This seems to be the recognition of the full subjection of Christ to death, and the utter holding aloof of men, but this is identified, as in verse 15, with the Jews as from Mount Sinai. The subject is the Jews, but it discovered the identity of Christ with them. It is the plea of the Remnant; it also implies their desolateness.
Christ seems to have entered into the spirit of this Psalm—to have drawn it forth rather-when he describes the elect, God's elect, as those who "cry night and day" unto God, Luke 18; and I suppose (connect here the close of Luke 17) He alludes in that passage to the circumstances to which that Psalm refers. His Spirit, in the Psalm, enters into the circumstances of full sympathy because in full affection, in which Israel the elect, and the elect heart-widowed Israel (righteous in affection, yet feeling all the effects of wickedness, and for others -Christ's true character and state) found themselves in protracted sorrow in that long yet, through mercy, shortened day; compare the confession in Daniel's prayer.
He enters into the long course of righteous judgment due to the people-terrible and awful thought! For the soul of Christ felt it—the judgment of a broken law from the outset—the array of terror which it brought against the Soul who understood its curse, and the weight of it, in holiness—who understood the effect of the law—the terrors of God—wrath lying hard upon Him. Outward mercies are nothing, in such a case, but mockeries, thin as the light air or what passes vainly through it. Still a call daily on the Lord (for the law is the Law of the Lord, therefore its terror) and God with whom we are in relation who has shut us up in this terror, forgotten seemingly of God, but only in the darkness of His anger when we cannot find Him-the more we know what He is, the more terrible to find nothing but darkness—still the cry is maintained, yea "day and night."
It is a matter of the grave and destruction. Enemies there were withal—lovers and friends none. Such is the estimate of the Spirit of Christ, the just estimate it forms, and forms therefore in the people in the latter day under the Law—shut up into terror, and alone there with the Lord, their Lord against whom they had transgressed. So much the more joyful and blessed their deliverance! Still, being the Spirit of Christ which alone can feel this, it cries “day and night." What a picture, and how the truth!
This Psalm then gives us the condition of the righteous Remnant, who know the law, understand the law is spiritual, see it broken from the outset, and the circumstances but the consequences of a vastly, infinitely deeper state of things—a real return to God according to their circumstances—death was what stared them in their face, and this, under which they were, was the ministration of death. Their history, in this view, did but add to their misery, but their condition (in soul) before the Lord blotted out their history. They could not get forth—death was before them, but they cried. What could they add to this engulfing in the terror of a righteous judgment, and a broken law—a law against a relationship, and ministration of death? They could add nothing-had there been hope, they would not have been where they were, nor thrown, in the knowledge of righteousness, on a God of grace. It ends thus in perfect misery, but in a cry—the righteous cry of right affections in God's elect. There was One who, taking their sorrow and the curse of the law-being made a curse—understood their cry, and heard it. When they understood it, so as to be brought with Him, He delivered; but death must be, in some sort, read here. Paul, I suppose, understood this much. All must know it in light (for we begin with resurrection), not necessarily in darkness, but for experience, knowledge even often of God, and action through the region of death, i.e., the world. It is often, as neutralizing it, and introducing us within the veil of it, very profitable and useful. For them Christ has, at any rate, gone through it; but He has gone through it, so we are really free.
It is a very deep and, when known, through grace, a very blessed subject, because it introduces to God, and whatever introduces us there is blessed. The Spirit of Christ alone can make us know it—it is known only by the Spirit of Christ, and He has known it.