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Psalm 88:15
I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted.
13But to you, LORD, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you.
14LORD, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?
15I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted.
16Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off.
17They came around me like water all day long. They completely engulfed me.
Notice
The words “from my youth up” make this suffering feel long and exhausting, while “your terrors” reveals how frightening the sufferer’s relationship with God has become.
Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.
What changes in your reading when you notice that this affliction reaches back to youth?
Write on thisWhat is hard to voice in prayer when God himself seems frightening or distant?
Write on thisConnect
Where else Scripture says this
12 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.
This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Job 6:4For the arrows of the Almighty are within me. My spirit drinks up their poison. The terrors of God set themselves in array against me.Both sufferers describe God’s terrors as something they endure, making their anguish inseparable from their understanding of God.
Psalm 31:10For my life is spent with sorrow, my years with sighing. My strength fails because of my iniquity. My bones are wasted away.Both speakers describe suffering that extends across years and leaves them with little strength.
Ruth 1:20She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.Naomi and the psalm’s speaker both describe their suffering in terms of what God has brought upon them.
Luke 22:44Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.Both passages portray prayer amid anguish, with suffering still present as the prayer is offered.
Isaiah 53:10Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He will prolong his …Both passages connect suffering with God’s action, though Isaiah speaks of an offering for sin and the psalm does not.
Job 7:11–16“Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.Both speakers put anguish into speech, describing distress without softening its bitterness or confusion.
Psalm 73:14For all day long I have been plagued, and punished every morning.Both speakers describe affliction as persistent, measuring its duration through youth, days, or mornings.
Job 30:15Terrors have turned on me. They chase my honor as the wind. My welfare has passed away as a cloud.Both passages name terrors that overwhelm the sufferer and leave life stripped of ease.
Zechariah 13:7“Awake, sword, against my shepherd, and against the man who is close to me,” says the LORD of Armies. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; …The shared thread is limited: both texts connect danger with God, though Zechariah describes a commanded strike against a shepherd.
Psalm 129:1A Song of Ascents. Many times they have afflicted me from my youth up. Let Israel now say:Both passages use “from my youth up” to describe affliction reaching back to the speaker’s earliest years.
Job 20:25He draws it out, and it comes out of his body. Yes, the glittering point comes out of his liver. Terrors are on him.Both passages name terrors in the presence of mortal danger, though Job’s scene describes a bodily wound.
Psalm 22:14–15I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me.Both speakers describe overwhelming distress, with one near death and distracted and the other feeling poured out and undone.
Where this verse fits
Chronic pain. feeling distant from God. illness or diagnosis.
One step
Something small to carry out of this verse
Encouragement
Your prayer need not sound calm to belong among the prayers of Scripture. Here, the sufferer speaks to God from distress, without an explanation or a turn toward relief.
Now put it in your words.
Start an entry on Psalm 88:15. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.
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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).