What Does Psalm 88:9 Mean?
My eye wastes away from bowing low. LORD, I call to you every day. I spread out my palms to you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction: LORD, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee.THE KEY
The eye that “mourns” is described by a Hebrew verb for languishing under affliction, even as the voice keeps calling and the palms remain extended.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you in affliction: your sight can feel spent while your call continues day after day and your palms reach toward the LORD. Reaching does not erase the pain; both are present at once.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse loosens the belief that visible anguish means the voice has gone silent: the eye languishes, yet the call continues every day.
THE ROOT
דָּאֲבָה
da'avah
GROWS FROM
דָּאַב
To languish or pine away.
“wastes away” in this verse is da'avah. The verb describes the eye itself as languishing under affliction, not only expressing grief. Its related noun can name anguish as a condition, linking what the eye shows to what the person carries.
ALSO GROWS
da'ab: To languish or pine away.
דָּאַב
This is the root verb behind “mourneth”; the eye is described as worn down by affliction.
de'avon: Anguish or sorrow.
דְּאָבוֹן
This related noun appears as “sorrow of mind” in Deuteronomy 28:65, showing the root can name the inward condition as well as the eye’s visible languishing.
THE PATTERN
The appeal to God takes shape through the body as well as through words.
And Moses said to him, As I go out of the city, I will spread out my palms to the LORD. The thunder shall stop, and there shall be no more hail, so that you may perceive that the earth is the LORD's.I spread my hands to you; my living soul thirsts for you as a parched land. Selah.I will therefore that men pray in every place, lifting up set-apart hands, without anger and divided reasoning.THE THREAD
And among these nations you will not be still, and the sole of your foot will have no place to settle, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart, and eyes running out, and a wasting of the living soul.The noun דְּאָבוֹן (de’avon, anguish or sorrow) in Deuteronomy 28:65 grows from the same root דָּאַב (da’ab, languish or pine away) as the verb for the eye here. Psalm locates the languishing in the eye; Deuteronomy names sorrow as an inward burden.
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