This post will conclude my commentary on Psalm 88. In the previous posts, I discussed the psalmist’s description of his suffering, his reproach, and his questioning of God. In this post, I hope to address the author’s use of repetition and metaphor as he finalizes the description of his suffering.
How long can you stand the pain
Red, “Let it Burn,” track #4 from Until We Have Faces, Essential and Sony Records, 2011
How long will you hide your face
How long will you be afraid
Are you afraid
How long will you play this game
Will you fight or will you walk away
How long will you let it burn
Let it burn
Introduction
Verse 14 harkens back to verses 2-3 and 10, where the psalmist describes his ardent devotion to Yahweh. As the author draws the psalm to a close, he paints one of the most vivid images of hopelessness in the entirety of Scripture or even human literature as a whole. The final line, from whence I have taken the name of this article, is one of the hardest, yet most relatable verses in the Bible. Here, as I will discuss later, the less accurate translations of the Bible (NLT, NIV, ESV, etc.) provide a beautifully creative distortion in the English text.
We do not find the words “happily ever after” at the end of Psalm 88. Instead, we depart from the psyche of a man who has lost it all; hope is not only diminished, it is foreign to him. God has let him down. People have let him down. He has let himself down. And now, he lies on his death bed, possibly composing his final words. They are tragic. The ending alone is part of what makes Psalm 88 the most unique chapter of the Bible.
Psalm 88:14-15 and Divine Hiddenness
But I cry out to you, Adonai;
Psalm 88:13-14, Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)
my prayer comes before you in the morning.
So why, Adonai, do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face from me?
I have already mentioned that the author returns to expressing his loyalty to God in the midst of anguish. Now, this is the third time the psalmist speaks of his prayer coming before God. In verse 2, he cries out to God at night; the second time, in verse 10, his prayer comes before God “every day.”
In verse 14, his prayer comes before God in the morning. What is the significance of this? According to Hebrew tradition, morning is a “time of new beginning when God was expected to demonstrate anew his steadfast love for his people.”1 Another commentator believes this is a metaphorical reference to the pagan sun god, who puts an end to evil “in the morning” and restores justice.2
A Return to Interrogating God
In verse fifteen, the author again interrogates God. Like the previous questions in the psalm, the author’s goal is to provoke God to act. Unlike the earlier questions, these two are not sarcastic; they should be taken literally. A good comparison, again, would be Job. The entire purpose of Job’s plea is to get answers from God. As we know, the answers Job receives are unsatisfactory; in Psalm 88, there is no answer at all. The two pieces share common ground in that the “supplicant wants God to account for his contractual breach.”4
It is also imperative to note the author’s choice of words in questioning why God hides his face. The reference to God hiding his face occurs numerous times throughout the Hebrew Testament. And it is never a good thing. A thorough article on this phrase, as it relates to Psalm 88, contends that it denotes either divine hiddenness with hostile divine presence or divine hiddenness with divine absence.5
Job and Psalm 88 are excellent examples of the former. While God is not entirely absent in either, he remains hidden except to provide hostile intervention. Think of it this way: God is either acting passive-aggressively, as he does in Job and Psalm 88, or he is completely invisible and silent.
Psalm 88:16-18
Since my youth I have been miserable, close to death;
Psalm 88:16-18, CJB
I am numb from bearing these terrors of yours.
Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me,
your terrors have shriveled me up.
They surge around me all day like a flood,
from all sides they close in on me.
You have made friends and companions shun me;
the people I know are hidden from me. (CJB)
From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
Psalm 88:16-18, New International Version (NIV)
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.
For the conclusion of Psalm 88, I have included a textually accurate translation (CJB) and a popular English translation of the Bible (NIV). As you know, I almost exclusively use CJB or NIV, though I often feel the CJB is the superior translation. In Psalm 88, however, I think the NIV translation succeeds in providing an artistic translation, if you will.
Once again, the psalmist decries God’s wrath and identifies him as the enemy who has inflicted him with suffering. He formalizes his final grievance against God, not holding back in his reproach. Heiman is no stranger to suffering; he complains that it has marred his life, since his youth. For the length of his existence on earth, up until his deathbed poem, he has experienced the wrath of God.
Divine Terrors
The writer accuses God of forcing him into situational pain throughout his life, unloading his “divine terrors” that leave him in despair, the wrath that has smothered him, and, again, terrors that have destroyed him. God’s horrors have engulfed him as a flood that consumes everything, with the waters representing the chaos God has caused in his lifetime.6
Here again, God is not only the psalmist’s reverent enemy, to whom he makes his plea but also the subject. Heiman acknowledges that God has always terrorized him, but now these terrors have intensified and pushed him to the brink of death (v. 15).7 The author again relies on the imagery of drowning, climaxing in the final word, “darkness.”8 He is drowning in God’s wake, reaching for his help but being ignored, and finally sinks to the bottom of the sea, encapsulated by darkness.
Most psalms end on a positive note; Psalm 88, on the other hand, contains the most tragic ending of all. Once again, to top the pain and suffering God has caused the psalmist, he has abandoned him in social isolation. Not only is God not actively present, but he has taken friends, family, and neighbors away from this man. He is eclipsed by darkness. And despite the increasing pain and suffering, the psalmist knows he must suffer alone.
Everything he loves is gone. As his life draws to a close, he has nothing but himself and the God who has both hidden himself and tortured him. He cannot even reach out to his friends; they have abandoned him. This is precisely where I prefer the NIV translation, but not under the standard of accuracy. For portraying the picture in full. His friends are gone; the only friend that remains is darkness. As some scholars argue, the final word, “darkness,” sums up Psalm 88 perfectly.9
Conclusion
This concludes my in-depth study of my favorite psalm, Psalm 88. As I mentioned in the first entry, this psalm helped me through the process of grieving my mother’s death. I watched a sermon on it a week or two before her passing; never before had I found a scripture that so clearly resonated with my soul. Like Heiman, I could see nothing but the darkness; I had no reason or desire to seek the light because the light had abandoned me.
I did not need positive, Christian affirmations when I lost my mom. I needed to know that it was okay to feel abandoned by God. It was okay to be angry, depressed, and sorrowful. There was no use in finding the goodness of God at that time; it was far more important to search for the significance of self. God had forsaken me. His face was hidden. I did not have time to thank him for making me suffer. I needed nothing more than to know my darkness so that I could defeat the darkness. God made it clear to me that he would not help with that.
The message that I take away from Psalm 88 is that it is okay to call God out. Sometimes, as Psalm 88, Job, and Amos make crystal clear, God causes our suffering. In these moments, while Christianity encourages us to be ignorant and continually praise God, the Bible instructs us to be upset. If God can be upset with us, we can be frustrated with God.
On a more personal note…
I do not believe the God of the Bible is perfect or entirely moral. This is a controversial position to hold, but I cling to it. I encourage everyone to think and believe for themselves, without the aid of church or religion. My beliefs are not perfect; but beliefs in the supernatural cannot be proven correct, at least not in this lifetime. My goal in this project has been to present my beliefs of God, which are significantly based on Psalm 88.
I hope you have enjoyed these posts. I hope that you will find the light in any darkness you face. I hope that light will overcome the darkness. It happened for me, although not in the way I expected. I learned that I could not accept the God I was forced to believe as a child. Despite this lesson, I found one thing for certain: there is always hope.
1. Thornhill, A. Chadwick. “A Theology of Psalm 88.” Evangelical Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2015): 52.
2. Hossfeld, Frank-Lothar, Erich Zenger, and Linda M. Maloney. Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100. Edited by Klaus Baltzer. 1517 Media, 2005. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvb6v84t. 396.
3. Mandolfo, Carleen. “Psalm 88 and the Holocaust: Lament in Search of a Divine Response.” Biblical Interpretation 15, no. 2 (2007): 164. https://doi.org/10.1163/156851507X168476.
4. Ibid.
5. Fabrikant-Burke, O. Y. “Rethinking Divine Hiddenness in the Hebrew Bible: The Hidden God as the Hostile God in Psalm 88.” The Harvard Theological Review 114, no. 2 (2021): 178.
6. Longman, Tremper, III. Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary, InterVarsity Press, 2014. 418.
7. Thornhill, A. Chadwick. “A Theology of Psalm 88.” Evangelical Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2015): 53.
8. Grogan, Geoffrey W. Psalms. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008. 134.
9. Ibid.