But unto you have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer come before you.
Read Chapter 88
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
11. "Shall thy wondrous works be known in the dark, and thy righteousness in the land where all things are forgotten?" (ver. 12), the dark answers to the land of forgetfulness: for the unbelieving are meant by the dark, as the Apostle saith, "For ye were sometimes darkness;" and the land where all things are forgotten, is the man who has forgotten God; for the unbelieving soul can arrive at darkness so intense, "that the fool saith in his heart, There is no God." Thus the meaning of the whole passage may thus be drawn out in its connection: "Lord, I have called upon Thee," amid My sufferings; "all day I have stretched forth my hands unto Thee" (ver. 13). I have never ceased to stretch forth My works to glorify, Thee. Why then do the wicked rage against Me, unless because "Thou showest not wonders among the dead"? because those wonders move them not to faith, nor can physicians restore them to life that they may praise Thee, because Thy hidden grace works not in them to draw them unto believing: because no man cometh unto Me, but whom Thou hast drawn. Shall then "Thy loving-kindness be showed in the grave"? that is, the grave of the dead soul, which lies dead beneath the body's weight: "or Thy faithfulness in destruction"? that is, in such a death as cannot believe or feel any of these things. "For how then in the darkness" of this death, that is, in the man who in forgetting Thee has lost the light of his life, "shall Thy wondrous works and Thy righteousness be known." ...
