The Darkest Psalm Begins with Faith: Text: Psalm 88:1-2
Introduction: The Sanity of Honest Lament
We live in an age that is terrified of the dark. I am not speaking of a child's fear of what is under the bed, but of a deep, cultural aversion to suffering, grief, and honest-to-God lament. Our modern piety is often a thin veneer of relentless positivity, a smiley-face sticker slapped over a gaping wound. We are told to "claim victory" and "speak positivity," as though our words could somehow manipulate God into giving us a more comfortable life. When the darkness comes, as it always does, this kind of faith shatters like cheap pottery. It has no categories for the pit, for the silence of God, for the long night of the soul.
Into this shallow and sentimental world, Psalm 88 lands with the force of a meteor. This is, by all accounts, the darkest psalm in the entire Psalter. It is the only lament that does not end with a turn to praise or a confident expression of hope. It begins in the dark, it walks through the dark, and it ends in the dark. The last word of the psalm, in the Hebrew, is "darkness." And for this very reason, it is a profound gift to the saints. It is inspired Scripture, which means it is profitable for us. This psalm gives us a divine permission slip to be honest with God when our life feels like an unrelenting midnight.
But we must be careful here. There is a world of difference between biblical lament and faithless grumbling. The Israelites grumbled in the wilderness, and God judged them for it. Theirs was a horizontal complaint, a murmuring against God's appointed leaders and, ultimately, against God Himself. It was the whining of unbelief. Biblical lament, which we see here in its rawest form, is altogether different. Lament is vertical. It is a cry directed to God, not about God. It takes its pain, its confusion, its anguish, and it drags it into the presence of the Almighty. It is the prayer of a man who, though he feels abandoned, still knows the address of the throne of grace. This is not the death of faith; it is faith in the crucible.
Before we descend into the depths of Heman's affliction, we must first plant our feet firmly on the bedrock of his introduction. For in these first two verses, before the flood of sorrow is unleashed, the psalmist makes a declaration that defines everything that follows. He shows us that the blackest soil can produce the most tenacious faith.
The Text
A Song. A Psalm of the sons of Korah. For the choir director. According to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.
O Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried out by day and throughout the night before You.
Let my prayer come before You; Incline Your ear to my cry of lamentation!
(Psalm 88:1-2 LSB)
The Unshakable Confession (v. 1)
We begin with the superscription and the first verse:
"A Song. A Psalm of the sons of Korah. For the choir director. According to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. O Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried out by day and throughout the night before You." (Psalm 88:1)
First, do not skip over the introduction. These are not editor's notes; they are part of the inspired text. We are told this is a song from the "sons of Korah." This is theologically significant. Who was Korah? He was the one who led a wicked rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and the earth opened up and swallowed him and his co-conspirators whole (Numbers 16). Yet, the text tells us that "the sons of Korah did not die" (Numbers 26:11). Here, generations later, the descendants of a notorious rebel are leading Israel in worship. This is a testimony to the sheer, unmerited grace of God. The very existence of the "sons of Korah" as worship leaders is a gospel announcement. It tells us that God's grace can overcome the darkest of legacies. The author is Heman the Ezrahite, a man renowned for his wisdom (1 Kings 4:31), yet his wisdom does not insulate him from profound suffering. This is a lesson for us. Your wisdom, your theology, your piety will not make you immune to the pit. But it will teach you where to turn when you find yourself in it.
Now look at the first words out of his mouth. Before he describes his soul full of troubles, before he speaks of the grave, before he complains of God's wrath, he makes a monumental confession: "O Yahweh, the God of my salvation." This is everything. He addresses God by His covenant name, Yahweh, the God who keeps His promises. And he identifies Him as the God of his salvation. In the midst of what feels like damnation, Heman clings to the truth of his salvation. He is preaching to himself. His feelings are telling him he is lost, abandoned, and forgotten. But his faith, rooted in the covenant promises of God, declares the truth over the noise of his circumstances. This is the central battle of the Christian life: will you believe your feelings, or will you believe God's Word?
This confession is the anchor that holds the ship fast in the hurricane. Without this, the rest of the psalm would be the ranting of despair. But with it, the rest of the psalm becomes an act of rugged, persevering faith. He is saying, in effect, "You are the God who saves. I do not feel saved. I feel the opposite of saved. But I will address You by Your name and Your office, not by my current emotional state." This is theological sanity.
And what does this faith do? It prays. "I have cried out by day and throughout the night before You." This is not a one-time emergency flare. This is a constant, persistent, unceasing appeal. Day and night. The darkness does not silence him, and the light does not bring a false cheerfulness. He is relentless. This persistence is not an attempt to wear God down, as though God were a reluctant deity. Rather, it is the natural expression of a faith that knows there is nowhere else to go. Peter said it best: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). Heman's persistent cry, day and night, is a confession of his utter dependence on the God of his salvation. He has no Plan B.
The Humble Petition (v. 2)
Having established his confession of faith, Heman now makes his simple, direct request.
"Let my prayer come before You; Incline Your ear to my cry of lamentation!" (Psalm 88:2 LSB)
Notice the humility here. "Let my prayer come before You." This is the language of a subject approaching a great king. He is not demanding an audience. He is requesting one. He is asking for his prayer to be granted access to the throne room. In the ancient world, gaining the ear of the king was no small thing. You couldn't just walk in. You needed to be granted entrance. Heman, though he feels like he is in the lowest pit, still understands the protocol of heaven.
He then asks God to "incline Your ear." This is a beautiful anthropomorphism. It pictures the great God of the universe leaning down, stooping low, to catch the faint cry of His suffering child. It is a posture of attentiveness and compassion. The psalmist is not shouting to a distant, uncaring deity. He is whispering to a personal God whom he believes can and will draw near. This is a profound act of faith. When you feel that God is a million miles away, the act of faith is to ask Him to lean in close.
And what does he call his prayer? A "cry of lamentation." The Hebrew word here is for a ringing, piercing cry. This is not a polite, well-ordered request. This is a raw, guttural wail. He is not hiding the ugliness of his grief. He is not dressing it up for church. He is bringing his unvarnished anguish to God and asking God to listen to it. This is so important. God does not want our sanitized, cleaned-up prayers. He wants the real thing. He invites us to pour out our hearts to Him like water (Lam. 2:19). The fact that this raw, painful cry is preserved in the hymnbook of Israel tells us that this kind of prayer is not just permitted; it is prescribed. It is a holy and acceptable way to approach God in our affliction.
The Gospel in the Gloom
How can a Christian pray this psalm? We can pray it because a greater Heman has prayed it for us. The Lord Jesus Christ was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. This darkest of psalms finds its ultimate fulfillment in the darkest moment in the history of the world: the cross.
Was there ever one whose soul was more "full of troubles" than our Lord in Gethsemane? Did not His life "draw near to the grave"? Was He not "counted with them that go down into the pit," crucified between two thieves? Was He not abandoned by His friends, with darkness becoming His closest companion when the sky turned black for three hours?
Most profoundly, Jesus is the one who truly knows what it is to be afflicted with the wrath of God. Heman felt the waves of God's wrath, but Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. He, the sinless Son of God, was "made a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13). The entire weight of God's fury against our sin was poured out upon Him.
And in that moment, He cried out. But His cry was not, "O God of my salvation." His cry was, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). He was forsaken so that we, who confess Him as the God of our salvation, would never be. He entered the ultimate darkness so that we could be brought into marvelous light. He prayed the prayer of the abandoned one so that we could always pray the prayer of the accepted one: "Let my prayer come before You."
Therefore, when we find ourselves in the pit, when the darkness is our only companion, we can pray this psalm with a confidence Heman could only anticipate. We pray it in the name of Jesus. We can be brutally honest about our pain because Christ has fully absorbed the wrath that our sins deserved. We can cry out "day and night" because He is our great High Priest who ever lives to intercede for us. And we can, even when our feelings scream the opposite, begin our darkest prayers with the unshakable confession of faith: "O Yahweh, the God of my salvation." Because of Jesus, that salvation is not a future hope, but a present, accomplished reality, secure in Him, even when all we can see is the dark.