Biblion Bible Commentary
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Darkness Is My Closest Friend
Psalms 88:1-18
1 A Song. A Psalm by the sons of Korah. For the Chief Musician. To the tune of “The Suffering of Affliction.” A contemplation by Heman, the Ezrahite. Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you. · WEB
The one psalm that never turns, and the collection kept it exactly as it is.
Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you Psalms 88:1.
The darkest psalm in Scripture, and the only one that ends without relief of any kind. Every other lament turns somewhere — the thirteenth in six verses, the twenty-second at the mid-point, the seventy-seventh by an act of will. This one does not.
The first line is the last piece of light in it, and even that is only the address. He still calls him the God of my salvation, which is the thread the whole psalm hangs from.
I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help, set apart among the dead Psalms 88:4–5.
Already numbered with the dead while still able to write. The condition described is one of being in the grave's category before arriving in it.
You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves Psalms 88:6–7.
Every verb is God's, and the psalm never softens it. There is no enemy in this psalm, no slander, no army. The only agent named is God, and the psalmist addresses him throughout.
You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can't escape Psalms 88:8.
The language suggests a long illness, possibly a disfiguring one, and the isolation that came with it.
Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you?... Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Psalms 88:10–12.
Six questions, all rhetorical, all expecting no. They are the sixth psalm's argument extended and made desperate — praise stops at the grave, and the psalm is telling God he is about to lose a worshiper. The picture of death is the collection's consistent one: silence, darkness, forgetting, and no activity of any kind. That is why the argument has force.
But to you, Yahweh, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you Psalms 88:13.
He keeps praying. It is the only thing in the psalm that could be called hope, and it is not called that.
Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? Psalms 88:14.
You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness Psalms 88:18.
The last word of the psalm in Hebrew is darkness. Nothing is resolved, nothing is promised, and the collection preserved it in the hymnbook anyway — which is the most pastoral decision in the Psalter. Somebody is always in this psalm, and when they are, they are not required to sing something else.
settled What this mark means