Psalms 88: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a prayer of someone who cries out to God day and night while feeling close to death. He says God has put him in the lowest pit, sent wrath and terrors against him, and driven his friends away, and he asks whether the dead can praise God or hear about God's faithful love. He keeps praying each morning and asks why God rejects him and hides. The last verse leaves him without his loved ones, in darkness.

Claim by Claim

1. 88:1
   • The speaker addresses the LORD as the God of his salvation.
   • The speaker has cried out before God by day and in the night.
2. 88:2
   • The speaker asks that his prayer come before God.
   • The speaker asks God to incline his ear to his loud cry.
3. 88:3
   • The speaker's soul is full of troubles.
   • The speaker's life draws near to Sheol, the realm of the dead.
4. 88:4
   • The speaker is counted among those who go down into the pit.
   • The speaker is like a strong man who has no strength left.
5. 88:5
   • The speaker is among the dead in a state described by a word meaning set loose or freed, which may mean released from life or abandoned.
   • The speaker is like the slain who lie in the grave.
   • God remembers the slain no more.
   • The slain are cut off from God's hand.
6. 88:6
   • God has laid the speaker in the lowest pit.
   • God has laid the speaker in dark places.
   • God has laid the speaker in the depths.
7. 88:7
   • God's wrath lies heavy upon the speaker.
   • God has afflicted the speaker with all his breaking waves.
   • Selah.
8. 88:8
   • God has removed the speaker's acquaintances far from him.
   • God has made the speaker an object of loathing to his acquaintances.
   • The speaker is shut in.
   • The speaker cannot get out.
9. 88:9
   • The speaker's eye wastes away because of affliction.
   • The speaker has called on the LORD every day.
   • The speaker has spread out his hands to God.
10. 88:10
    • The speaker asks whether God will work wonders for the dead.
    • The speaker asks whether the shades of the dead will rise and praise God.
    • Selah.
11. 88:11
    • The speaker asks whether God's steadfast love is declared in the grave.
    • The speaker asks whether God's faithfulness is declared in the place of destruction.
12. 88:12
    • The speaker asks whether God's wonders are known in the darkness.
    • The speaker asks whether God's righteousness is known in the land of forgetfulness.
13. 88:13
    • The speaker has cried out to the LORD for help.
    • In the morning the speaker's prayer comes to meet God.
14. 88:14
    • The speaker asks the LORD why he casts off his soul.
    • The speaker asks why God hides his face from him.
15. 88:15
    • The speaker has been afflicted and close to death from his youth.
    • The speaker bears God's terrors.
    • The speaker is in a condition named by an obscure word, rendered as being distracted or helpless.
16. 88:16
    • God's fierce wrath has swept over the speaker.
    • God's terrors have destroyed the speaker.
17. 88:17
    • The terrors surround the speaker like water all day long.
    • The terrors close in on the speaker from every side together.
18. 88:18
    • God has put loved one and friend far from the speaker.
    • The clause about the speaker's acquaintances is ambiguous: either God has put his acquaintances into darkness, or darkness is now his acquaintance.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

88:1

"The God who saves me" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning the God who rescues from danger, illness or death, deliverance in this life, not a statement about the afterlife.

88:2

The old words say "incline thine ear." That means bend down close to listen. It is how you listen to a small child.

88:3

"The grave" here renders the Hebrew word Sheol, the underworld where all the dead were thought to go, good and bad alike, a dim, silent place below the earth, not a place of punishment.

88:4

"The pit" is another Hebrew name for the realm of the dead, drawn from the image of a deep cistern or grave-shaft. To be "counted with" those going down into it means being written off as good as dead.

88:5

The King James "free among the dead" is puzzling in English; the Hebrew word can mean set loose or released (as a slave is released from service) and so, here, cut adrift and abandoned, left among the dead with no claim on anyone. "Cut off from your care" is literally "cut off from your hand," the hand standing for God's active help.

88:6

The lowest pit, the darkness and the depths are all names for the underworld of the dead; "the depths" also carries the sense of deep water, which leads into the waves of the next verse.

88:7

Selah is a Hebrew term found throughout the Psalms whose meaning is no longer known. It was probably a musical or performance direction (a pause, or a cue to the instruments), rather than part of the words being sung.

88:8

The King James "abomination" is the language of ritual impurity: the speaker has become something others must keep away from, as they would keep away from a contagious disease or a corpse. Contact would leave them unfit to join in worship.

88:9

Holding out or spreading the hands, palms up, was the ordinary posture for prayer in ancient Israel, the way kneeling or folded hands are today.

88:10

The word behind "the dead" in the second question is a distinct Hebrew term (rephaim), meaning the shades or ghosts of the dead, the weak, shadowy remnants of people thought to linger in the underworld. The questions expect the answer no: the dead were understood to be beyond both God's wonders and the praise God's living worshipers offer.

88:11

"Faithful love" renders hesed, a Hebrew word for loyal, committed kindness, the steady goodwill owed within a close relationship. "The place of ruin" translates Abaddon, meaning "destruction," which was used as another name for the realm of the dead.

88:12

"The land where everything is forgotten" is again the world of the dead, imagined as a place where the dead are forgotten by the living and themselves forget.

88:13

Where the King James says the prayer will "prevent" God, the 1611 sense of that word was to come before or go out to meet, the opposite of what "prevent" means today. The prayer arrives at first light, before anything else.

88:14

To "hide your face" is a standard Hebrew idiom for withdrawing attention and favor, like a person turning away and refusing to look at someone. It does not suggest God has a face that can be concealed.

88:15

The King James "distracted" does not mean inattentive; in 1611 it meant driven out of one's mind, at the end of one's wits, closer to "desperate."

88:18

The Hebrew of the last line is ambiguous and translators divide over it: it can mean that the people the speaker knows have been taken away into the darkness, or that darkness itself is now the only acquaintance he has left. The word for "loved one" covers a close companion or family member, not specifically a spouse.