Psalms 88:8

Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me. If ever we need friends it is in the dreary hour of despondency and the weary time of bodily sickness; therefore does the sufferer complain because divine providence had removed his friends. Perhaps his disease was infectious or defiling, so that he was legally separated from his fellow men, perhaps their fears kept them away from his plague stricken house, or else his good name had become so injured that they naturally avoided him. Lost friends require but small excuse for turning their backs on the afflicted. The swallows offer no apology for leaving us to winter by ourselves. Yet it is a piercing pain which arises from the desertion of dear associates; it is a wound which festers and refuses to be healed. Thou hast made me an abomination unto them. They turned from him as though he had become loathsome and contaminating, and this because of something which the Lord had done to him; therefore, he brings his complaint to the prime mover in his trouble. He who is still flattered by the companions of his pleasure can little guess the wretchedness which will be his portion should he become poor, or slanderously accused, for then one by one the parasites of his prosperity will go their way and leave him to his fate, not without cutting remarks on their part to increase his misery. Men have not so much power to bless by friendship as to curse by treachery. Earth's poisons are more deadly than her medicines are healing. The mass of men who gather around a man and flatter him are like tame leopards; when they lick his hand it is well for him to remember that with equal gusto they would drink his blood. "Cursed is he that trusteth in man." I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. He was a prisoner in his room, and felt like a leper in the lazaretto, or a condemned criminal in his cell.

Thou hast made me an abonmination - This verse has been supposed to express the state of a leper, who, because of the infectious nature of his disease, is separated from his family - is abominable to all, and at last shut up in a separate house, whence he does not come out to mingle with society.

Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me - The same ground of complaint, or expression of the depth of affliction, occurs elsewhere, Psa 31:11; Psa 38:11; Psa 69:8. See also Job 19:13-17. Thou hast made me an abomination unto them - As something which they would avoid, or from which they would revolt and turn away - as we turn away from the body of a dead man, or from an offensive object. The word means properly an object to be detested or abominated, as things unclean, Gen 43:32; or as idolatry, 1Ki 14:24; 2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 23:13. I am shut up - As in prison; to wit, by disease, as when one is confined to his house. And I cannot come forth - I cannot leave my couch, my room, my house. Compare Job 12:14.