The Purposeless Place (revised from December 23, 2016)
Will Your wonders be made known in the darkness? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? Psalm 88:12 NASB
The darkness – “Little doubt surrounds the meaning of this denominative verb coming from the noun ḥōšek (darkness). It occurs eighteen times, seventeen times in poetical books. Exodus 10:15 is the only occurrence of ḥāšak in a prose passage. There it refers to the plague of darkness over Egypt. Elsewhere the word is used to indicate judgment or curse.”[1] The place of ḥōšek is she’ol. The place of weakness, disorientation, and silence. The place where I am forgotten.
Want to know what it will be like when you die? Want a little taste of the afterlife? Go into your closet. Shut the door. Turn off the light and sit there, not saying a word, not hearing anything from the outside world for, say, three hours! Oh, yes, and stop having an inner conversation with yourself. That’s why you need a few hours. You have to run out of things to say, even in your mind. Then you know ḥōšek. It’s the place where God isn’t!
No wonder that the psalmist cries out, “No one can offer praises to You in this place, Lord! No one can speak of Your wonders, Your mercies, Your faithfulness. You get no credit in ḥōšek. So, don’t send me there, Father. I want to praise You. I want to shout Your wonders. I want to proclaim Your righteousness. But if you send me to ḥōšek, all that will be lost. Please, for Your own sake, reconsider!”
Brené Brown offers an alternative. I doubt she meant it as an alternative to ḥōšek, but it fits. “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”[2] The interesting implication in her words is that it is possible to be here, breathing, moving—and not be alive! That’s the implication in the psalmist’s words. Like you and me, when we feel abandoned by God—or worse, under His thumb—we’re here but we aren’t living. We might as well be in the deep, dark place. We are forgotten—by God and by others. What’s the popular expression for this? Oh, yes, “Dead man walking.”
This psalm is terrifying. How it ever got in the Bible seems a mystery. But then the Bible doesn’t sugarcoat our emotional experiences, and this is certainly one of them. It does, however, push us toward the only real solution to despair. Trust in the character of God. Then we can rise up and say, “I’m here—alive!”
Topical Index: ḥōšek, darkness, despair, alive, Psalm 88:12
[1] Alden, R. (1999). 769 חָשַׁך. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old (331). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, p. 115.
