[12] According to Martin Marty, a professor of church history at the University of Chicago, Psalm 88 is "a wintry landscape of unrelieved bleakness".

[14] In the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 88 is appointed to be read on the morning of the seventeenth day of the month,[16] as well as at Evensong on Good Friday.

[17] The Presbyterian Scottish Psalter of 1650 rewords the psalm in a metrical form that can be sung to a tune set to the common meter.

[18] Heinrich Schütz set the psalm in a metred version in German, "Herr Gott, mein Heiland, Nacht und Tag", SWV 185, as part of the Becker Psalter, first published in 1628.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier compose around 1690 Domine Deus salutis meae , H.207, for soloists, chorus, flutes, strings, and continuo.