Heman the Ezrahite

[5] Heman the Ezrahite may be one of the three Levites assigned by King David to be ministers of music.

This Heman was a grandson of Samuel the prophet[6] who went on to become King David's seer and to have fourteen sons and three daughters.

According to Martin Marty, a professor of church history at the University of Chicago, Psalm 88 is “a wintry landscape of unrelieved bleakness.” Nevertheless, the appeal to God in Psalm 88 begins with the following expression of faith: "O Yahweh, God of my salvation!"

"[8] Madeleine L'Engle has a poem called "Herman the Ezragite: Psalm 88:18" in her collection A Cry Like a Bell.

[9] In it, she imagines the feelings of Heman (Herman) that led him to write Psalm 88.