Psalms 88:1 - Meaning and Application

It seems, from the titles of this psalm and the next, that Heman wrote one and Ethan wrote the other. There were two men named Heman and Ethan among the sons of Zerah, Judah’s son (1 Chronicles 2:4, 1 Chronicles 2:6). There were also two others known for great wisdom, and Solomon was said to be wiser than Heman and Ethan (1 Kings 4:31). We are not sure whether the Levite singers named Heman and Ethan were the same men, or whether either of them wrote these psalms.

There was a Heman who was one of the chief singers, and he was called the king’s seer, that is, a prophet, in the words of God (1 Chronicles 25:5). It is likely that this Heman also had spiritual insight, yet he could find no comfort for himself. He could guide and encourage others, and still feel shut out from comfort himself. The first words of this psalm are the only words of comfort in it. Everything else is cloud and darkness. Still, before he begins his complaint, he calls God “the God of my salvation.” That shows he expected rescue, even in a very dark time, and that he depended on God to bring it.

Here we see the psalmist as a man of prayer. He prayed at all times, but especially in suffering, because if anyone is afflicted, he should pray. His comfort is that he had prayed, and his grief is that he was still afflicted even after prayer. He was earnest in prayer, saying, “I have cried out to you,” and “I have stretched out my hands to you” (Psalm 88:1, Psalm 88:9). That picture shows a man reaching for God, as if to take hold of mercy, afraid of missing it.

He was also constant in prayer. He says he called on God daily, yes, day and night (Psalm 88:9, Psalm 88:1). In this way we should always pray and not lose heart. God’s own chosen people cry to him day and night, beginning and ending each day with prayer, and filling the day with prayer as well. This is what it means to pray always. We do well in prayer when we keep at it.

He also directed his prayer to God and wanted an answer from him. He says, “Let my prayer come before you” (Psalm 88:2). He did not want to be seen by people, like the Pharisees who prayed to be noticed. He wanted his prayer to be accepted by God. He was content to leave the answer in God’s hands, saying in effect, “Lord, listen to my cry and answer it as you choose.”

The psalmist was also a man of sorrow, and some have taken him here as a picture of Christ, whose cries in suffering often match the same tone. He says, “My soul is full of troubles” (Psalm 88:3). Christ said, “Now is my soul troubled,” and in his agony, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” The psalmist also says, “My life draws near to the grave.” Heman was wise, good, a man of God, and a singer, so we might expect him to be cheerful. Yet here he is deeply troubled in mind and close to despair. Inner trouble is often the worst kind, and even the best of God’s servants have felt it sharply. No human spirit can always carry its weakness. Who then can bear a wounded spirit?

He also saw himself as a dying man, with a heart ready to break from sorrow (Psalm 88:5). He says he is “free among the dead,” like one of that grim company, lying in the grave like the slain. In that picture, no one notices them anymore, and no one cares for them. They seem forgotten, left to corruption and worms. They are cut off from God’s hand, the hand that used to support them and reach out to them. Now they are beyond any earthly help, and the verse speaks as if God has laid him in the lowest pit, in darkness and the deep (Psalm 88:6). He feels sunk to the very bottom, with no way out in sight, and ready to think all is lost.

Good people may suffer very deeply, and they may also form very dark thoughts about their suffering and its outcome. That can happen through the heaviness of sorrow and the weakness of faith. He complained most of all about God’s displeasure, because that gave bitterness to all the rest of his pain. He says, “Your wrath lies hard on me” (Psalm 88:7). If he had seen God’s favor in his suffering, it would have felt lighter. But instead it pressed down on him heavily, and he was close to fainting.

The weight of this wrath seemed to come in waves from God, one after another. He could hardly recover from one dark thought before another pressed him down. These waves came with force and noise. He says that all God’s waves were used to afflict him and bring him low. Even God’s beloved children may sometimes think they are children of wrath. No outward trouble can weigh on them so heavily as that thought.

It also made his pain worse that his friends had left him and treated him as a stranger. When we are in trouble, it helps to have people near us who love and sympathize with us. But this good man had none of that. He does not accuse them of betrayal, ingratitude, or cruelty. Instead, he complains to God and sees God’s hand in it: “You have put my acquaintances far from me” (Psalm 88:8). Providence had removed them, or made them unable to help, or turned their hearts away. Every creature is only what God makes it to be for us.

If old friends become distant and those we hoped would be kind turn against us, we should bear that with the same patient submission to God’s will as other troubles (Job 19:13). In fact, his friends were not only distant, they even hated him because he was poor and in distress. “You have made me an abomination to them,” he says. They were not merely cold toward him, but repelled by him. They looked at him with contempt and disgust. No one should think such a trial strange, when Heman, so famous for wisdom, was still neglected by the world when it turned against him, like a vessel that no one values.

He saw his situation as hopeless and miserable: “I am shut up, and I cannot come out.” He felt like a prisoner held under God’s angry judgment, with no way to escape. So he lies down under his troubles and gives in to them, because he cannot see any real chance of getting free.

He says the same thing in (Psalms 88:9): “My eye wastes away because of my affliction.” At times, crying out can bring some relief to a hurting heart. But tears must not stop prayer. We must sow in tears, and still keep praying: “My eye mourns, but I cry to you daily.” Let prayers and tears go together, and God will accept them together. “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears.”