English · KJV

Psalms 88

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Superscription and Invocation 1–2

1
A Song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief Musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Heman the Ezrahite. O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: ​
2
Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry;

Near Death and Utter Isolation 3–9

3
For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. ​
4
I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength:
5
Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. ​
6
Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.
7
Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah. ​
8
Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. ​
9
Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.

The Rhetoric of the Grave 10–13

10
Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah. ​
11
Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction?
12
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? ​
13
But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.

Abandoned by God and Man 14–18

14
LORD, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?
15
I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. ​
16
Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. ​
17
They came round about me daily like water; they compassed me about together.
18
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. ​

Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain

Study Notes for Psalm 88

Verse 1

O LORD God of my salvation — Heman the Ezrahite is named in no other psalm title; he stands with Ethan among the wise in 1 Kgs 4:31, and the next psalm is ‘Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite’. The first words call the LORD the God of salvation (yeshu’ah), and the cry goes up ‘day and night’, as of God’s elect in Luke 18:7.

Verse 3

draweth nigh unto the grave — ‘Grave’ is sheol, the place of the dead, and ‘draweth nigh’ (naga’) is to touch it, as in Ps 107:18, ‘they draw near unto the gates of death’. ‘Full of troubles’ uses saba’, to be sated, the verb for being filled with food; the soul is filled with ra’ot, evils.

Verse 5

Free among the dead — Chofshi is the word for the freed slave (Ex 21:2) and for ‘the servant… free from his master’ in the grave (Job 3:19). These are the dead ‘whom thou rememberest no more’, ‘cut off’ (gazar) from God’s hand, the verb of Isa 53:8, ‘cut off out of the land of the living’. Compare Ps 6:5.

Verse 7

Thy wrath lieth hard upon me — Samak is to lean a weight upon. The ‘waves’ (mishbar, breakers) are those of Ps 42:7, ‘all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me’. Here the weight and the waves are both laid to the LORD (‘thy… thou’), and the first Selah of the psalm, a pause, follows; the second is at v.10.

Verse 8

an abomination unto them — To’evah is the word that marks the unclean in Deut 14:3; here it names what the sufferer has become to those who knew him. ‘Put away… far’ (rachaq) returns in the last verse, and ‘I am shut up’ (kala) means held back, so that he ‘cannot come forth’. Job 19:13 has the same loss.

Verse 10

shall the dead arise — The second ‘dead’ is rephaim, the departed in Sheol, as in Isa 26:14, ‘they are deceased, they shall not rise’. The question receives its answer in Isa 26:19, ‘Thy dead men shall live… Awake and sing’, and in 1 Cor 15:20, ‘now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept’.

Verse 12

the land of forgetfulness — Neshiyah occurs only here, and it answers v.5, ‘whom thou rememberest no more’. The questions of vv.10–12 ask whether the dead can know God’s ‘wonders’ (pele, as in v.10) or his ‘righteousness’ (tsedaqah) in the dark. Ps 31:12 has the same fear of being ‘forgotten as a dead man out of mind’.

Verse 15

I am distracted — Puwn occurs only here. ‘Ready to die’ is gava’, to expire, and ‘from my youth up’ dates the affliction from early life. The ‘terrors’ (emah) he suffers are God’s, as Job says, ‘the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me’ (Job 6:4), where a different word for terrors is used.

Verse 16

thy terrors have cut me off — Bi’uthim, terrors, occurs in only two verses, here and Job 6:4. ‘Fierce wrath’ (charon, burning anger) ‘goeth over’ him, and ‘cut me off’ is tsamat, to destroy or silence. The lines repeat v.7: the wrath that lies upon him and the waves that go over him are both the LORD’s doing.

Verse 18

Lover and friend — The KJV ends the psalm on ‘darkness’ (machshak, a dark place), the word of v.6, ‘in darkness, in the deeps’. ‘Put far’ (rachaq) returns from v.8. Ps 38:11 has ‘My lovers and my friends stand aloof’. Christian writers have heard this psalm as the voice of Christ in his passion, when ‘all the disciples forsook him, and fled’ (Matt 26:56).