Psalms 88 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Yahweh, God who rescues me, I cry out day and night, standing right in front of you.

Let my prayer reach you; turn your ear toward my desperate call.

Because my life is saturated with suffering, and I am standing at the edge of the grave.

I am already counted among those going down to the pit. I have become like someone with no strength left —

abandoned among the dead, like the slain lying in their graves, the ones you no longer remember, cut off from your hand forever.

You have put me in the deepest pit, in the darkest, most suffocating depths.

Your fury presses down on me; you crash wave after wave over me. Selah

You have driven my closest friends far away from me. You have made me repulsive to them. I am trapped, and there is no way out.

My eyes are worn out from grief. Yahweh, I call out to you every single day; I stretch my hands toward you.

Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise to praise you? Selah

Is your faithful love declared in the grave? Your reliability in the place of destruction?

Are your wonders known in the darkness? Your justice in the land where everything is forgotten?

But I — I keep crying out to you, Yahweh. Every morning my prayer meets you before anything else.

Yahweh, why do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?

I have been suffering and close to death since I was young. I have carried your terrors and I cannot take it anymore.

Your burning anger has swept over me; your assaults have destroyed me.

They surround me like floodwaters all day long; they close in on me from every side.

You have driven away everyone who loved me and everyone who knew me. Darkness is my only friend now.