Fathers

Psalms 88

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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 shew 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.

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What the Fathers say

Psalms 88:1

Eastern Fathers

Cyril of Jerusalem

Accept an additional testimony from the eighty-seventh psalm [LXX], where Christ speaks in the prophets—for he who then spoke afterwards came among us: "O Lord, the God of my salvation: I have cried in the day and in the night before you"; and subsequently, "I am become as a man without help, free among the dead." He did not say, "I am become a man without help," but "as a man without help"; for he was crucified, not because of helplessness but because he willed it; his death was not a result of involuntary weakness. …

Catechetical Lecture 14:8 ↗

Western Saints

Augustine of Hippo

"O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before You" [Psalm 88:1]. Let us therefore now hear the voice of Christ singing before us in prophecy, to whom His own choir should respond either in imitation, or in thanksgiving.

Exposition on Psalm 88 ↗

Jerome

At the very outset the title is most difficult, and although we have not yet begun the harbor of exposition, nevertheless the most obscure questions press upon us. "A song of a psalm, for the sons of Chore, unto the end, for meleth, to be answered, of the understanding of Eman the Ezraite." You see that in the individual words there are individual questions. "A song of a psalm": there is no great difficulty. "For the sons of Chore": the sons of Caath, of the tribe of Levi. …

Homily 65, on Psalm 87 (Alternate Series) ↗