Psalms 88

This is the darkest psalm in the Psalter. The sufferer, Heman the Ezrahite according to the title, cries out in sickness, abandonment and fear of death, and the psalm ends with no relief in sight. Yet it is still a prayer, addressed to the God of salvation. It shows that honest, unresolved sorrow has a place before God.

Psalms 88:1

The psalm begins with the only hope it will state: He is the God of my salvation. Even in utter darkness the sufferer addresses the Lord by name and keeps praying around the clock. Faith here is not cheerful. It is simply refusing to stop calling on God.

BSA: salvation (“rescue, deliverance”): He still looks to God as the one who rescues, even though no rescue has come.

See also: Psalm 22:2.

Psalms 88:2

He asks that his prayer actually reach God and that God bend down to listen. The picture is of a sick man calling from far below, hoping the Lord will lean close enough to hear. He asks only to be heard.

BSA: incline (“turn, bend”): He asks God to stoop toward him like someone leaning in to hear a weak voice.

Psalms 88:3-4

His troubles are so many that he feels he is already at death’s door. Sheol is the shadowy realm of the dead. He is counted with those going down to the Pit, like a man whose strength is gone. Such weakness is a deeply human place to pray from.

BSA: soul (“inner being, my whole self”): The trouble fills his entire being, not only his body or his mood.

Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל (Sheʾol, H7585) — “the realm of the dead.” Sheol is the underworld where the dead were thought to dwell silent and out of sight. The psalmist feels himself being pulled toward it.

Psalms 88:5

He feels like the dead, forgotten and cut off from God’s care. This is how it feels, not a full teaching about the afterlife. His deepest fear is that God has stopped remembering him.

BSA: forsaken (“abandoned, cast off”): He feels thrown aside, as if no one is looking after him.

See also: Psalm 31:12.

Psalms 88:6-7

He pictures himself laid in the lowest pit, in darkness. He does not blame chance or enemies first. He sees God’s wrath pressing on him like crashing waves. The honest complaint is that God’s hand seems to be behind his suffering.

BSA: waves (“turbulent waters, overwhelming forces”): Trouble comes in repeated surges that leave him no chance to surface. weighs heavily (“crushingly, oppressively”): God’s anger feels like a heavy load lying on him.

See also: Jonah 2:3.

Psalms 88:8

Sickness has cost him his friends. They shrink from him, and he feels shut in like a prisoner. Perhaps his illness made him unclean or an embarrassment. Pain is worsened by loneliness, and he lays that loneliness before God.

BSA: repulsive (“an abomination”): His friends see him as something to avoid, which is the deepest kind of rejection. confined (“shut up, trapped”): He is walled in, unable to go out to anyone.

Psalms 88:9

His eyes are wasted from weeping. Even so, he calls on the Lord every day and spreads out his hands, the ancient posture of prayer. His hands are open and empty, held up to God, who alone can fill them.

BSA: spread out (“in prayer, supplication”): The open hands show he is asking and waiting, not demanding.

See also: Psalm 143:6.

Psalms 88:10-12

He asks a series of questions. Will the dead praise God? Will His wonders, love and faithfulness be known in the grave? He is not denying the afterlife. In Old Testament language, the grave is the place where public praise ends. He argues that God has more to gain from keeping him alive.

BSA: loving devotion (“faithful love, kindness”): This is God’s covenant love, which the psalmist wants to go on declaring. oblivion (“forgetfulness, Abaddon, destruction”): The grave is pictured as a land where nothing and no one is remembered.

Hebrew: אֲבַדּוֹן (Avaddon, H11) — “destruction, place of ruin.” Abaddon is a name for the realm of the dead as a place of ruin. Revelation uses the same name for the angel of the abyss.

See also: Psalm 6:5; Isaiah 38:18-19.

Psalms 88:13

The word But marks a turn. He has not stopped praying. Each morning he brings his cry again, as though God might answer with the day. This is faith without evidence, holding to God even when feelings say otherwise.

BSA: morning (“early”): He rises early and brings his prayer first thing, before anything else.

See also: Psalm 5:3.

Psalms 88:14

Here is the question beneath it all: Why? He feels rejected and sees God hiding His face. The hiding face means God’s favor seems withdrawn. Scripture allows this question to be asked of God directly, and it never receives an easy answer here.

BSA: reject (“cast off”): He feels thrown away, as something no longer wanted. face (“Your presence, Your countenance”): Seeing God’s face means enjoying His nearness, and he feels that withheld.

See also: Psalm 22:1.

Psalms 88:15

His suffering is not new. From his youth he has lived under affliction and near death. Years of pain have worn him down. He speaks of terrors from God and of being lost in despair. Many believers know long illness or sorrow that never seems to lift.

BSA: terrors (“fearsome judgments, dreadful acts”): The sufferer feels God’s dealings with him as frightening, not comforting.

Psalms 88:16-17

The waves of verse 7 return as a flood. God’s wrath sweeps over him, His terrors cut him down, and trouble surrounds him all day. There is no gap in which to catch his breath. He is describing exactly what it feels like.

BSA: engulf (“like a flood, surrounding me”): Trouble does not come and go. It closes around him like rising water. destroyed (“cut me off, broken”): He feels cut off from life and from God.

Psalms 88:18

The psalm ends in darkness. Loved ones and friends are gone, and the only companion left is darkness. There is no closing praise. Yet this prayer is in God’s Book, so believers in deep darkness may bring the same words to Him. Jesus, in His suffering, also knew abandonment.

BSA: companion (“the one who stays with me”): Darkness is the only presence left with him, which shows how complete his loneliness is.

See also: Psalm 142:4; Matthew 27:46.