A Prayer with Three Sections
After the heading, we present three sections that relate to Christ in what follows. Each of them is introduced with the indication that He cries out and calls to God:
• “May my prayer come before You; Incline Your ear to my cry!” (v. 3)
• “My eye has wasted away because of misery; Every day I have called upon You, LORD; I have spread out my hands to You.” (v. 10)
• “But I, LORD, have cried out to You for help, And in the morning my prayer comes before You.” (v. 14)
Each section has a different emphasis. Yet one thought runs through them: It is always about darkness (vv. 7, 13, 19).
1. Darkness in the Depth (vv. 3-9)
The first section has a great theme: darkness in the depth. What is striking is how the path leads ever deeper downward. At the beginning it still says “close to Sheol” (v. 4). We read of “going down” into the pit (v. 5), and then of “lying in the grave” (v. 6). It appears as if He were like a man who has no strength (v. 5b) to free himself, and whom God no longer remembered, so that He was completely cut off from the kind and powerful action of God (v. 6b).
How could it come to this? Verse 7 answers: “You have put me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the depths.” For Christ, the fact that God Himself brought Him into this darkness made the pit the lowest pit.
But verse 8 goes one step further. It is not only that God put Him in the lowest pit and did not bring Him up. Christ feels that even in the lowest pit, God is pressing Him down. God’s wrath and His waves passed over Him. What made this wrath so “heavy” was that God Himself pressed Him down (“Your wrath … all Your waves You have …”). In this judgment, no suffering was spared Him. All the waves of judgment passed over Him—not one was missing.
After the Selah comes the statement that no one else—not even His confidants—stood by Him; they cursed Him, and He was an abomination to all. And therefore the first section concludes: “I am shut up and cannot go out”—He Himself was like a man with no strength; God pressed Him down and removed all confidants from Him.
These few verses show something of what Christ expresses in verse 4: “My soul has had enough troubles”—there could not have been more suffering!
2. Darkness in Death (vv. 10-13)
In the second section, it focuses on death as the “wages of sin” (Romans 6:23). Christ never sinned; instead, He glorified God throughout His life. All the more difficult it is for Him to endure the “sufferings of death” (Hebrews 2:9). His eyes waste away because of misery in view of the fact that this death lies before Him. With this misery He calls out and pleads[7] to God (v. 10).
In verses 11 to 13 the psalmist asks four questions. On the one hand, it is about what one (from an Old Testament perspective[8]) can no longer do in death: experience and praise God. Neither are miracles done on the dead themselves, nor does anything about it become known in the darkness. And neither are the goodness, faithfulness, and righteousness of God recounted there.
In this respect too Christ “tasted” what death is (cf. Hebrews 2:9b). In the three hours of darkness God hid His face from Him, so that He could not enjoy the goodness, faithfulness, and righteousness of God in fellowship with His God. For the Holy and Righteous One, this was more dreadful than it would have been for anyone else. No one knew God as He did. No one else enjoyed God’s attributes as much as He did. Therefore, it would not have been so dreadful for anyone else to no longer experience all that and no longer praise God.
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