Psalm 88 Bible study: Day and night before you

After its title the psalm opens, "LORD, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you" (88:1) (tap salvation). Three times the psalmist says he has cried out or called to the LORD, and each time he says when. "I have cried day and night before you" (88:1). "I have called on you daily, LORD. I have spread out my hands to you" (88:9). "But to you, LORD, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you" (88:13) (tap cried). Here is what almost everyone misses: each is a different Hebrew verb. The cried of 88:1 is tsa'aq, the called of 88:9 is qara, and the cried of 88:13 is shava; the WEB gives the first and the last the same English word. My prayer in 88:13 is the word of 88:2, "Let my prayer enter into your presence" (88:2): tefillati both times. Day and night, daily, in the morning: the psalm doesn't say that any of these prayers was answered.

מַחְשָׁךְmachshakhsay makh-SHAKH

Strong's: "darkness; concretely, a dark place". Brown-Driver-Briggs: "dark place (poet.)". It is the psalm's last word, in Hebrew as in the WEB: "You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness" (88:18). It comes in 88:6 too, in the plural, where the WEB has darkest: "You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths" (88:6). The Hebrew Bible has the word seven times, four of them in the Psalms. The form of 88:6, bemachashakkim, comes in two more verses, each where the WEB has in dark places and each with the dead beside it: "He has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead" (Psalm 143:3), and "He has made me dwell in dark places, as those who have been long dead" (Lamentations 3:6).