Psalm 88

Psalm 88 is the 88th psalm from the Book of Psalms. According to the title, it is a "psalm of the sons of Korah" as well as being a "maskil of Heman the Ezrahite".

It is described Psalm for the sons of Korah, a prayer for mercy and deliverance [1] and a Maschil.[2]

According to Martin Marty, a professor of church history at the University of Chicago, Psalm 88 is “a wintry landscape of unrelieved bleakness.” Psalm 88 ends by saying:

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend. (Psalm 88:18, NIV). Indeed, in Hebrew, the last word of the Psalm 88 is "darkness".

Uses

Judaism

Psalm 89 s

Byzantine rite

This Psalm is part of the Six Psalms (Psalms 3, 38, 63, 88, 103 and 143) that constitute the heart of the "orthros", that is to say Matins Orthodox and Catholic Churches of the Byzantine rite.

Commentary

Scroll of the Psalms

It is often assumed that it is the Psalm is a sick Psalm.[4][5] The disease, which laid low the psalmist could, have been leprosy or some other unclean illness.[6] [7] Others see rather than a specific disease, a more general calmity.[8][9]

By contrast Hermann Gunkel contends that in Psalm involves accusations against the Psalmist regarding their sins mentioned.

Neale and Littledale[10] find it "stands alone in all the Psalter for the unrelieved gloom, the hopeless sorrow of its tone. Even the very saddest of the others, and the Lamentations themselves, admit some variations of key, some strains of hopefulness; here only all is darkness to the close.—Neale and Littledale.

References

  1. ↑ (Ps 88:10-18).
  2. ↑ Charles Spurgeon,Treasury of David.
  3. ↑ The Artscroll Tehillim page 329
  4. ↑ Hochspringen B. Klaus Seybold, Prayer of the sick in the Old Testament (1973), p169.
  5. ↑ Willy Staerk, poetry (1920).
  6. ↑ Hochspringen B. Klaus Seybold, Prayer of the sick in the Old Testament (1973), 169
  7. ↑ Rudolf Kittel, Psalms (1921)
  8. ↑ Emil Kautzsch, The Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament II (4 1923), 113ff.
  9. ↑ Hochspringen B. Klaus Seybold, Prayer of the sick in the Old Testament (1973), 169
  10. ↑ Neale. A Commentary on the Psalms. Vol. 3. 1871. Reprint. London: Forgotten Books, 2013. 90-1.
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