Psalm 88
Plaintive Prayer of a Patient Sufferer Like Job
Psalms 88 is as gloomy as Psa 87:1-7 is cheerful; they stand near one another as contrasts. Not Ps 77, as the old expositors answer to the question quaenam ode omnium tristissima, but this Psalms 88 is the darkest, gloomiest, of all the plaintive Psalms; for it is true the name “God of my salvation,” with which the praying one calls upon God, and his praying itself, show that the spark of faith within him is not utterly extinguished; but as to the rest, it is all one pouring forth of deep lament in the midst of the severest conflict of temptation in the presence of death, the gloom of melancholy does not brighten up to become a hope, the Psalm dies away in Job-like lamentation. Herein we discern echoes of the Korahitic Psa 42:1-11 and of Davidic Psalms: compare Psa 88:3 with Psa 18:7; Psa 88:5 with Psa 28:1; Psa 88:6 with Psa 31:23; Psa 88:18 with Psa 22:17.; v. 19 (although differently applied) with Psa 31:12; and more particularly the questions in Psa 88:11-13 with Psa 6:6, of which they are as it were only the amplification. But these Psalm-echoes are outweighed by the still more striking points of contact with the Book of Job, both as regards linguistic usage (דּאב, Psa 88:10, Job 14:14; רפאים, Psa 88:11, Job 26:5; אבדּון, Psa 88:12, Job 26:6; Job 28:22; נער, Psa 88:16, Job 33:25; Job 36:14; אמים, Psa 88:16, Job 20:25; בּעוּתים, Psa 88:17, Job 6:4) and single thoughts (cf. Psa 88:5 with Job 14:10; Psa 88:9 with Job 30:10; v. 19 with Job 17:9; Job 19:14), and also the suffering condition of the poet and the whole manner in which this finds expression. For the poet finds himself in the midst of the same temptation as Job not merely so far as his mind and spirit are concerned; but his outward affliction is, according to the tenor of his complaints, the same, viz., the leprosy (Psa 88:9), which, the disposition to which being born with him, has been his inheritance
from his youth up (Psa 88:16). Now, since the Book of Job is a Chokma-work of the Salomonic age, and the two Ezrahites belonged to the wise men of the first rank at the court of Solomon (1Ki 4:31), it is natural to suppose that the Book of Job
