Bible Strands
Psalms 88:5
I am forsaken among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You remember no more, who are cut off from Your care.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses God while describing his current state of isolation and near-death despair. He speaks from the perspective of one already counted among those descending to the Pit and stripped of strength.
The words — The text uses בַּ/מֵּתִ֗ים (ba./me.Tim), meaning "among the dead," and חָ֫פְשִׁ֥י (cha.fe.Shi), literally "a [person] set free." These terms frame the speaker’s condition as one of complete severance from divine remembrance and care.
The thread — This theme of being cut off from divine care appears in Psalms 31:22 and Isaiah 53:8, where separation from God’s sight or the land is linked to oppression and judgment. The contrast with Psalms 136:23 highlights the psalmist’s current experience of God’s absent remembrance.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that divine silence accompanies the experience of death-like abandonment. It requires the reader to confront the reality of being cut off from God’s care without assuming immediate relief.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 53:8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and who can recount His descendants? For He was cut off from the land of the living; He was stricken for the transgression of My people.
- Psalms 31:22 In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from Your sight!” But You heard my plea for mercy when I called to You for help.
- Psalms 136:23 He remembered us in our low estate His loving devotion endures forever.
- Isaiah 14:9 Sheol beneath is eager to meet you upon your arrival. It stirs the spirits of the dead to greet you—all the rulers of the earth. It makes all the kings of the nations rise from their thrones.
- Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the ark. And God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to subside.
- Genesis 19:29 So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived.
- Job 6:9 that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
- Job 11:10 If He comes along to imprison you, or convenes a court, who can stop Him?
- Psalms 31:12 I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind. I am like a broken vessel.
- Psalms 88:16 Your wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have destroyed me.