Ps. lxxxviii. 14 — 16. Lord, why easiest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me ? I am afflicted, and ready to die, from my youth tip : while I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted. TJiy fierce wrath goeth over me ; thy terrors have cut me off.
HEMAN the Ezrahite, the author of this psalm, is thought by most to have been the grandson of Judaha; and to have been so eminent for wisdom, as almost to have equalled Solomon himselfb. But he seems rather to have been the grandson of Shemuel, or Samuel0. Whoever he was, he was a man greatly afflicted, and, at the time that he wrote this psalm, altogether destitute of any other conso- lation, than what he felt in spreading his sorrows before God. In other psalms we find many and grievous complaints ; but the gloom that overspreads the mind of the author at the commencement of them, is usually dispelled before they are brought to a close ; and what began with sorrow is terminated with joy. But in the composition before us there is no such pleasing change : it is nothing but one con- tinued complaint from beginning to end. In dis- coursing on it, we shall point out, I. The state to which a righteous soul may be reduced —
Truly the state of Heman was most afflictive — [There c£n be no doubt but that he was a righteous man. Had he not been so, he would not have addressed Jehovah in such expressions of holy confidence, as " The Lord God of his salvation ;" nor could he have affirmed, that " night and day he had poured out his prayers and cries before him4." Yet be- hold, how heavy, how exceeding heavy, was his affliction! " His soul was so full of troubles, that they brought him nigh to the grave e." Hear how he himself represents them, referring them all at the same time to God himself as the author of them : " Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me ; and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves f." To the same effect he speaks also in the words of our text, complaining of the dereliction he experienced in this hour of his calamity, and of the terrors which he endured, which, whilst they were rapidly bringing down his body to the grave, had well nigh bereaved him of his senses, and reduced him to a state of utter distraction.]
And such, alas ! is the state of many in every age of the Church —
a 1 Chron. ii. 6. b 1 Kings iv. 31.
c 1 Chron. vi. 33. and xv. 19. compared with the title to Ps. Ixxxix. The grandson of Jndah could not have written so aboutDavid. (i ver. 1, 2, 9, 13. e vcr. 3. f ver. 6, 7.