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88. Psalm 88

¹ LORD, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
² May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.

    ³ I am overwhelmed with troubles
   and my life draws near to death.
⁴ I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
   I am like one without strength.
⁵ I am set apart with the dead,
   like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
   who are cut off from your care.

    ⁶ You have put me in the lowest pit,
   in the darkest depths.
⁷ Your wrath lies heavily on me;
   you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and at the end of verse 10.
⁸ You have taken from me my closest friends
   and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
    ⁹ my eyes are dim with grief.

   I call to you, LORD, every day;
   I spread out my hands to you.
¹⁰ Do you show your wonders to the dead?
   Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
¹¹ Is your love declared in the grave,
   your faithfulness in Destruction Hebrew Abaddon?
¹² Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
   or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

    ¹³ But I cry to you for help, LORD;
   in the morning my prayer comes before you.
¹⁴ Why, LORD, do you reject me
   and hide your face from me?

    ¹⁵ From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
   I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
¹⁶ Your wrath has swept over me;
   your terrors have destroyed me.
¹⁷ All day long they surround me like a flood;
   they have completely engulfed me.
¹⁸ You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
   darkness is my closest friend.

14. Wherefore, O Jehovah! wilt thou reject my soul? These lamentations at first sight would seem to indicate a state of mind in which sorrow without any consolation prevailed; but they contain in them tacit prayers. The Psalmist does not proudly enter into debate with God, but mournfully desires some remedy to his calamities. This kind of complaint justly deserves to be reckoned among the unutterable groanings of which Paul makes mention in Romans 8:26. Had the prophet thought himself rejected and abhorred by God, he certainly would not have persevered in prayer. But here he sets forth the judgment of the flesh, against which he strenuously and magnanimously struggled, that it might at length be manifest from the result that he had not prayed in vain. Although, therefore, this psalm does not end with thanksgiving, but with a mournful complaint, as if there remained no place for mercy, yet it is so much the more useful as a means of keeping us in the duty of prayer. The prophet, in heaving these sighs, and discharging them, as it were, into the bosom of God, doubtless ceased not to hope for the salvation of which he could see no signs by the eye of sense. He did not call God, at the opening of the psalm, the God of his salvation, and then bid farewell to all hope of succor from him.