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Psalm 38

A Penitent Sufferer’s Plea for Healing

A Psalm of David, for the memorial offering.

O L ord, do not rebuke me in your anger,

or discipline me in your wrath.

For your arrows have sunk into me,

and your hand has come down on me.

There is no soundness in my flesh

because of your indignation;

there is no health in my bones

because of my sin.

For my iniquities have gone over my head;

they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.

My wounds grow foul and fester

because of my foolishness;

I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;

all day long I go around mourning.

For my loins are filled with burning,

and there is no soundness in my flesh.

I am utterly spent and crushed;

I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

O Lord, all my longing is known to you;

my sighing is not hidden from you.

My heart throbs, my strength fails me;

as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.

My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction,

and my neighbors stand far off.

Those who seek my life lay their snares;

those who seek to hurt me speak of ruin,

and meditate treachery all day long.

But I am like the deaf, I do not hear;

like the mute, who cannot speak.

Truly, I am like one who does not hear,

and in whose mouth is no retort.

But it is for you, O L ord, that I wait;

it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.

For I pray, “Only do not let them rejoice over me,

those who boast against me when my foot slips.”

For I am ready to fall,

and my pain is ever with me.

I confess my iniquity;

I am sorry for my sin.

Those who are my foes without cause are mighty,

and many are those who hate me wrongfully.

Those who render me evil for good

are my adversaries because I follow after good.

Do not forsake me, O L ord;

O my God, do not be far from me;

make haste to help me,

O Lord, my salvation.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

1 O Jehovah! rebuke me not in thy wrath As I have already expounded this verse in the beginning of the sixth psalm, where it occurs, and that I may not prove tedious to the reader, I shall notice it more briefly here. David does not expressly ask that his afflictions should be removed, but only that God would moderate the severity of his chastisements. Hence we may infer, that David did not give loose reins to the desires of the flesh, but offered up his earnest prayer in a duly chastened spirit of devotion. All men would naturally desire that permission should be granted them to sin with impunity. But David lays a restraint upon his desires, and does not wish the favor and indulgence of God to be extended beyond measure, but is content with a mitigation of his affliction; as if he had said, Lord, I am not unwilling to be chastised by thee, but I entreat thee, meanwhile, not to afflict me beyond what I am able to bear, but to temper the fierceness of thy indignation according to the measure of my infirmity, lest the severity of the affliction should entirely overwhelm me. This prayer, as I have said, was framed according to the rule of godliness; for it contains nothing but what God promises to all his children. It should also be noticed, that David does not secretly indulge a fretful and repining spirit, but spreads his complaint before God; and this he does, not in the way of sinful complaining, but of humble prayer and unfeigned confession, accompanied with the hope of obtaining forgiveness. He has used anger and wrath as denoting extreme rigour, and has contrasted them with fatherly chastisement.

2. For thy arrows go down in me. He shows that he was constrained by dire necessity to ask an alleviation of his misery; for he was crushed under the weight of the burden which he sustained. This rule is always to be observed in our prayers — to keep God’s promises present to our view. But God has promised that he will chastise his servants, not according to their deserts, but as they are able to bear. This is the reason why the saints so often speak of their own weakness, when they are severely oppressed with affliction. David very properly describes the malady under which he labored, by the terms, the arrows and the hand, or the chastisement of God. Had he not been persuaded that it was God who thus afflicted him, he could never have been brought to seek from him deliverance from his affliction. We know that the great majority of men are blinded under the judgments of God, and imagine that they are entirely the events of chance; and scarcely one in a hundred discerns in them the hand of God. But, in his sickness, as in all his other adversities, David views the hand of God lifted up to punish him for his sins. And certainly, the man who estimates his affliction only by the feeling of pain which it produces, and views it in no other light, differs nothing from the beasts of the field. As every chastisement of God should remind us of his judgment, the true wisdom of the saints, as the prophet declares,

“to look to the hand of him who smiteth.”— (Isaiah 9:13)

The pronoun thy is therefore emphatic. David’s words are, as if he had said, I have not to do with a mortal man, who can shoot his arrows with a force only in proportion to his own strength, but I have to do with God, who can discharge the arrows that come from his hand with a force altogether overwhelming.