Fathers

Psalms 88

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Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you. Let my prayer enter into your presence. Turn your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles. My life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help, set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand. You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can’t escape. My eyes are dim from grief. I have called on you daily, Yahweh. I have spread out my hands to you. Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you? Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But to you, Yahweh, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you. Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted. Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off. They came around me like water all day long. They completely engulfed me. You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends 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) ↗