Psalm 38:4

The heading names David as the writer and gives the purpose “to bring to remembrance”, in Hebrew l’hazkir. The verb means to remember, and in this form to mention or to bring to remembrance. The psalm asks God to remember David in his trouble and to remember his covenant promises and compassion, and it also reminds David, and everyone who prays it after him, how serious sin is and how God answers it. The same heading stands over Psalm 70, another urgent cry for God to come quickly and help. The heading can also be rendered “for the memorial offering”, which ties the psalm to remembrance, confession and petition before God.

Psalm 38 is one of the seven psalms long known as the penitential psalms, with Psalm 6, Psalm 32, Psalm 51, Psalm 102, Psalm 130 and Psalm 143. All of them confess sin, grieve over it and plead with God for mercy. In the first book of the Psalms it follows Psalm 37, which sets the end of the righteous beside the end of the wicked, and it comes before Psalms 39 and 40, which go on to speak of human frailty, the shortness of life and trust in God.

The heading names no occasion, but several times in David’s life fit it. There was his adultery with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah and Nathan’s rebuke (2 Samuel 11–12). There was the census that brought judgment on the nation (2 Samuel 24), and there was the rebellion of Absalom. A severe illness that left him open to his enemies would fit as well. The psalm itself gives us what we need: a man under the hand of God, sick in body, sure that his own sin lies behind it, and still praying.

These eight verses are the first part of Psalm 38, and the rest of the psalm carries the same prayer further. David tells how his friends and family stand back from his trouble (Psalm 38:11) while enemies scheme against him. Even so, he says his hope is in the LORD and that God will answer him (Psalm 38:15). He confesses his iniquity openly (Psalm 38:18), pleads with God to stay near (Psalm 38:21), and ends, “Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation” (Psalm 38:22).

“O LORD, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.” David calls on the LORD, the covenant God of Israel, by name. He expects to be corrected and makes no claim to deserve better. What he asks is that the correction come without the full, destroying force of God’s anger.

Two verbs and two words for anger stand side by side, and the second half of the verse repeats the first with more force. To rebuke, yâkach, means to decide, correct, convince or convict, and it can also mean to reason together. To chasten, yâçar, means to discipline or instruct. It can describe a father’s correction of his child, and it also covers a ruler’s harsh scourging, so the word alone leaves open how severe the chastening will be. That is the very thing David asks God to settle in mercy. Wrath, qetseph, means wrath or anger, and it often describes God’s judgment poured out. Hot displeasure, chêmâh, comes from a root meaning to be hot, and means heat or rage.

So David distinguishes two things that both come from God’s righteous character. Discipline is the correction of a Father who means to bring his child back and make him holy. Wrath is God’s holy anger against sin, which if it ran its full course would destroy. David asks for the first, trusting that the LORD’s purpose for his people is their restoration. Israel knew that the LORD would rebuke and chasten those who strayed from his covenant, which set blessing before obedience and curse before disobedience (Deuteronomy 28), and the hope of the faithful was always restoration.

Scripture says the same about the LORD’s discipline in many places. Proverbs tells the son to accept the LORD’s chastening, because the LORD corrects the one he loves (Proverbs 3:11–12). Hebrews teaches that the Lord disciplines those he loves, that his discipline is a mark of being his sons, and that he gives it for our good, so that we may share his holiness (Hebrews 12:5–11). Lamentations speaks of God’s compassion that remains even in the grief he sends (Lamentations 3:32–33). David’s plea comes from the humble place that God welcomes, the broken and contrite heart of Psalm 51:17.

“For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.” The word “For” gives the reason for David’s plea, and both pictures belong to God: “thine arrows”, “thy hand”. David traces his suffering straight to the LORD.

Arrows, chêts, are the ordinary arrows of war and hunting, and here they picture sharp, piercing pains sent by God. Scripture speaks of God’s arrows as judgment elsewhere too (Deuteronomy 32:23), and Job in his suffering speaks of God’s arrows in the same way (Job 6:4). The plural tells of many blows, and “stick fast” tells that they stay lodged. The pain is deep inside him and continues, and he cannot pull out what causes it.

The hand, yâd, is the open hand, and it stands for power and for the one who acts. God’s hand can bless or judge, and here it presses. The verb nâchath means to sink, to come down or to come down upon, so the hand has come down on David and stays there as a crushing weight. The first picture pierces and the second crushes, and together they show an affliction he cannot escape. The man who speaks in Lamentations, who has seen affliction from God’s hand, uses the same kind of language (Lamentations 3:1–3).

“There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.” Soundness, mᵉthôm, means wholeness or soundness. With it gone, no part of David’s body is healthy or intact. The anger here is zaʻam, fury or indignation, a word used especially of God’s displeasure with sin. It is a righteous anger, God’s just response to sin.

The word translated “rest” is shâlôwm, more often rendered “peace”. It names a state of completeness, soundness, welfare, peace and safety. David has none of it in his bones, and in Scripture the bones often stand for the deepest part of a person and his strength. The words “no rest in my bones” take in physical pain and also a disquiet that reaches his inmost being, where his guilt has gone.

The two halves of the verse set “thine anger” beside “my sin”. God’s anger and David’s sin are the two sides of one cause, and David blames no one else. He knew this experience from before. In Psalm 32:3–5 he tells how his body wasted while he kept his sin hidden, and how it changed when he confessed it to the LORD.

“My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.” The word for wounds, chabbûwrâh, means a bruise, stripe or weal, the visible mark of a blow or of disease, and Strong’s traces it to a root meaning to bind. To stink, bâʼash, means to smell bad or to be abhorrent. These wounds are rotting and festering, an advanced infection that gives off a foul smell. In a time without modern medicine such sores were visible, crippling and often isolating, and the rest of the psalm tells of friends who keep their distance.

The rotting wound is also a picture of what sin does inside a person. It is as offensive before a holy God as a putrid wound is to human senses, and it eats away at a person’s whole wellbeing and peace.

“For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh.” The loins, keçel, come from a root meaning fatness. The word refers to the loin, the lower back, the hips and the region around the kidneys and inner organs, and the loins stand for strength and vitality. David’s sickness has reached the core of his body and drained his strength at its source.

The word behind “loathsome” is qâlâh, which means to toast or scorch, to parch or dry up with heat. It describes a burning, shrivelling or festering condition that is painful and repulsive at once. The KJV prints “disease” in italics because it is supplied in English, and the Hebrew dwells on the burning, loathsome quality of the sickness itself.

The verse ends with the same words as verse 3, “no soundness in my flesh”, and the same word, mᵉthôm. David has come back round to it after describing his wounds, and every part of his body is now included. Isaiah uses the same kind of picture for a sinful nation covered in wounds and sores (Isaiah 1:5–6), and Job’s affliction with sores covered his body (Job 2:7–8). For a king, such a sickness also meant weakness that could embolden his enemies and shake his rule, and the later verses of the psalm show his enemies taking that chance.

“For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.” Iniquities, ‘âvôn, means perversity, moral evil, fault or sin, and the same word can mean the punishment that sin brings. Its plural speaks of many wrongs piling up together. To go over, ‘âbar, means to cross or pass over, and with “mine head” it gives the picture of waters rising over a drowning man. David’s sins have risen until they cover him and he cannot breathe or get free.

The second picture is a load on his back. Heavy, kâbêd, means heavy, weighty or grievous, and burden, massâʼ, means a load or weight, a word that elsewhere can also mean an oracle. The words “too heavy for me” are an honest confession that this weight is beyond his strength. He can only be freed by someone else lifting it.

David says elsewhere, “my sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51:3), and Paul cries out, “O wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24). All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), so David’s burden belongs to every one of us. Peter tells believers to cast all their care on God, because he cares for them (1 Peter 5:7).

Verses 6 and 8 tell what all this has done to the whole man. “I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.” Troubled, ʻâvâh, means to crook, to bend, to do amiss or to trouble, and it gives the sense of a person twisted out of shape inside, with no settled peace. Bowed down is shâchach, to sink, bend or stoop, and greatly is mᵉʼôd, meaning very, greatly or exceedingly. David is bent over with weakness and shame, perhaps from his illness and certainly under the weight he has just described.

Mourning, qâdar, means to be ashy, dark or gloomy. It points to the outward signs of grief in Israel: dark or soiled clothes, sackcloth and ashes, torn garments and an unkempt look. David goes about this way “all the day long”, so his sorrow fills every hour of his day and gives him no respite.

“I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.” Feeble, pûwg, means to be sluggish, to faint or to cease, and describes strength that has run out completely. Broken, dâkâh, means to collapse in body or mind, to be crushed, and the same word can mean to be contrite. He is worn out and shattered at once. Roared, shâʼag, is the sound of a lion, a deep, wordless cry of agony. The disquietness behind it, nᵉhâmâh, comes from a root meaning to snarl or moan, so the groaning inside him breaks out as a roar. Its seat is the heart, lêb, his whole inner self of thought, feeling and will. This is the lowest point of the psalm’s first part, and from here David turns more and more to asking God for help.

David’s other psalms speak the same way. He wept until his bed swam with tears (Psalm 6:6), and he asked “How long, O LORD?” (Psalm 13:1–2). Lamentations remembers affliction and bitterness in the same words of grief (Lamentations 3:19–20). God invites his people to pour out their hearts before him (Psalm 62:8), and when we do not know what to pray, the Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26). David’s roar is a prayer, made to the God he trusts to heal, the God who heals all our diseases and forgives all our iniquities (Psalm 103:3) and who healed David when he cried to him before (Psalm 30:2). James joins confession and prayer with healing (James 5:16).

This psalm tells of one man who knew that his sickness came with his sin, and the rest of Scripture shows sickness coming from other causes as well. Sin brought brokenness and suffering into the world from the beginning (Genesis 3:16–19), and the whole creation groans under it (Romans 8:22). Some sins do bring their own painful consequences. Nathan told David of the trouble his sin with Bathsheba would bring on his house (2 Samuel 12:10–12), and the child born to them died (2 Samuel 12:15–18).

Scripture also shows righteous people suffering for reasons that lie outside their own sin. Job’s great suffering came on a man God himself held up as faithful (Job 1). When the disciples asked whose sin had made a man born blind, Jesus answered that his blindness came so that the works of God would be shown in him (John 9:1–3). God’s fatherly discipline is one cause of hardship among others.

So Psalm 38 gives no rule that every sick person is being punished, and it would be cruel to read it that way over someone else’s illness. What it gives is the prayer of a man who examined himself and knew the cause in his own case. His honesty about his own sin is part of true repentance.

David asked to be spared the full force of God’s wrath. Christ, the sinless Lamb of God, took that wrath on himself on the cross. John the Baptist called him “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God made him “to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:25), he redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13), and through him we are saved from wrath (Romans 5:9). He made peace through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20). For those who belong to him, what David prayed for is given. God’s hand still corrects his children as a Father, and he shapes them into the image of his Son (Romans 8:29).

Isaiah’s Servant carries everything David describes (Isaiah 53:3–6). He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, “and with his stripes we are healed”. David’s iniquities went over his head, and of the Servant Isaiah says, “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” David’s wounds came from his own foolishness, and Christ’s came from ours. He “bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Christ also became wisdom for us (1 Corinthians 1:30), the answer to the folly that leaves us dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1).

Jesus knew the anguish of verses 6 and 8 from the inside. In Gethsemane his soul was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38), and his sweat fell like great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). So we have a High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities and who was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). In his ministry he healed many who were sick (Matthew 8:16–17).

To everyone weighed down as David was, Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30). The burden that was “too heavy for me” is the burden he lifts. Our old self is crucified with him, so that sin no longer rules us (Romans 6:6–7). He gives his own peace (John 14:27), times of refreshing come from the Lord to those who repent (Acts 3:19), and at the last God will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4).

Psalm 38 gives us words for the hour when sin and suffering are tangled together. David holds nothing back. He names God’s anger, his own sin, his rotting wounds and his roaring heart, and he says all of it to the LORD. That honesty is itself an act of trust, because he speaks to the God who corrects as a Father and whose purpose is to restore.

The psalm also shows who God is. He takes sin seriously enough to let David feel its full weight, and he hears a cry too deep for words. He answered David’s plea for mercy most fully at the cross, where Christ carried the wrath and the burden that crushed David. Anyone who prays this psalm today prays it to that God, who has made the way back open in his Son.