Holy Saturday and Psalm 88
I tell myself not to write seasonal posts. But this morning I was reading the set reading for the day, which included Psalm 88. And I was meditating on how apt it was, how perhaps this was a psalm on Jesus’ lips as he went down to the dead.
I’ve written an earlier post on this psalm, but today here’s a fresh rendering, drawing freely on some English translations, and my own rendering of the LXX version. It’s halfway between translation and interpretative paraphrase.
YHWH, God of my rescue
by day I have cried out,
by night before you.
May my prayer come before you,
incline your ear to my request.
My entire self is soaked in troubles,
and my life has arrived at the door of the realm of the dead.
I am reckoned with those descending to the Pit,
am become like a person bereft of strength
cast off among the dead,
like the wounded, thrown in the grave,
whom you remember no more
and they are cut off from your hand.
You placed me in the deepest Pit,
in darkness, in the shadow of Death,
Your fury lay heavy upon me,
and you brought all your breakers upon me.
~~
You distanced my friends from me,
made me an abomination to them:
betrayed, and no way out.
My eyes grew dim from affliction,
I called on you, YHWH, every day!
I stretched out my hands to you.
Do you perform wonders for the dead?
Do the shades arise and confess you?
~~
Will anyone recount your faithful-mercy in the grave?
your truthfulness in destruction?
Will your wonders be known in the Darkness?
Your justice, in the land of forgetting?
But I — I have cried out to you, YHWH,
and in the morning my prayer would greet you.
For what purpose, YHWH, have you spurned my life,
and turned your face away from me?
I have been poor and in hardships from my youth,
borne your terrors, and am totally at a loss.
Your rage has passed over me,
your terrors destroyed me.
Like water, they encircled me all day,
surrounded me altogether.
You distanced from me friend and neighbour;
my friends : darkness.