Psalm 38:19

“For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.” This verse is the turning point of the psalm. In Psalm 38:1–14 David has traced his sickness to his iniquity and to God’s heavy hand, watched his friends and kinsmen keep their distance, and heard his enemies plot against him, while he stayed silent before his accusers. With every earthly support gone, he says where his hope lies. “In thee” puts it in one place, in the LORD himself, away from his own strength, from human remedies and from political alliances.

Psalm 38 is one of the seven penitential psalms, with Psalm 6, Psalm 32, Psalm 51, Psalm 102, Psalm 130 and Psalm 143. These are prayers that confess sin, grieve over suffering that is often tied to that sin, and plead with God for mercy and restoration.

The verb for hope, yâchal, means to wait or to hope. It is the hope of someone who stays where he is and waits for God to act, resting on God’s character and promises while the trouble goes on. Other psalms speak with the same voice: the psalmist whose soul waits for the LORD and hopes in his word (Psalm 130:5–6), and the soul that waits on God alone because its expectation is from him (Psalm 62:5–6). Lamentations says it plainly: “The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him” (Lamentations 3:24).

“Thou wilt hear” is a confident statement about what God will do. The Hebrew verb, ʻânâh, means to answer or respond, so David expects God to reply to his prayer and act on it. It fits what he has just said about himself. He has given his accusers no answer, and he leaves the answering to God. Scripture gives him good ground for this confidence. A psalm says that the righteous cry and the LORD hears them (Psalm 34:17), and through Jeremiah God promises that when his people call on him and pray to him, he will hearken to them (Jeremiah 29:12).

David calls on God twice, by two names. “O LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name. “O Lord my God” is ʼĂdônây ʼĕlôhîym. The first word, ʼĂdônây, speaks of God as sovereign Master, and the second, ʼĕlôhîym, the ordinary word for God, here carries the word “my”. It is a servant speaking to his Master and a believer speaking to his own God. God had promised Israel, “I will be to you a God” (Exodus 6:7), and David prays inside that promise.

“For I said, Hear me” uses ʼâmar, the ordinary verb for saying, which also covers telling, commanding and what a person thinks within himself. What David said was a prayer, and he gives the reason for it at once: “lest otherwise they should rejoice over me”. The verb sâmach is the common word for rejoicing and being glad, and Scripture uses it of gloating as well as of good joy. Here it is the glee of enemies over a man’s fall.

“When my foot slippeth” joins regel, the plain word for the foot, to môwṭ, which means to totter, shake or slip. A man whose foot slips loses his footing and is about to fall, and here the picture covers any stumble that would bring David down, whether sickness, a failure of his own or an attack. At that moment his enemies “magnify themselves” against him. The verb gâdal means to become great or to make great, and here they make themselves great over him by boasting and exalting themselves.

In Israel honour and shame mattered a great deal, especially for a king. When people took a leader’s weakness as a sign of God’s displeasure, his rivals used it to assert themselves and to claim God’s favour for their own side. To rejoice over a fallen enemy meant public mockery and boasting. So the gloating David fears would say to everyone that God had abandoned his servant, and that would bring reproach on God’s name as well as shame on David. His prayer asks God to act for his own honour and faithfulness, and for David’s relief too. He prays the same way in Psalm 35, where his enemies rejoice and gather together in his adversity (Psalm 35:15–16) and he asks God to keep them from gloating over him (Psalm 35:19–26).

Another psalm answers the fear of a slipping foot: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand” (Psalm 37:23–24). Our security rests in the hand that holds us.

“For I am ready to halt” gives the reason David fears a slip. “Ready” is kûwn, from a root meaning to stand upright or set up, so to be fixed, prepared or ready. “Halt” is tselaʻ, a limping or stumbling, and figuratively a fall or adversity. David is ready to stumble and fall. Whether from sickness or from exhaustion of body and spirit, he can barely stand.

“My sorrow is continually before me” uses makʼôb, a strong word for pain, suffering or grief, often of body and mind together. “Continually” means it stays always in his sight. A king is speaking here, and he owns that he is as frail as anyone. The psalm’s honesty shows that deep weakness and lasting sorrow belong to the life of faith, and that a believer can bring them as they are to God. Another psalmist asks his own soul why it is cast down and tells it to hope in God (Psalm 42:11). The Lord told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9), and Peter tells us to cast all our care on God, because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).

“For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.” Here David resolves to confess. The verb nâgad means to make known, tell or report, and its root has the sense of standing out in front, so to declare is to set the matter openly before God and keep it hidden no longer. “Iniquity” is ʻâvôn, a word for moral crookedness and guilt that covers both the wrong itself and the burden of guilt and punishment it brings. “Mine iniquity” is David owning it as his and laying the blame on himself.

“I will be sorry” is dâʼag, to be anxious, afraid or troubled. David’s sorrow is the inward distress of a man who knows he has offended God. The two lines of the verse belong together. The first is confession spoken aloud, the second is grief felt within, and true repentance holds both. Proverbs gives the promise that goes with them: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). John gives it to the church: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

In Israel, confession was the way back to fellowship with God and with the community, often with sacrifices. Here the weight falls on the heart. The psalm leaves its occasion unnamed. Some connect it with David’s sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah (2 Samuel 11–12), and others with Absalom’s rebellion (2 Samuel 15) or Saul’s pursuit of David (1 Samuel 23), and Scripture leaves the question open.

“But mine enemies are lively, and they are strong” sets David’s enemies beside his own failing body. “Lively” is chay, living or alive. While David is ready to fall, his enemies are full of life. “Strong” is ʻâtsam, to be mighty, a word that can also mean to be numerous. They have the power, and “they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied”: their numbers keep growing. The enemies were real people who wanted David’s downfall.

“Wrongfully” is sheqer, which means falsehood, a lie or deception, and it is also used for what is vain or without cause. Their hatred rests on falsehood. David makes the same complaint in Psalm 35 about those who hate him without a cause, and again in Psalm 69:4. Scripture tells believers to expect hatred of this kind, and Peter writes that those who belong to Christ should count a fiery trial as nothing strange (1 Peter 4:12).

“They also that render evil for good are mine adversaries” names the worst of David’s opponents. Raʻ is the word for evil in every sense, harm, distress and calamity as well as wickedness, and ṭôwb is the broad word for good, what is right, kind and pleasing to God. These people have received good from David and given back harm. “Adversaries” is sâṭan, a verb meaning to attack, accuse or resist, one who stands against another. It shares its root with the name Satan, and here it describes men who have set themselves against David.

In Israel loyalty and gratitude were highly prized, and repaying good with evil was treachery. Proverbs warns, “Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house” (Proverbs 17:13). Paul gives the other side of the same truth when he tells believers to recompense no one evil for evil, in the passage from Romans 12 already quoted above.

“Because I follow the thing that good is” gives the reason they oppose him. David is pursuing what is right, and that is what provokes them. The same thing runs through Scripture, from Cain’s murder of Abel (Genesis 4:8) to the prophets, whom Jesus names as persecuted before his disciples (Matthew 5:12). The one who suffers like this commits his cause to the LORD who judges the peoples (Psalm 7:8), and Peter says, “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye” (1 Peter 3:14).

The psalm names several sources of David’s suffering. He says plainly that his sickness is tied to his iniquity and to God’s chastening hand, and he confesses it in verse 18. Israel’s law had warned that disobedience would bring sickness (Deuteronomy 28:58–61), and in Israel illness was often taken as a sign of sin, though the book of Job takes up the case of suffering that has another cause. At the same time David’s enemies attack him out of malice, without a true cause, and his friends abandon him. Even where his trouble is deserved, their gloating is wicked, and God’s help is the right thing to ask for. So he asks God to deliver him from the results of his sin and from the malice of his foes alike, and the psalm leaves us no simple rule that ties every trouble to some particular sin.

The New Testament shows us the sufferings of Jesus in prayers like this one. He was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). In Gethsemane he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38), and on the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). His enemies were lively and strong, and they magnified themselves over him as he hung on the cross, mocking and reviling him (Matthew 27:39–44). He did good to all, and he was betrayed by his own disciple (Luke 22:48), accused by false witnesses (Mark 14:55–59), and denied and killed as the Holy One and the Just (Acts 3:14–15). Jesus himself said that he was hated without a cause (John 15:25), and he was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

Verse 18 is where the likeness ends. Jesus had no iniquity of his own to declare, and he bore ours, as Isaiah says: “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and God made him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). “Thou wilt hear” was always true of him. At the tomb of Lazarus he thanked the Father for hearing him and said that the Father heard him always (John 11:41–42), and on the cross he committed his spirit into his Father’s hands (Luke 23:46). God answered by raising and exalting him (Philippians 2:8–11), declaring him the Son of God with power by the resurrection (Romans 1:4), and by the cross Christ triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). He left us an example of suffering wrong and committing ourselves to God (1 Peter 2:21–23).

Our own confession rests on his work. The Spirit he sent convicts the world of sin (John 16:8), and those who trust Christ are freed from sin’s rule because their old self was crucified with him (Romans 6:6–7). God showed his love in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). In him we receive the Spirit of adoption and cry “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15), we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16), and we can say, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31–39). He calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28).

These six verses give us a way to pray when our own sin and other people’s wrongs press on us at once. David hopes in the LORD, tells him his fears, admits his weakness, confesses his iniquity and lays out the injustice done to him, all in the same prayer and to the same God. He speaks of his condition just as it is, and he expects an answer.

The passage also shows us who God is. He is the LORD of the covenant, who binds himself to his people as their God. He answers those who hope in him. He receives the confession of a guilty man and forgives, and he defends the one who follows what is good against those who repay him with evil. The God who chastens his servant is the same God that servant waits for, and that is why David can say to him, “thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.”