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Psalm 88 | King James Audio Bible
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Psalm 88 expresses despair and there is an absence of the redemptive turn found in many other psalms. Traditionally ascribed to Heman the Ezrahite, this psalm explores depths of human suffering and spiritual desolation, offering a raw and unfiltered cry from the soul.
The psalmist addresses the Lord as the God of salvation, setting a poignant tone for the lament that follows. The psalmist’s plea is relentless, crying out day and night, seeking an audience with the Divine. The vivid language employed portrays a soul overwhelmed by troubles, drawing near to the very edge of the grave. The psalmist feels counted among those destined for the pit, devoid of strength and likened to the dead.
Imagery of being laid in the lowest pit, shrouded in darkness, and subjected to the waves of God’s wrath intensifies the psalmist’s experience of affliction. There is profound sense of being abandoned, with acquaintances distanced and the psalmist feeling like an abomination, imprisoned and unable to come forth.
The psalmist’s gaze turns inward as affliction takes a toll on the eyes, and the relentless suffering leads to a sense of daily mourning. The poignant questioning arises: Will wonders be shown to the dead? Can the dead arise and praise the Lord? The psalmist grapples with the seeming futility of divine intervention after death.
The psalm ends without the customary hopeful note, leaving the reader in the darkness of the psalmist’s affliction. Lover and friend are put far away, and acquaintances are shrouded in darkness, highlighting a stark sense of isolation.
Psalm 88 | King James Audio Bible KJV | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee:
Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry;
For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.
I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength:
Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.
Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.
Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.
Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.
Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: Lord, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.
Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah.
Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction?
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
But unto thee have I cried, O Lord; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.
Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?
I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted.
Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.
They came round about me daily like water; they compassed me about together.
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.
Psalm 88 | King James Audio Bible KJV | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
- Relentless Lamentation: Psalm 88 is characterized by an unyielding expression of lamentation, expressing a soul’s persistent cry to God in the midst of profound despair.
- Desolation and Abandonment: The psalmist vividly portrays a sense of desolation, feeling abandoned and cut off from the divine presence. Themes of darkness and affliction permeate the psalm, reflecting depths of the psalmist’s suffering.
- Questioning Divine Intervention: The psalmist grapples with the seeming futility of divine intervention after death. Questions about wonders being shown to the dead and the praise of the Lord by those who are dead underscore complexity of the psalmist’s faith.
- Intense Personal Affliction: The psalmist experiences physical and emotional anguish, drawing near to the grave, feeling counted among the dead, and being subjected to the waves of God’s wrath. The language conveys the depth of personal affliction.
- Isolation And Separation: The psalm concludes with a poignant sense of isolation. Friends, lovers and acquaintances are put far away, shrouded in darkness; there is profound separation and loneliness experienced by the psalmist.
- Absence Of Redemptive Turn: Notably, Psalm 88 lacks the typical redemptive turn found in many other psalms. The absence of a shift towards hope or praise sets it apart, allowing it to stand as a powerful representation of the complexities of faith in the face of unrelenting suffering.
- Raw And Unfiltered Expression: The psalm’s unfiltered portrayal of the psalmist’s agony and the unrelenting nature of the lament contribute to its uniqueness. It provides a sacred space for the expression of raw, honest emotions and the complexities of the human experience.
Little Gidding, the fourth and final poem in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, examines themes of time, redemption, and spiritual renewal. Written in 1942 during World War II, this poem brings together reflections from the previous three poems and culminates in a unified vision of human experience and transcendence [ … ]
Saint Bede the Venerable (c. 673–735), monk of Wearmouth-Jarrow and the most eminent Anglo-Saxon theologian, offers in this passage a profound meditation on 1 Peter 2:9, wherein the Apostle applies Old Testament imagery to the new People of God. Bede’s theological genius lies in his ability to interweave patristic exegesis, liturgical spirituality, and historical typology into a cohesive vision of the Christian life as pilgrimage from darkness to light, from Egypt to the Promised Land [ … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
