1 Jehovah, God of my salvation,
By day, by night I cry before Thee.
2 Let my prayer come before Thy face,
Bow Thine ear to my shrill cry.
3 For sated with troubles is my soul,
And my life has drawn near to Sheol.
4 I am counted with those that have gone down to the pit,
I am become as a man without strength.
5 [I am] free among the dead,
Like the slain that lie in the grave,
Whom Thou rememberest no more,
But they are cut off from Thy hand.
6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the deeps.
7 Upon me Thy wrath presses hard,
And [with] all Thy breakers Thou hast afflicted [me]. Selah
8 Thou hast put my familiar friends far from me,
Thou hast made me an abomination to them,
I am shut up so that I cannot come forth.
9 My eye wastes away because of affliction,
I have called on Thee daily, Jehovah,
I have spread out my palms to Thee,
10 For the dead canst Thou do wonders?
Or can the shades arise [and] praise Thee? Selah.
11 In the grave can Thy loving-kindness be told,
And Thy faithfulness in destruction?
12 Can Thy wonders be made known in darkness,
And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, I have cried unto Thee, Jehovah,
And in the morning my prayer comes to meet Thee.
14 Why, Jehovah, dost Thou cast off my soul,
[And] hidest Thy face from me?
15 Afflicted am I and at the point of death from [my] youth,
I have borne Thy terrors [till] I am distracted.
16 Over me have Thy [streams of] wrath passed,
Thy horrors have cut me off.
17 They have compassed me about like waters all the day.
They have come round me together.
18 Thou hast put far from me lover and friend,
My familiar friends are--darkness.
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 by sore
distress," that he has neither definite petition for deliverance nor
hope. His cry to God is only a long-drawn complaint, which brings
no respite from his pains nor brightening of his spirit. But yet to
address God as the God of his salvation, to discern His hand in the
infliction of sorrows, is the operation of true though feeble faith.
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is the very spirit of
this psalm. It stands alone in the Psalter, which would be incomplete
as a mirror of phases of devout experience, unless it had one psalm
expressing trust which has ceased to ask or hope for the removal of
lifelong griefs, but still clasps God's hand even in the "darkness."
Such experience is comparatively rare, and is meant to be risen above.
Therefore this psalm stands alone. But it is not unexampled, and all
moods of the devout life would not find lyrical expression in the book
unless this deep note was once sounded.
It is useless to inquire what was the psalmist's affliction. His
language seems to point to physical disease, of long continuance
and ever threatening a fatal termination; but in all probability
sickness is a symbol here, as so often. What racked his sensitive
spirit matters little. The cry which his pains evoked is what we are
concerned with. There is little trace of strophical arrangement, and
commentators differ much in their disposition of the parts of the
psalm. But we venture to suggest a principle of division which has not
been observed, in the threefold recurrence of "I cry" or "I call,"
accompanied in each case by direct address to Jehovah. The resulting
division into three parts gives, first, the psalmist's description
of his hopeless condition as, in effect, already dead (vv. 1-8);
second, an expostulation with God on the ground that, if the psalmist
is actually numbered with the dead, he can no more be the object of
Divine help, nor bring God praise (vv. 9-12); and, third, a repetition
of the thoughts of the first part, with slight variation and addition.
The central portion of the first division is occupied with an expansion
of the thought that the psalmist is already as good as dead (vv. 3
_b_-6). The condition of the dead is drawn with a powerful hand, and the
picture is full of solemn grandeur and hopelessness. It is preceded in
vv. 1, 2, by an invocation which has many parallels in the psalms, but
which here is peculiarly striking. This saddest of them all has for its
first words the Name which ought to banish sadness. He who can call on
Jehovah as the God of his salvation possesses a charm which has power
to still agitation, and to flush despair with some light of hope as
from an unrisen sun. But this poet feels no warmth from the beams, and
the mists surge up, if not to hide the light, yet to obscure it. All
the more admirable, then, the persistence of his cry; and all the more
precious the lesson that Faith is not to let present experience limit
its conceptions. God is none the less the God of salvation and none the
less to be believed to be so, though no consciousness of His saving
power blesses the heart at the moment.
Ver. 1 _b_ is obscure. Psalm xxii. 2 and other places suggest that
the juxtaposition of day and night is meant to express the continuity
of the psalmist's prayer; but, as the text now stands, the first
part of the clause can only mean "In the time (day) when I cry,"
and the second has to be supplemented so as to read "[My cry comes]
before Thee." This gives a poor meaning, and there is probability
in the slight emendation on the word for _day_, which is required
in order to make it an adverb of time equivalent to "In the day,"
as in the passage already quoted. Another emendation, adopted by
Graetz, Bickell, and Cheyne, changes "God of" into "my God," and "my
salvation" into "I cry" (the same word as in ver. 13), and attaches
"by day" to the first clause. The result is,--
Jehovah, my God, I cry to Thee by day,
I call in the night before Thee.
The changes are very slight and easy, and the effect of them is
satisfactory. The meaning of the verse is obvious, whether the
emendation is accepted or not. The gain from the proposed change is
dearly purchased by the loss of that solitary expression of hope in
the name of "God of my salvation," the one star which gleams for a
moment through a rift in the blackness.
With "For" in ver. 3 the psalmist begins the dreary description of his
affliction, the desperate and all but deodly character of which he
spreads before God as a reason for hearing his prayer. Despair sometimes
strikes men dumb, and sometimes makes them eloquent. The sorrow which
has a voice is less crushing than that which is tongueless. This
overcharged heart finds relief in self-pitying depicting of its burdens,
and in the exercise of a gloomy imagination, which draws out in detail
the picture of the feebleness, the recumbent stillness, the seclusion
and darkness of the dead. They have "no strength." Their vital force
has ebbed away, and they are but as weak shadows, having an impotent
existence, which does not deserve to be called life. The remarkable
expression of ver. 5, "free among the dead," is to be interpreted in
the light of Job iii. 19, which counts it as one blessing of the grave,
that "there the servant is free from his master." But the psalmist
thinks that that "freedom" is loathsome, not desirable, for it means
removal from the stir of a life, the heaviest duties and cares of which
are better than the torpid immunity from these, which makes the state
of the dead a dreary monotony. They lie stretched out and motionless.
No ripple of cheerful activity stirs that stagnant sea. One unvarying
attitude is theirs. It is not the stillness of rest which prepares for
work, but of incapacity of action or of change. They are forgotten by
Him who remembers all that are. They are parted from the guiding and
blessing influence of the Hand that upholds all being. In some strange
fashion they are and yet are not. Their death has a simulacrum of life.
Their shadowy life is death. Being and non-being may both be predicated
of them. The psalmist speaks in riddles; and the contradictions in his
speech reflect his dim knowledge of that place of darkness. He looks
into its gloomy depths, and he sees little but gloom. It needed the
resurrection of Jesus to flood these depths with light, and to show that
the life beyond may be fuller of bright activity than life here--a state
in which vital strength is increased beyond all earthly experience, and
wherein God's all-quickening hand grasps more closely, and communicates
richer gifts than are attainable in that death which sense calls life.
Ver. 7 traces the psalmist's sorrows to God. It breathes not complaint
but submission, or, at least, recognition of His hand; and they who,
in the very paroxysm of their pains, can say, "It is the Lord," are
not far from saying, "Let Him do what seemeth Him good," nor from the
peace that comes from a compliant will. The recognition implies, too,
consciousness of sin which has deserved the "wrath" of God, and in
such consciousness lies the germ of blessing. Sensitive nerves may
quiver, as they feel the dreadful weight with which that wrath presses
down on them, as if to crush them; but if the man lies still, and lets
the pressure do its work, it will not force out his life, but only his
evil, as foul water is squeezed from cloth. Ver. 7 _b_ is rendered by
Delitzsch "All Thy billows Thou pressest down," which gives a vivid
picture; but "billows" is scarcely the word to use for the downward
rushing waters of a cataract, and the ordinary rendering, adopted
above, requires only natural supplements.
Ver. 8 approaches nearer to a specification of the psalmist's
affliction. If taken literally, it points to some loathsome
disease, which had long clung to and made even his friends shrink
from companionship, and thus had condemned him to isolation. All
these details suggest leprosy, which, if referred to here, is most
probably to be taken, as sickness is in several psalms, as symbolic
of affliction. The desertion by friends is a common feature in the
psalmists' complaints. The seclusion as in a prison-house is, no
doubt, appropriate to the leper's condition, but may also simply
refer to the loneliness and compulsory inaction arising from heavy
trials. At all events, the psalmist is flung back friendless on
himself, and hemmed in, so that he cannot expatiate in the joyous
bustle of life. Blessed are they who, when thus situated, can
betake themselves to God, and find that He does not turn away!
The consciousness of His loving presence has not yet lighted the
psalmist's soul; but the clear acknowledgment that it is God who has
put the sweetness of earthly companionship beyond his reach is, at
least, the beginning of the happier experience, that God never makes a
solitude round a soul without desiring to fill it with Himself.
If the recurring cry to Jehovah in ver. 9 is taken, as we have
suggested it should be, as marking a new turn in the thoughts,
the second part of the psalm will include vv. 9-12. Vv. 10-12 are
apparently the daily prayer referred to in ver. 9. They appeal to
God to preserve the psalmist from the state of death, which he
has just depicted himself as having in effect already entered,
by the consideration which is urged in other psalms as a reason
for Divine intervention (vi. 5, xxx. 9, etc.)--namely, that His
power had no field for its manifestation in the grave, and that He
could draw no revenue of praise from the pale lips that lay silent
there. The conception of the state of the dead is even more dreary
than that in vv. 4, 5. They are "shades," which word conveys the
idea of relaxed feebleness. Their dwelling is Abaddon--_i.e._,
"destruction,"--"darkness," "the land of forgetfulness" whose
inhabitants remember not, nor are remembered, either by God or man. In
that cheerless region, God had no opportunity to show His wonders of
delivering mercy, for monotonous immobility was stamped upon it, and
out of that realm of silence no glad songs of praise could sound. Such
thoughts are in startling contrast with the hopes that sparkle in some
psalms (such as xvi. 10, etc.), and they show that clear, permanent
assurance of future blessedness was not granted to the ancient
Church. Nor could there be sober certainty of it until after Christ's
resurrection. But it is also to be noticed that this psalm neither
affirms nor denies a future resurrection. It does affirm continuous
personal existence after death, of however thin and shadowy a sort. It
is not concerned with what may lie far ahead, but is speaking of the
present state of the dead, as it was conceived of, at the then stage
of revelation, by a devout soul, in its hours of despondency.
The last part (vv. 13-18) is marked, like the two preceding, by the
repetition of the name of Jehovah, and of the allusion to the psalmist's
continual prayer. It is remarkable, and perhaps significant, that the
time of prayer should here be "the morning," whereas in ver. 1 it
was, according to Delitzsch, _the night_, or, according to the other
rendering, _day and night_. The psalmist had asked in ver. 2 that his
prayer might enter into God's presence; he now vows that it will come
to meet Him. Possibly some lightening of his burden may be hinted at
by the reference to the time of his petition. Morning is the hour of
hope, of new vigour, of a fresh beginning, which may not be only a
prolongation of dreary yesterdays. But if there is any such alleviation,
it is only for a moment, and then the cloud settles down still more
heavily. But one thing the psalmist has won by his cry. He now longs
to know the reason for his affliction. He is confident that God is
righteous when He afflicts, and, heavy as his sorrow is, he has passed
beyond mere complaint concerning it, to the wish to understand it.
The consciousness that it is chastisement, occasioned by his own evil,
and meant to purge that evil away, is present, in a rudimentary form
at least, in that cry, "_Why_ castest Thou off my soul?" If sorrow has
brought a man to offer that prayer, it has done its work, and will cease
before long, or, if it lasts, will be easier to bear, when its meaning
and purpose are clear. But the psalmist rises to such a height but for a
moment, though his momentary attaining it gives promise that he will, by
degrees, be able to remain there permanently. It is significant that the
only direct naming of Jehovah, in addition to the three which accompany
the references to his prayers, is associated with this petition for
enlightenment. The singer presses close to God in his faith that His
hardest blows are not struck at random, and that His administration has
for its basis, not caprice, but reason, moved by love and righteousness.
Such a cry is never offered in vain, even though it should be followed,
as it is here, by plaintive reiterations of the sufferer's pains. These
are now little more than a summary of the first part. The same idea
of being in effect dead even while alive is repeated in ver. 15, in
which the psalmist wails that from youth he had been but a dying man,
so close to him had death seemed, or so death-like had been his life.
He has borne God's terrors till he is distracted. The word rendered "I
am distracted" is only used here, and consequently is obscure. Hupfeld
and others deny that it is a word at all (he calls it an "Unwort"), and
would read another which means _to become torpid_. The existing text
is defended by Delitzsch and others, who take the word to mean to be
weakened in mind or bewildered. The meaning of the whole seems to be
as rendered above. But it might also be translated, as by Cheyne, "I
bear Thy terrors, my senses must fail." In ver. 16 the word for wrath
is in the plural, to express the manifold outbursts of that deadly
indignation. The word means literally heat; and we may represent the
psalmist's thought as being that the wrath shoots forth many fierce
tongues of licking flame, or, like a lava stream, pours out in many
branches. The word rendered "Cut me off" is anomalous, and is variously
translated _annihilate_, _extinguish_, or as above. The wrath which
was a fiery name in ver. 16 is an overwhelming flood in ver. 17. The
complaint of ver. 8 recurs in ver. 18, in still more tragic form. All
human sympathy and help are far away, and the psalmist's only familiar
friend is--darkness. There is an infinitude of despair in that sad
irony. But there is a gleam of hope, though faint and far, like faint
daylight seen from the innermost recesses of a dark tunnel, in his
recognition that his dismal solitude is the work of God's hand; for, if
God has made a heart or a life empty of human love, it is that He may
Himself fill it with His own sweet and all-compensating presence.