Psalm 88, the ogdoadic pinnacle of the Psalter

For my 88th post on Substack, a sequel to my 80th

Four months ago, for my 80th post on Substack, I wrote about Psalm 80, the chiastic center of the Psalter. There I explained that the middle book of the Psalter, Psalms 72–88 (Septuagint numbering), simultaneously features a chiastic “butterfly” structure and a triadic linear structure, making Psalm 80 the chiastic center of the Psalms and Psalm 88 the linear pinnacle, as if the tip of an onion dome (the other four chiastic books of the Psalter forming the rest of the spherical dome). Here again is the shape of that central sequence, as outlined on my website:

Viewed linearly — as Ϛ.–Ζ.–Η. — everything leads up to Psalm 88, the eta-psalm of the eta-section, the eighth of the eighth. It’s Psalm 88, the octave of octaves. In sequence it comes on the heels of Psalm 87, the sabbath of the octave, a uniquely bleak vision of a soul filled with evils and nigh to hades, cast off and forgotten by God (well known to the Orthodox for its use in the Six Psalms at Matins). Supplication is made to the Lord God of salvation, but no response is rendered. Psalm 88 fulfills that need.

All the Psalms are Messianic, in that all of Scripture in some way relates to the Word of God, but Psalm 88 is among those most directly about Christ, in that it features the Lord promising David an eternal seed with a throne in heaven. That is, from the royal humanity of David will emerge something messianic that simultaneously emanates from above. In time will appear the eternal. The material will be transfigured with the Divine — as the reference to Mount Tabor in verse 12 even makes literal. As the Orthodox Study Bible (OSB) and Fr. Stephen De Young both note, verses from this psalm are used at Vespers and Divine Liturgy for the Feast of Transfiguration.

But in the context of the Gospel, the Transfiguration plays an anticipatory role relative to the Passion. Likewise, the exuberant radiance of the Transfiguration only carries through the first five strophes of Psalm 88, at which point a “diapsalm” marks a turning point towards a storm of unexpected suffering. It is a remarkable and stunning transition. How do the evils, the darkness, the death of Psalm 87 become incorporated into the octave of octaves? The depths of desecration here contrast unimaginably with what came before, but the psalmist is detailing prophetically the Passion of the Christ. It should be that devastating. We had just been told that the Lord’s mercy — chesed in Hebrew, the Lord’s steadfast love, which forms the subject of the psalm from the very first syllables — would not be dispersed away from His sons. If that’s true, how is this subsequent death a mercy? This psalm to great effect draws us into the mystery of the Resurrection: the death of death and the coming of the kingdom of God.

Here is my sequencing of the Psalm, based on the Holy Transfiguration Monastery (HTM) translation from the Greek, but with the language tweaked throughout based on the Greek and Hebrew. “Mercy/mercies” consistently translates what in Greek is τὸ ἔλεος/τὰ ἐλέη, which in turn is a translation of the Hebrew חסד, chesed, often expressed in English as “steadfast love.”

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