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Read the text of Psalm 88, with optional informational overlays.

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Access our aids for translating Hebrew poetry in Psalm 88.

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Study Psalm 88 in depth with our scholarly resources.

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Exegetical Issues

Many have said that this psalm is all about complete darkness, and chaos. As one scholar put it,

“This Psalm stands alone in all the Psalter for the unrelieved gloom, the hopeless sorrow of its tone. Even the very saddest of the other psalms admit some variations of key, some strains of hopefulness; here, in Psalm 88, only all is darkness to the end."[1]

But is that true? Is that the message of Ps 88? Only all is darkness to the end?

בַּמֵּתִים חָפְשִׁי

[I am] an outcast among the dead.

verse 6


וַאֲנִי אֵלֶיךָ יְהוָה שִׁוַּעְתִּי

But I have been crying out to you for help, YHWH.

verse 14




  1. ↑ Neale and Littledale, 1871, pg 90.