Why, O Lord, do you…hide your face from me?

It says it’s a song.  If this is a song, it’s bluer than the bluest blues.  It makes the blues sound like brilliant, sun-shiny yellow on a cheerful, magnificent, cloudless day.  Years ago, when I was in Bible college I systematically studied the Psalms, so much so that I gave each one a title.  My title for Psalm 88 was, “Troubled to Death.”  This is truly a rare psalm in Scripture in that there is no obvious resolution to the pangs of the writer, Heman the Ezrahite.

Heman was a musician who founded the Kohathite choir (1 Chr. 6:33, 2 Chr. 5:12, etc.) and may have been a wise man in Solomon’s court (1 Kings 4:31).  So he was no slacker.  Nor was he immature.  It is impossible to tell if Heman wrote this psalm from personal experience or that of another.  Either way, it confronts us with a difficult subject—when God seems to be remote, far off, anything but engaged with our lives in a positive way.

Beginning in the first two verses, Heman’s perspective couldn’t be better:  “O Lord, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you.  May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.”  Then he details his current state:  “For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.… I am set apart with the dead…whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care…. (vs. 3, 5).  This quickly deteriorates to a case against God:  “You have put me in the lowest pit…you have overwhelmed me with all your waves…You have taken from me my closest friends…” (vs. 6-8).

Then in his appeal to God Heman asks, “I call to you, O Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to you.  Do you show your wonders to the dead?  Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?  Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?” (vs. 9-12).  Ouch!  These questions leave no room for the benefit of the doubt.  Doubt has already melted into despair.  His thoughts begin to encroach on God’s character and ways, but he doesn’t stop.  “…I cry to you for help… Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?…I have suffered your terrors…your terrors have destroyed me…they have completely engulfed me…darkness is my closest friend” (vs. 13-18).  This not only bleak, it is where he ends, not dangling over the cliff, but already falling toward the bottom of the abyss!

So why does God hide himself from Heman…or anyone else?  Obviously Heman himself can’t tell us because his situation illustrates the condition of rebellious man — alienated from a holy God, separated from Lord of glory.  Does God capriciously send “terrors” against his people?  Is he whimsical?

If someone goes into hiding, it strongly implies two things:  (1) distance, and (2) difference.  Proverbs 28:12 says, “When the righteous triumph, there is great elation; but when the wicked rise to power, men go into hiding.”  If men go into hiding from other — i.e., wicked — men, how about God?  Could he go “into hiding” when wickedness prevails?  Deuteronomy 31 tells us.  In one of the saddest passages in all of Scripture, God predicts that after Moses dies, the Jews “will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering.  They will break the covenant I made with them.  On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed …. And I will certainly hide my face on that day because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods” (vs. 16-18).  On a number of occasions Isaiah confirms that God does not cozy up to our rebellion or selfishness.  Other prophets repeat this idea.  Our stubborn, willful and habitual sins create distance — relational, not geographical — between God and us.  They also mark the categorical difference between our thoughts and intentions and God’s.  Heman’s abrupt ending suggests that it is he who hasn’t figured out who’s at fault.  Psalm 88 is the portrait of a man consumed by the consequences of his own sins.  But since God “is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” and doesn’t “harbor his anger forever” or “treat us as our sins deserve” (Ps. 103:8-10 ), Heman can replace the “darkness” he experiences with God as his closest friend.  What a choice!

Who or what is your closest friend today?