Tag Archives: desperate prayer

Psalm 88 Only Darkness Knows Me

1 Reply

Marc Chagall, Solitude (1933)

Psalm 88

<A Song. A Psalm of the Korahites. To the leader: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.>
1 O LORD, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
2 let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.
3 For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help,
5 like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah
8 You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, O LORD, cry out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O LORD, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Wretched and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long; from all sides they close in on me.
18 You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.

Psalms 88 and 89 stand together at the end of book three of the book of Psalms and take us into the darkest despair of the entire book. (Nancy de Claisse-Walford, 2014, p. 668) Both prayers are appeals for help that have no resolution within the psalm and while Psalm 89 is a prayer grieving the destruction of Judah and the loss of the promises to the line of David, Psalm 88 is the prayer of an individual who is either metaphorically or physically at the point where, “Death is so near and so real that it becomes the subject of the lament.” (Mays, 1994, p. 282) This is not the type of prayer that was taught in Sunday school, nor is this psalm used in the worship of most churches. Its vision of the world is darker than many churches are comfortable with but it also speaks honestly to the experience of deep darkness that many both inside and outside the church experience. The daring language of the psalm, which is willing to declare that God is responsible for their dire circumstance, turns on the head the vision of Psalm 56:4 or Romans 8:31 as it wonders, “if God is against me, who can be for me?” The psalmist’s words break forth from the dark night of the soul where their abandonment by God and their companions leaves only darkness to know them.

The psalm is attributed to Heman the Ezrahite. It is possible that the intent is to attribute the psalm to Heman who is listed as one of the wise men who Solomon surpasses in 1 Kings 4:31 or Heman the singer, one of the Kohathites appointed by David in 1 Chronicles 6:33. It is also possible that it is the same individual referred to in both 1 Kings and 1 Chronicles (singers/psalmists would be considered wise in Hebrew society) but it is also likely that the Heman referred to in the psalm is a different person unmentioned elsewhere in scripture. Regardless of the authorship of the psalm, it speaks in the brutally honest language of the Hebrew Scriptures that many contemporary Christians have little exposure to.

The psalm begins in a pious cry out to God, crying out to God for God’s attention to the prayers of the one dependent on God’s salvation. The prayer uses three different words for ‘crying out’ to God in verse 1, 9b and 13 (NIB IV: 1027) exhausting the language of prayer as they desperately seek an answer from the God who is both their only hope of salvation and the source of their troubles. The psalm begins with language that would is the traditional language of prayer learned in worship. Yet, once the prayer begins the dam holding back the psalmist’s words breaks and their desperation and abandonment cannot be contained. The pain of the psalmist rushes forth from the shattered walls of convention and flows into an irresistibly honest prayer that emerges from the space of death, darkness, and despair.

The stakes of this prayer are incredibly high for the psalmist. The very center of their life[1] is threatened. The psalmist deploys an incredible number of words for death: Sheol, the Pit, like the dead, slain, grave, those you remember no more, cut off from your hands, in the regions dark and deep, shades (Hebrew Rephaim), Abaddon, darkness, the land of forgetfulness. Almost every line has the presence of death within this prayer. This deployment is especially striking when compared to the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures which rarely talk about death and the afterlife. In verses three to five the mentions of death indicate the serious nature of the psalmist’s petitions but the jarring realization comes in verse six when the psalmist turns their invective to God and declares that God is the one responsible for the psalmist’s situation. God may be the psalmist’s salvation but God is also, in this psalm, the psalmist’s oppressor.

The psalmist girds up their loins and stands before God in accusation declaring that God has put them at death’s door, that God’s wrath is actively overwhelming the psalmist in waves, and God has caused the alienation of the psalmist from their companions. Many Christians are not familiar with this type of accusatory language directed at God and are surprised at the directness of this psalm or Jeremiah’s accusations of God.[2] As mentioned in my comments on Psalm 86 there is a relationship between the servant and their Lord, and here the servant boldly claims that their Lord has violated their relationship. Where the servant needed protection, their Lord has overwhelmed them with wrath. Where the servant looks for a compassionate answer, the answer[3] they receive is unbearable. The actions of God have alienated the servant from both God and their companions making them, like Job, one despised and one cursed by God.

The psalmist’s eyes growing dim is not a statement of eyesight, but indicates that their vitality is failing. Physically and mentally, they are dying and yet they continue to cry out to God. They cry out from a place of “abandonment and lostness…so great that it saturates the soul so there is room for nothing else.” (Nancy de Claisse-Walford, 2014, p. 671) But it is heartbreaking that for the psalmist it is God who has cast them into this space of darkness and death and then turns away from their cries. In a series of six rhetorical questions: Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? The answer to each of these rhetorical questions in the vision of the psalmist is no! As mentioned above the Hebrew scriptures rarely talk about death and the afterlife and there is no conception of heaven and hell as destinations for the people of God in the psalms. Psalm 88 deploys this shocking set of questions to the God of life to get their either unresponsive or oppressive God to relent and deliver their servant from death or the relationship will be broken and God will be the unfaithful one who broke it. In the Psalms when the concept of death, Sheol, the Pit, or Abaddon are mentioned it is assumed that there is no longer any communication between the deceased and God.[4] The only freedom this psalm offers the psalmist is the freedom of the dead where God either does not remember or has actively cut off God’s servant. (Nancy de Claisse-Walford, 2014, p. 671) Yet the psalmist cries out to their Lord as a servant desiring to continue to serve their God in the land of the living.

The psalmist cries out one final time in verse thirteen. Their prayers come before God and even boldly confront[5] God asking God to relent. God’s anger has left the psalmist in the space of darkness and death. There is no escape for the servant from the anxiety filled and deathly state of the servant’s life. There is no answer as the psalm reaches its final gasp, there is only the cry of the servant thrown “against a dark and terrifying void” (Nancy de Claisse-Walford, 2014, p. 669) The final word of the psalm is darkness.[6] The sad final phrase is obscured by the NRSV’s translation. The NIV’s “darkness is my closest friend” or Beth Tanner’s “only darkness knows me” (Nancy de Claisse-Walford, 2014, p. 670) better captures the isolation and abandonment that the psalm closes with. We may rebel against a psalm where death and darkness have the final word, but the book of Psalms reminds us that there are times where the faithful ones of God may find themselves in the God forsaken place where God seems silent, absent, or angry; where relationships prove themselves unfaithful, and where the agonizing prayer breaks forth to God from the death’s door where no light seems to be able to penetrate the darkness of the faithful one’s world.

Nobody would choose to walk into the place of depression and suffering where death and darkness seem to be their only companion, but even people of faith may find themselves in these spaces that appear devoid of God’s steadfast love and compassion. Depression can make the world feel like a place where darkness is the sufferer’s only companion and death may cry out to them. Even faithful people can suffer from bouts of depression so deep that suicide and death seem closer than God. God does not condemn these words of the psalmist as faithless, instead they are placed within the scriptures of God’s people. From a Christian perspective we may answer the rhetorical questions of Psalm 68 differently than the psalmist: from a Christian perspective, to quote Paul, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:8) Yet, this psalm invites us to walk into the swampland of the soul, pitch a tent, and get to know the lay of the land. It invites us to dwell in the God forsaken place of the crucifixion without immediately jumping forward to the surprise of the resurrection. Sometimes resurrection takes time, sometimes prayers end in darkness as they await a response from God, and sometimes faithful ones walk through the valley of the shadow of death. This uncomfortable psalm invites us into an honest relationship with God that demonstrates a confrontational or defiant calling upon God to act in compassion and love rather than abandonment or wrath.  We may not like that darkness has the last word and we may want a happy ending to occur within eighteen verses, but sometimes we dwell in darkness and hope for a light which we cannot see but our faith longs for.

[1] The NRSV’s ‘soul’ in verse 3 is the Hebrew nephesh which occurs frequently in the psalms but the modern idea of ‘soul’ comes from Greek thought instead of Hebrew thought. The Hebrew nephesh is closer to ‘life itself’ or ‘the essence of life.’

[2] For example: Jeremiah 15: 17-18, 20: 7-10. Particularly in Jeremiah 20 our English translations often soften the shocking language or Jeremiah.

[3] The Hebrew word translated ‘waves’ also can means ‘answer.’

[4] See for example Psalm 6:5, Psalm 30:9. The contrary point will be argued by Psalm 139:8 where even if the psalmist makes their bed in Sheol, God is present there.

[5] The Hebrew verb qdm can mean either come before or confront.

[6] The final word of the psalm is the Hebrew hoshek (darkness).

Psalm 83 A Fearful Prayer for Deliverance

1 Reply

From Susan Harris Anger and art// A Rage to Paint https://www.susanharrisart.com/blog

 Psalm 83

<A Song. A Psalm of Asaph.>
1 O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!
2 Even now your enemies are in tumult; those who hate you have raised their heads.
3 They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against those you protect.
4 They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more.”
5 They conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant —
6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites,
7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
8 Assyria also has joined them; they are the strong arm of the children of Lot. Selah
9 Do to them as you did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the Wadi Kishon,
10 who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for the ground.
11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
12 who said, “Let us take the pastures of God for our own possession.”
13 O my God, make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind.
14 As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze,
15 so pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane.
16 Fill their faces with shame, so that they may seek your name, O LORD.
17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace.
18 Let them know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth.

One of the gifts of the book of psalms is the range of situations these poems address and the emotions they embrace. The potency of poetry can be uncomfortable, especially when it comes out of a space of fear or anxiety to call upon God to turn God’s power upon an enemy. Many of the psalms in book three of the psalter (Psalms 73-89) reflect the experience of suffering paired with the expectation of God’s response to the cry of the suffering one. The hope of the psalmist is for a God who can provide hope in the midst of the hopeless situation for the individual or the nation. This is the final Psalm of Asaph, a group of psalms which expect God to execute judgment on the situation of the individual or (as in this psalm) the nation. (Brueggemann, 2014, p. 360)

In the threatening situation that Israel encounters the psalmist asks for God’s silence to cease and for God not to be still. In contrast to the perceived silence of God there is the tumult[1] of Israel’s threatening enemies. Even beyond the threat to Israel, these enemies have raised themselves to oppose the God of Israel. The plans to wipe out Israel and take possession of the land are paired with the unusual action of making a covenant against God.[2] The situation in the poem is deadly serious with a group of enemies promising to destroy the population and the memory of Israel.

The enemies listed in the middle of the psalm geographically encircle Israel. Edom, Moab, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia and Tyre are all common opponents of the Israelites in the time of both judges and throughout the monarchy of Israel. Assyria may indicate a later date for the psalm since the Assyrian empire rises as a regional power that begins to impact Israel during the Omri dynasty in Israel[3] and a century later will defeat Israel[4] decisively. There is no known alliance of Assyria with the listed nations. Two nations are rarely mentioned: the Hagrites and Gebal. The Hagrites are mentioned in 1 Chronicles 5 as a group in the northern Transjordan, Gebal is associated with the city of Byblos on the coast of modern Lebanon. (Brueggemann, 2014, p. 361) Israel finds itself surrounded by a numerically and militarily superior enemy which is determined to destroy them so completely that not even their memory remains.

The mention of Assyria may indicate a later date for the psalm, but the history that the psalmist appeals to all occur in the time of Judges and early in the monarchy of Israel at the latest.. God’s action against Midian occurs through Gideon (Judges 6-8), Sisera and Jabin are the general and king that oppose Deborah as judge and Barak as the military leader of the Israelites (Judges 4-5). En-dor is mentioned twice in the Hebrew Scriptures: once when Saul consults a medium (1 Samuel 28) but the reference in the psalm is probably to the people of Manasseh taking possession of the land in Joshua 17:11.[5] Oreb and Zeeb are two of the captains of Midian killed when Gideon fought against the Midianites (Judges 7:25) and Zebah and Zalmunna are the final leaders of Midian pursued and killed by Gideon (Judges 8:1-21). The final psalm may build upon an early psalm which arose out of the experiences of the time of judges or early in the monarchy. Regardless of its history of composition the psalm echoes the experiences of God’s deliverance of the people in the past to cast a hopeful vision for God’s deliverance in the present.

Frequently psalms that call upon God to act against a military threat portray God as a divine warrior, but here the psalm calls upon God to be a force of nature. God is a wind that scatters their enemies like tumbleweeds, a consuming fire that consumes the forests and mountains, and a mighty storm that terrifies those who are in its path. Perhaps the psalmist expects the presence of God to be preceded by these things, like the wind, earthquake, and fire that precede the still small voice in 1 Kings 19.The experience of war is brutal and the language of this psalm expresses that brutality with the image of bodies littering the earth like fertilizer.[6] The psalmist does not anticipate that God acting as a force of nature will be painless for their enemies or that their oppressors will change their behavior without God’s forceful action. Yet, Israel here does not seem to embody the same genocidal tendencies of their oppressors. The desire is for the enemies to be shamed but with the ultimate goal of the enemies know that the LORD the God of Israel is the Most High over all the earth.

For people who are not the victims of oppression the idea of calling upon God to terrify and eliminate our enemies may seem uncomfortable. Psalm 83 is one of the imprecatory psalms[7] and these psalms are rarely used in the worship of the church. Yet, these psalms are a part of the honest dialogue of faith that emerges from those moments in life where enemies are oppressing the faithful and they ask for God’s response amidst the clamoring of their enemies. The gift of the psalter is its ability to contain the breadth of human emotions and bring those emotions into the dialogue with the promise of God hearing the concerns of God’s people. The God of the scriptures is not an uninvolved or detached God. The psalmist expects God’s silence to end and for God to be a force of nature which delivers God’s people from the violent enemies that surround them.

[1] Growling in Hebrew (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 647)

[2] As Beth Tanner notes this is the only place in the Hebrew Scriptures where a covenant is made against a person or entity instead of with. (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 647)Normally covenants bind individuals and peoples together, but the alliance made here is in aggression against both God and God’s people.

[3] Particularly in the time of King Ahab 869-850 BCE

[4] Israel here refers to the northern kingdom of Israel as opposed to Judah after the split of the nations in the time of Jeroboam and Rehoboam (1 Kings 12)

[5] Although the text seems to indicate that Dor and En-dor are cities that Manasseh were unable to take full possession of and that the Canaanites remained within. It is possible there is a memory of a victory that is not recorded in Joshua or Judges that is remembered in the psalm.

[6] This word in Hebrew is frequently used for bodies left on the ground (2 Kings 9:37, Jeremiah 8:2; 9: 22; 16:4; 25:33) but seems to be more associated with debris or fertilizer than dung which would be an offensive way to refer to the dead. (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 646)

[7] Other psalms of this type include psalms 7, 35, 55, 58, 59, 69, 79, 104, and 137.

Psalm 55-A Desperate Prayer from an Unsafe Environment

6 Replies

Apophysis-Betrayal (1footonthedawn at deviantart.com)

Psalm 55

To the leader: with stringed instruments. A Maskil of David.
1 Give ear to my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication.
2 Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in my complaint. I am distraught
3 by the noise of the enemy, because of the clamor of the wicked. For they bring trouble upon me, and in anger they cherish enmity against me.
4 My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.
6 And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
8 I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.”
9 Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech; for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it;
11 ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace.
12 It is not enemies who taunt me — I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me — I could hide from them.
13 But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend,
14 with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God with the throng.
15 Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.
16 But I call upon God, and the LORD will save me.
17 Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he will hear my voice.
18 He will redeem me unharmed[1] from the battle that I wage, for many are arrayed against me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old, Selah will hear, and will humble them — because they do not change, and do not fear God.
20 My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me
21 with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords.
22 Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.
23 But you, O God, will cast them down into the lowest pit; the bloodthirsty and treacherous shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.

This Psalm is filled with unusual Hebrew words that account for the differences in wording among translations. Although individual words may present challenges the overall message of the words are clear. This is a desperate prayer for deliverance from an unsafe environment where human relationships have failed, trust has been violated, and the psalmist feels unsafe. It is a petition for God’s help. It is a cry for God to condemn those who have brought such pain. It bears witness to the psalmist grasping to their faith in God’s justice when others have proven faithless.

Many people can reflect on moments in their life when they can identify strongly with the words of this Psalm. For me, the words of this psalm take me back to a time when a dream had died, I was leading a congregation that was splitting apart due to conflict, and even home was no longer a healthy place as I attempted to deal with a betrayal by one I loved. It was a time where it felt like all the things that defined me had rejected me. My hopes for the future, my work, my place of worship, and even my family all had been impacted and the only thing I had left to hold on to was the faith that God would hear my cry in that moment, that the pain would eventually end, and that God would save me in a time when I could not save myself.

Perhaps the reason that the words in this Psalm are so difficult to translate is that the poet has to grasp for words in the midst of their pain which seem just out of reach. Deep pain seems to shatter our ability to narrate what is happening, the events become unspeakable. Yet, it is precisely this inability to speak about the trauma that one endures which can trap us within it. One of the gifts of scripture, particularly the Psalms and the prophets, is honest language which attempts to bear witness to the pain and suffering that are often a part of the life of the faithful. Being a religious person does not prevent one from experiencing conflict, betrayal, anxiety, fear, and even desiring to run away from one’s home or one’s vocation.

The Psalm begins with four verbs asking God to pay attention to the desperate prayer (Give ear, do not hide, attend, and answer) followed by a long list of troubles caused to this faithful one by the actions of the enemy/wicked. The righteous one is troubled, distraught, experiencing anguish in their heart and the terrors of death, fear, trembling. and horror overwhelm them, and their desire is to flee from the city, their home, and their responsibilities to some wilderness retreat. These early descriptions of the psalmist’s current condition seem in tension the affirmation later in the Psalm that “the LORD…will never permit the righteous to be moved” but they need to voice the full extent of their affliction before they can enter into the trust in God’s provision. J Clinton McCann highlights that many of the things the righteous one is experiencing are exactly what those opposed to God’s way and experiencing God’s judgment have experienced in the past:

“Terrors” (v.4) and “trembling” (v.5) are what the Egyptians experienced as a result of opposing God (see Exod 15: 15-16), and overwhelming horror is what Ezekiel promises as a result of God’s judgment (see Ezek 7:18). (NIB IV, 898)

Now in a world turned upside down by violence and betrayal the righteous are experiencing this at the hands of the wicked and only God can reestablish justice in this unjust environment. The psalmist, like the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 9:1-6, desires to be away from this place of betrayal and pain.

The city itself has become unsafe because of the actions of the wicked. There is no safe time and there is no safe place. Morning to night and from the walls of the city to the marketplace and even in the heart of the city the enemy cannot be avoided. The features of the city that are supposed to bring security are occupied by the enemy, commerce has been corrupted, and there is no place to go where violence, strife, and ruin have not transformed the city which was once a home into a prison for this petitioner. God must act in the midst of this injustice and the psalmist echoes God’s judgment of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 where the languages of the city are confused.

It is only in the middle of the psalm that we learn that the betrayer who has made their world unsafe is, “my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.” This intimate friend who has shared times both mundane and sacred with the speaker has become their oppressor. The transformation from friend to enemy has broken the petitioner’s world and they cry out for God to judge them like God judged Korah and his company that were taken alive into the realm of death. (Numbers 16: 30-33) Although Sheol as a place of the dead does not have the same meaning as Hell in much Christian thought, the injustice committed by this former close friend and companion has damaged the petitioner so deeply they want them removed from the sphere of the living. As uncomfortable as these words crying out for judgment may be, they need to be spoken and lifted up to God so that they can leave the speaker’s heart. Like Jeremiah 9:1-6 mentioned above, it is neighbors and kin who bring about, “Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit!” (Jeremiah 9:6) and now the fate of these friends turned enemy belongs to God. The companion who laid hands on the psalmist and violated their covenant now finds themselves in the hands of the God who is faithful to the covenant.

God will judge the wicked and restore the just. The redemption which the psalmist longs for is not merely a removal of the wicked but also a relief from their anxiety and a complete return to wholeness and happiness. The only life after this experience of betrayal and oppression can come from the LORD who sustains the righteous. Ultimately for the healing to begin the environment must change and the only way the petitioner sees for that to happen in their current state is for the violent betrayer to be removed. There is no trust in one whose speech was smoother than butter and whose words were smoother than oil which hid a heart set on conflict and actions which cut deeply.  For the psalmist human beings have proven untrustworthy, and it has driven this righteous one towards God. Perhaps in a place and time where the poet’s center of life has been returned to peace and wholeness there will be a space for reconciliation and forgiveness, but in the immediate aftermath of betrayal as the poet lives in fear and anxiety their horizon can only embrace a future without their betrayer.

 

[1] Literally “he will ransom in shalom (peace-wholeness) my nephesh (soul-center of life)” As Beth Tanner notes, “my very life will be protected, not just from harm, but will be restored to complete wholeness and happiness. (Nancy deClaisse-Walford 2014, 475)