10 Do you show wonders to the dead?
Do the dead rise up and praise you? Selah. 11 Is your loving kindness declared in the grave?
Or your faithfulness in Destruction? 12 Are your wonders made known in the dark?
Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? 13 But to you, Yahweh, I have cried.
In the morning, my prayer comes before you. 14 Yahweh, why do you reject my soul?
Why do you hide your face from me? 15 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up.
While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted. 16 Your fierce wrath has gone over me.
Your terrors have cut me off. 17 They came around me like water all day long.
They completely engulfed me. 18 You have put lover and friend far from me,
and my friends into 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.