Psalm 88
18 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 31×4Psalms 86×3Psalms 22×2Lamentations 3×2Isaiah 53×2Psalms 69×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The darkest psalm, the only lament with no turn. Heman the Ezrahite cries day and night: 'my soul is full of troubles, and my life draweth nigh unto Sheol.' Laid in the lowest pit; 'thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them.' The desperate questions: 'Wilt thou show wonders to the dead?… Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?' From youth up afflicted and ready to die. The last word of the psalm is darkness, left in the canon so the praying church would have words for its blackest nights.
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 88The history
The name at the top matters. Heman was one of the three men set over the music of the sanctuary, alongside Asaph and Jeduthun, and he is listed among the wise men of the age. The man who led Israel's praise wrote the darkest song in its book.
Free among the dead is a bitter phrase — free the way a discharged servant is free, cut loose from everything. Israelites were buried in rock-cut family tombs, the body laid on a bench, and once the flesh was gone the bones were gathered into a pit or box with the ancestors. Being gathered to your fathers was a literal description. To be cut off from that was to be cut off from the family itself, and that is the fear this psalm keeps circling.
Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead, shall the dead arise and praise thee — these are questions inside a complaint, not a settled teaching. In this same section of the book another singer says God will receive him to glory. The psalm records what a man says in the dark, and the book keeps both.
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. A long illness, especially one that made a man ritually unclean, emptied a house. The social death arrived before the other kind.
What it meant to them
This is the only psalm that ends with no turn upward. The last word is darkness, and there is no closing line of trust.
Israel put it in the hymnbook anyway and kept it there. First hearers learned that a believer in the dark is not required to finish on an upswing to be given a place in the service.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 88. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.