Psalm 88:17

Psalm 88:17, in plain English

All day long, troubles surround him completely—from every direction, like being submerged in water with no surface in sight.

Why it's here

The water imagery returns, but now it's omnidirectional. He's not just drowning; he's enclosed, boxed in, surrounded with no escape route and no breathing room.

Who's speaking

The psalmist, using vivid sensory language to convey his trapped state

Where it sits in the story

This image of being engulfed appears in the psalms whenever someone describes overwhelming adversity from which there's seemingly no exit.

The scholarly reading

The speaker describes how his afflictions surround and engulf him constantly — using water-imagery to convey the totality and inescapability of his suffering.

Language and setting

The Hebrew סבבוני (sabuni, 'they engulf me') and נקפו עלי כמים (nakkfu alai kamayim, 'they enclose me like water') create a spatial image of being trapped in a sphere of suffering. The 'all day long' (כל־היום, kol-hayom) emphasizes temporal totality — suffering is his constant condition. The water-metaphor recalls the chaos-waters of verse 7, but here they are internalized, surrounding the speaker from every direction. There is no angle of escape.

Voice

The sufferer, describing the phenomenology of utter enclosure.

Significance

The spatial and temporal totality expressed here — surrounded on all sides, for all hours — represents the ultimate form of existential imprisonment. In the biblical imagination, water (especially the primordial chaos-waters) represents the forces antecedent to and opposed to creation. The speaker experiences his suffering as a reversion to chaos, an undoing of the ordered world.

15From my youth I was afflicted and near death. I have borne Your terrors; I am in despair.

16Your wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have destroyed me.

17All day long they engulf me like water; they enclose me on every side.

18You have removed my beloved and my friend; darkness is my closest companion.

Read all of Psalm 88 — The only psalm that ends without a glimmer of hope. Darkness is my closest friend. Even Scripture makes room for the blackest night.