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 and a Maschil.

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.

Indeed, in Hebrew, the last word of the psalm is "darkness".

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

By contrast, Hermann Gunkel contends that this psalm involves accusations against the Psalmist, regarding his sins mentioned.

Neale and Littledale 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.

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