Biblion Bible Commentary
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My Wounds Are Loathsome
Psalms 38:1-22
1 A Psalm by David, for a memorial. Yahweh, don’t rebuke me in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure. · WEB
A man too ill to defend himself against slander decides not to try, and says nothing at all.
Yahweh, don't rebuke me in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure Psalms 38:1.
The opening is word for word the opening of the sixth psalm, and again the request is not that the discipline stop but that it not come in anger.
There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation, neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin Psalms 38:3.
The psalm makes a direct connection between an illness and a specific sin, and it is important to say what this does and does not license. The writer is speaking about his own case, from the inside, with knowledge nobody else has. Scripture flatly refuses the same inference when it is made about somebody else — Jesus is asked whose sin caused a man's blindness and answers that neither he nor his parents sinned John 9:3. A man may say this of himself. It may not be said of a neighbor.
My iniquities have gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me Psalms 38:4. Two images at once, drowning and crushing.
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt because of my foolishness Psalms 38:5.
The word is foolishness rather than wickedness — the sin is presented as stupidity, which is often the more accurate description and always the harder one to admit.
My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away Psalms 38:11.
The isolation of illness, and it is worse than the illness. Those who stay away are not enemies; they are the people who loved him, keeping a distance that a sick man can measure exactly.
But I, as a deaf man, don't hear. I am as a mute man who doesn't open his mouth. Yes, I am as a man who doesn't hear, in whose mouth are no reproofs Psalms 38:13–14.
The center of the psalm and its most deliberate act. Slander is being circulated, he has answers, and he chooses to become deaf and mute. Not because he cannot reply but because he has decided to leave the reply to someone else: for I hope in you, Yahweh. You will answer Psalms 38:15.
This is the same silence Isaiah describes of the suffering servant, who didn't open his mouth Isaiah 53:7, and Peter notes that Christ, when he was cursed, he didn't curse back 1 Peter 2:23 — and gives the same reason, that he entrusted the matter to the one who judges righteously.
For I will declare my iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin Psalms 38:18.
He is silent to men and voluble to God, and the psalm keeps the two clearly apart. What he will not defend before his neighbors he confesses without reserve to the one he actually sinned against.
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