“Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.”
This final verse of the darkest psalm in the psalter articulates the complete isolation and alienation that characterizes the psalmist's experience of suffering, as companions and loved ones have abandoned him in his distress. The repetition of you have taken regarding friends and loved ones establishes that even the comfort of human relationship has been stripped away, leaving the sufferer utterly alone to face the overwhelming assault of divine abandonment and physical affliction. This verse refuses to resolve the psalm's central crisis with false comfort or premature theological resolution, instead honoring the genuine despair that can arise when suffering becomes total and apparently purposeless. By concluding without promise of deliverance, the psalmist models a profoundly honest faith that acknowledges the reality of suffering that admits no easy answers, inviting God's people to bring even their darkest anguish into the sanctuary of prayer where questions may be raised without resolution.
Church Fathers on Psalms 88:18
1. The Title of this eighty-seventh Psalm contains a fresh subject for enquiry: the words occurring here, “for Melech to respond,” being nowhere else found. We have already given our opinion on the meaning of the titles Psalmus Cantici and Canticum Psalmi: and the words, “sons of Core,” are constantly repeated, and have often been explained: so also “to the end;” but what comes next in this title is peculiar. For “Melech” we may translate into Latin “for the chorus,” for…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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