Darkness Is My Closest Friend
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. 2 Let my prayer enter into your presence. Turn your ear to my cry. 3 For my soul is full of troubles. My life draws near to Sheol. 4 I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help, 5 set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand. 6 You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. 7 Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. Selah. 8 You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can’t escape. 9 My eyes are dim from grief. I have called on you daily, Yahweh. I have spread out my hands to you. 10 Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you? Selah. 11 Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction? 12 Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? 13 But to you, Yahweh, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. 14 Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? 15 I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted. 16 Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off. 17 They came around me like water all day long. They completely engulfed me. 18 You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.
The one psalm that never turns, and the collection kept it exactly as it is.
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.
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.
4 I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help, 5 set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand.
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.
6 You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. 7 Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. Selah.
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.
The language suggests a long illness, possibly a disfiguring one, and the isolation that came with it.
10 Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you? Selah. 11 Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction? 12 Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
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.
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?
You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.
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