Commentary - Psalm 88:13-18

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm in the entire Psalter. It is a raw, unrelenting cry from the depths of profound suffering and apparent abandonment by God. Unlike almost every other lament psalm, it ends without a turn to praise, without a final declaration of trust or hope. It concludes in utter darkness. This passage, verses 13 through 18, forms the final, desperate appeal of the psalmist, Heman the Ezrahite. He has been crying out to God consistently, yet his experience is one of constant divine rejection and wrath. He feels that God Himself is his primary antagonist. The terrors he endures are not random misfortunes; he identifies them as "Your terrors" and "Your burning anger." The psalm's ultimate value for the Christian is found not in providing a template for how our own laments should end, but in its profound and prophetic anticipation of the cry of the Lord Jesus Christ from the cross. This is the psalm of Gethsemane and Golgotha, where the Son of God was made to feel the full, unmitigated force of His Father's wrath against sin, utterly friendless and alone in the dark.

The structure of this final section is a series of anguished questions and declarations directed at Yahweh. The psalmist wants to know why God is rejecting him. He catalogues his lifelong affliction, the overwhelming nature of God's terrors, the constant, suffocating presence of divine horrors, and the complete isolation from all human companionship, which he attributes directly to God's action. This is not the complaint of an unbeliever, but the agonizing prayer of a believer who cannot reconcile his faith in the "God of my salvation" (v. 1) with his experience of unceasing dereliction. It is a vital part of the canonical witness because it gives voice to the darkest moments of a believer's life, and more importantly, it points us to the Savior who entered that darkness completely, so that we would never have to experience it eternally.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 88 is unique. It is placed in Book III of the Psalms (Psalms 73-89), a section that contains many psalms of corporate lament, dealing with the destruction of the temple and the exile of Israel. This psalm, however, is intensely personal. It is attributed to Heman the Ezrahite, a wise man and Levitical musician from the time of Solomon. The superscription also mentions "the sons of Korah," connecting it to a guild of temple singers. This is not the cry of a man ignorant of worship or theology; it is the cry of a man steeped in the life of faith, now plunged into an abyss. Its canonical placement, particularly its stark contrast with the triumphant notes of other psalms, serves a crucial purpose. It validates the experience of utter desolation within the life of faith and prevents us from adopting a triumphalism that is detached from reality. It forces us to confront the cost of sin and the reality of divine wrath, driving us to find a resolution not within the psalm itself, but in the One to whom the entire Psalter points: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Key Issues

The Cry from the Abyss

This psalm is a hard providence in the canon. It feels like a block of granite, unyielding and bleak. There is no tidy resolution, no "and then God answered." It is a prayer that seems to go up into a heaven of brass. And this is precisely its value. We live in a world that has been shattered by sin, and our theology must be robust enough to handle the jagged edges. A faith that only has psalms for sunny days is a faith that will not survive the winter. Psalm 88 is a winter psalm. It teaches us that faith is not always a feeling of confidence, but sometimes it is simply the sheer, dogged refusal to turn anywhere else. The psalmist, though he feels utterly rejected by God, continues to address God. He is not talking about God to his friends; he is crying to God. This is the faith of Job, who said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." This psalm is what that slaying feels like from the inside. And ultimately, it is a window into the soul of Christ, who was not just slain by the Father in some abstract sense, but who felt the full weight of that judicial slaying on the cross. He entered this darkness so that the final word for us would not be darkness, but light.

Verse by Verse Commentary

13 But as for me, O Yahweh, I have cried out to You for help, And in the morning my prayer comes before You.

The psalmist begins this final section by reasserting the one thing he is still doing: praying. The "But as for me" sets his action in contrast to his circumstances. Everything around him screams that God is his enemy, but he persists in treating Him as his only possible helper. He cries out to Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God. This is not a generic appeal to a distant deity; it is an appeal to the God who made promises to Israel. His prayer is not sporadic; it is disciplined. "In the morning my prayer comes before You." This is a picture of faithful, persistent, daily seeking. He gets up, and the first thing he does is lay his case before the Lord. This is a profound act of faith in the midst of faith-destroying circumstances. He believes God is there, and he believes God is a hearer of prayer, even though his own experience provides no evidence for it. He is operating on sheer, naked trust in the character of God against the overwhelming testimony of his feelings and his situation.

14 O Yahweh, why do You reject my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?

Here are the terrible questions that his persistence forces to the surface. He is doing what he is supposed to do, so why is God responding this way? The word "reject" is a strong one; it means to spurn or cast off. He feels that God has taken a personal dislike to his very being, his "soul." The second question is a classic Old Testament expression for divine disfavor. To have God "hide His face" was to be cut off from the source of life, blessing, and salvation. For an Israelite, the great blessing was to have God's face shine upon you (Num 6:25). To have God hide His face was the ultimate curse. The psalmist cannot understand it. He is seeking God's face every morning, and yet God seems to be deliberately turning away. These are not faithless questions. They are the questions of a faith that is grappling with a reality it cannot comprehend. It is the cry of a son who cannot understand his father's inexplicable and painful silence.

15 I have been afflicted and about to breathe my last from my youth on; I bear Your terrors; I am overcome.

His suffering is not a recent development. It has been a lifelong condition, "from my youth on." This is not a man having a bad week; this is a man whose entire existence has been defined by affliction and the proximity of death. And notice the source of the affliction. He does not attribute it to fate, or chance, or even to human enemies in this verse. He says, "I bear Your terrors." The terrors, the things that cause him to shudder with dread, are from God. This is a hard-won theological realism. He understands God's sovereignty not just in blessing, but also in affliction. The final phrase, "I am overcome," can also be translated as "I am distracted" or "I am at my wits' end." The relentless, divine pressure has brought him to the point of mental and emotional collapse. He is drowning, and he believes it is God who is holding his head under the water.

16 Your burning anger has passed over me; Your horrors have destroyed me.

He now defines the "terrors" more specifically. It is God's "burning anger," His fierce wrath, that has swept over him like a flood or a fire. This is the language of covenant curse. This is what God promised would happen to those who broke His law. The psalmist feels the full force of this judicial wrath. The "horrors" of God, the things that inspire dread, have not just wounded him; they have "destroyed me." The word means to bring to silence, to annihilate. He feels that his very identity is being unmade by this divine onslaught. This is the language that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the mouth of Christ. On the cross, the burning anger of God against the sins of the elect passed over the Son of God. He was destroyed, brought to silence, so that we would not be.

17 They have surrounded me like water all day long; They have encompassed me altogether.

The assault is relentless and total. He uses the metaphor of a flood. God's terrors and horrors are like water, surrounding him constantly, "all day long." There is no escape, no high ground to which he can flee. The water is not just at his feet; it has "encompassed me altogether." He is completely submerged. This is a picture of utter helplessness and suffocation. The pressure is constant and it comes from every direction. It is the feeling of being trapped in a hopeless situation with no possibility of relief. This is the deep water of which other psalms speak, the chaotic abyss that represents the power of death and judgment.

18 You have removed lover and friend far from me; My acquaintances are in darkness.

The psalm ends with the final, crushing blow of total isolation. And again, he attributes it directly to God: "You have removed lover and friend far from me." In his moment of greatest need, when he might have found some small comfort in human companionship, God has systematically stripped it away. His closest relations, "lover and friend," are gone. Even his more distant "acquaintances" are gone. The final phrase is stark and devastating: "My acquaintances are in darkness." This could mean they are in the land of darkness (the grave), or that his only remaining acquaintance is darkness itself. The Hebrew is simply "darkness." It is as though he looks around for a friendly face, and the only thing that meets his gaze is a black void. This is the final word of the psalm. No hope, no light, no friend. It is the cry of dereliction. It is the cry of the cross, where Jesus was abandoned by His friends and, in a way we can never fully comprehend, by His Father, so that He might purchase for us a friendship that can never be taken away, and bring us into a light that can never be extinguished.

Application

So what do we do with a psalm like this? First, we must refuse to blunt its sharp edges. We should not rush to the end and say, "Well, he shouldn't have felt that way." The Holy Spirit included this prayer in Scripture to give a divine voice to the darkest moments of human experience. There are times in the life of a believer when everything feels like this psalm. To deny that is to be a miserable comforter, a friend of Job. This psalm gives us permission to be honest with God when we are in the abyss. God is not fragile; He can handle our most desperate and confused cries.

Second, and most importantly, we must read this psalm through the lens of the cross. This psalm is ultimately not about you, or about Heman. It is about Jesus. He is the one who truly lived this psalm. He was afflicted from His youth. He bore the Father's terrors. The burning anger of God against our sin passed over Him. He was surrounded by the floodwaters of judgment. And on the cross, God removed lover and friend far from Him, and His only acquaintance was darkness. He drank this cup of wrath to the dregs so that it would pass from us. He endured the Father's hidden face so that the Father's face would shine on us forever.

Therefore, when we find ourselves in a dark place, we can pray this psalm knowing that Jesus has been there before us and for us. We cry out from our own little darkness into the memory of His great darkness. And because He went into that final darkness and came out the other side in the resurrection, we know that darkness will not have the last word for us either. This psalm, which ends in a black hole, is answered not in verse 19, but in the empty tomb. Christ has plumbed the depths of this psalm and has, for all His people, exhausted its curse. Because He was truly forsaken, we can know with absolute certainty that we will never be.