Context No. 3836 of 4322 · Psalms

Psalms 88:1-18: in context

1LORD, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you. 2Let my prayer enter into your presence. Turn your ear to my cry. 3For my soul is full of troubles. My life draws near to Sheol. 4I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help, 5set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand. 6You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. 7Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. Selah. 8You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can’t escape. 9My eyes are dim from grief. I have called on you daily, LORD. I have spread out my hands to you. 10Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you? Selah. 11Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction? 12Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? 13But to you, LORD, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. 14LORD, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? 15I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted. 16Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off. 17They came around me like water all day long. They completely engulfed me. 18You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.

This is a psalm of unrelieved darkness, and it ends without resolution. The psalmist is overwhelmed by trouble, feeling near death, abandoned by friends, weighed down as if by God's own wrath, and its final word is not hope but darkness: you have put lover and friend far from me, and my acquaintances into darkness.

There is no tidy turn to praise at the end, as in most psalms; the darkness simply remains. And yet, this psalm is in the Bible, and its presence tells us something precious. It gives voice to those in unrelieved darkness, to the depths of depression and despair, and shows that such honest, anguished crying out is not a failure of faith but a form of it. For notice: bleak as it is, the whole psalm is addressed to God. LORD, God of my salvation, it begins; day and night I cry out before you. The sufferer keeps praying, keeps crying to God, even when he feels no relief and sees no light. If you find yourself in such darkness, this psalm is God's gift, permission to bring your raw anguish to him, and assurance that even a prayer without a happy ending is heard.

When I find myself in unrelieved darkness, will I keep crying out to God as this psalmist did, trusting that even an anguished prayer that finds no easy resolution is still heard by the God of my salvation?

Sources

Psalm 88:1: "LORD, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you."
Psalm 88:18: "You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness."
Psalm 88:13: "But to you, LORD, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you."