Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Psalm 88

Dance, eh? Jam it baby. Doesn't this qualify as loud crying and tears? Will it not be heard?

A song
A Psalm of the children of Korah
For the leader in the dance to jam
a maskil of Heyman the Ezrahite

יְהוָה my God of my salvation
day and night I call before you
let my prayer come to your presence
incline your ear to my cry

for my being is filled with evil
and my life has touched the grave
I am reckoned with those going down to a pit
I have become as a warrior without potency

among the dead free
as the wounded lying in a tomb
whom you remember no more
and they are parted from your hand

you have set me in a low pit
in darknesses in depths
on me your wrath lies hard
and you have inflicted all your waves
Selah
you have removed from me those I knew
you have set me as an abomination to them
I am shut up and do not come out
my eye languishes from affliction

I call you יְהוָה every day
I spread out my palms to you
to the dead will you show wonders?
will the shades rise up?
will they praise you?
Selah
will they tell in the tomb your loving kindness?
your faithfulness in destruction?
will your wonders be known in the darkness?
and your righteousness in the land of oblivion?

but I, I to you יְהוָה shout
and in the morning my prayer will confront you
why יְהוָה do you cast off my being?
hide your face from me?
jammed I am
I ready to die
from my youth I bear up your terrors
I am distracted

your burnings go over me
your alarms annihilate me
they surround me like waters all the day
they go around me as one
you have put from me lover and friend
those I know into darkness

Note: jammed and the repeated I, imitates the alliteration in the Hebrew עָנִי אֲנִי

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