My Wounds Are Loathsome
1 A Psalm by David, for a memorial. Yahweh, don’t rebuke me in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure. 2 For your arrows have pierced me, your hand presses hard on me. 3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation, neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin. 4 For my iniquities have gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. 5 My wounds are loathsome and corrupt because of my foolishness. 6 I am in pain and bowed down greatly. I go mourning all day long. 7 For my waist is filled with burning. There is no soundness in my flesh. 8 I am faint and severely bruised. I have groaned by reason of the anguish of my heart. 9 Lord, all my desire is before you. My groaning is not hidden from you. 10 My heart throbs. My strength fails me. As for the light of my eyes, it has also left me. 11 My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away. 12 They also who seek after my life lay snares. Those who seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and meditate deceits all day long. 13 But I, as a deaf man, don’t hear. I am as a mute man who doesn’t open his mouth. 14 Yes, I am as a man who doesn’t hear, in whose mouth are no reproofs. 15 For I hope in you, Yahweh. You will answer, Lord my God. 16 For I said, “Don’t let them gloat over me, or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.” 17 For I am ready to fall. My pain is continually before me. 18 For I will declare my iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin. 19 But my enemies are vigorous and many. Those who hate me without reason are numerous. 20 They who give evil for good are also adversaries to me, because I follow what is good. 21 Don’t forsake me, Yahweh. My God, don’t be far from me. 22 Hurry to help me, Lord, my salvation.
A man too ill to defend himself against slander decides not to try, and says nothing at all.
A Psalm by David, for a memorial. Yahweh, don’t rebuke me in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure.
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.
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.
For my iniquities have gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.
Two images at once, drowning and crushing.
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt because of my foolishness.
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.
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.
13 But I, as a deaf man, don’t hear. I am as a mute man who doesn’t open his mouth. 14 Yes, I am as a man who doesn’t hear, in whose mouth are no reproofs.
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.
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.
settled What this mark means