·reading

Psalm 88

The one psalm that never resolves — a lament that walks all the way into the dark and stops there.

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Heman the Ezrahite
Hebrew Bible, Book III
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Every other lament in the psalter turns somewhere near the end — but I will trust, but you have heard. Psalm 88 does not turn. It ends on the word darkness and leaves you there.

I keep coming back to it because it is the honest counterweight to every optimistic thing I believe about building. Not everything resolves inside the frame you can see. A tradition that keeps this psalm in the book is a tradition willing to hold an unresolved case without editing it into a lesson.

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