Psalm 88 is a remarkably sad psalm, and is said to be the most despondent of them all. It has little or no lift or hope all through it. The speaker bemoans his afflictions and his plight in many ways. He shares that the Lord seems to have brought about his despair and that He will not act to relieve it. 'I suffer Your terrors; I am distraught.' (Verse 15)
The one redeeming feature throughout the psalm is that the speaker gives no sign of abandoning the Lord but maintains his assurance that the Lord is there even though his existence shows no sign of this.
This one feature helps us to understand why this psalm is part of the Word. First, it reflects and describes the Lord's life on earth during which He was deeply tempted and at times felt that the Divine was absent from Him. We, as human beings, can't have any idea about the severity or extent of the Lord's temptations, but we can understand in principle that He was tempted in every way and on every level. (Arcana Caelestia 1787)
In a less severe way, this psalm also describes our human temptations, and it reflects and describes our experiences during temptation. Our spiritual faith and confidence seem to have gone from us and we are left with doubts and despair about what we once knew we had. The Lord seems to have deserted us and left us to ourselves alone, even though we can still mentally recall the Lord and address Him. (New Jerusalem 200)
This psalm helps us to appreciate the importance of knowing and acknowledging the Lord while we have to live our lives as if everything is done by us. These two - faith and life - hold us together despite everything we may experience. (Divine Providence 321[1])
The psalm opens with affirmative words that the Lord is the God of my salvation. The speaker knows this to be true. This first and saving cry rings on throughout this dark psalm as something to remember and depend on when there is no other reference or help. (Apocalypse Revealed 798[3])
Reading through the psalm, we can get the impression that it is simply a catalogue of woes where each phrase expresses the same kind of personal trial as all the others. But with closer scrutiny and with a sense of how our spiritual life takes us through trials and personal discoveries we see that each situation is descriptive of our encounters with temptation.Let’s look at several of these as examples.
Verses 4 and 6, 6 speak about those who go down to the pit. A pit is a deep, dark hole in the ground from which there is no escape. This is a picture of a terrifying state which can come upon us. We may think there’s no point in believing, trying or caring because we get misunderstood. We may think those who live for themselves get rich and seem happy. We may feel that spiritual things are useless. Such feelings may overwhelm us and evil spirits will seek to hold us in this despair. (True Christian Religion 123[6])
Verse 8 (and verse 18) says that 'You have put away my acquaintances far from me and made me an abomination to them’. As we commit to living a spiritual life, we may feel lonely when we try to share with others if they don’t understand. But even more, at a deeper level, our 'acquaintances' stand for aspects of our own life such as peace, joy, contentment, even loving others, that we can't feel in our present condition. (Arcana Caelestia 2684)
Perhaps the hardest experience during our trials is to feel that the Lord is absent from us, or even worse, that the Lord has deliberately left us, cast us off and hidden His face from us. In calmer states we can understand that this is an appearance and that the Lord is in fact closer to us, so close that we lose our sense of his presence. Verse 14 speaks about this and then goes on to say that 'affliction and readiness to die have been with me since my youth', suggesting a strength to withstand everything, even seeming to lose the Lord. (Arcana Caelestia 840)
While this dark psalm seems to give a sense of no end to distress, it is important to see it as descriptive of states of full and sustained temptations. And it is important to remember that when we make our decision to hold on to the Lord - as this person surely does - temptations depart and we find new strength and a greater knowing in our trust.
