing him down. Even the children of God's love may sometimes apprehend themselves children of wrath, and no outward trouble can lie so hard upon them as that apprehension.

      V. It added to his affliction that his friends deserted him and made themselves strange to him. When we are in trouble it is some comfort to have those about us that love us, and sympathize with us; but this good man had none such, which gives him occasion, not to accuse them, or charge them with treachery, ingratitude, and inhumanity, but to complain to God, with an eye to his hand in this part of the affliction (Psalms 88:8; Psalms 88:8): Thou hast put away my acquaintance far from me. Providence had removed them, or rendered them incapable of being serviceable to him, or alienated their affections from him; for every creature is that to us (and no more) that God makes it to be. If our old acquaintance be shy of us, and those we expect kindness from prove unkind, we must bear that with the same patient submission to the divine will that we do other afflictions, Job 19:13. Nay, his friends were not only strange to him, but even hated him, because he was poor and in distress: "Thou hast made me an abomination to them; they are not only shy of me, but sick of me, and I am looked upon by them, not only with contempt, but with abhorrence." Let none think it strange concerning such a trial as this, when Heman, who was so famed for wisdom, was yet, when the world frowned upon him, neglected, as a vessel in which is no pleasure.

      VI. He looked upon his case as helpless and deplorable: "I am shut up, and I cannot come forth, a close prisoner, under the arrests of divine wrath, and no way open of escape." He therefore lies down and sinks under his troubles, because he sees not any probability of getting out of them. For thus he bemoans himself (Psalms 88:9; Psalms 88:9): My eye mourneth by reason of affliction. Sometimes giving vent to grief by weeping gives some ease to a troubled spirit. Yet weeping must not hinder praying; we must sow in tears: My eye mourns, but I cry unto thee daily. Let prayers and tears go together, and they shall be accepted together. I have heard thy prayers, I have seen thy tears.