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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 38:1 - 38:1
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(Heb.: 38:2-9) David begins, as in Psa 6:1-10, with the prayer that his punitive affliction may be changed into disciplinary. Bakius correctly paraphrases. Psa 38:2 : Corripe sane per legem, castiga per crucem, millies promerui, negare non possum, sed castiga, quaeso, me ex amore ut pater, non ex furore et fervore ut judex; ne punias justitiae rigore, sed misericordiae dulcore (cf. on Psa 6:2). The negative is to be repeated in Psa 38:2, as in Psa 1:5; Psa 9:19; Psa 75:6. In the description, which give the ground of the cry for pity, נִחַת, is not the Piel, as in Psa 18:35, but the Niphal of the Kal נָחַת immediately following (root נח). קֶצֶף is anger as a breaking forth, fragor (cf. Hos 10:7, lxx φρύγανον), with ĕ instead of ı̆ in the first syllable, vowels which alternate in this word; and חֵמָה, as a glowing or burning. חִצִּים (in Homer, κῆλα), God's wrath-arrows, i.e., lightnings of wrath, are His judgments of wrath; and יָד, as in Psa 32:4; Psa 39:11, God's punishing hand, which makes itself felt in dispensing punishment, hence תִּנְחַת might be attached as a mood of sequence. In Psa 38:4 wrath is called זַעַם as a boiling up. Sin is the cause of this experiencing wrath, and the wrath is the cause of the bodily derangement; sin as an exciting cause of the wrath always manifests itself outwardly even on the body as a fatal power. In Psa 38:5 sin is compared to waters that threaten to drown one, as in Psa 38:5 to a burden that presses one down. כִכְבְּדוּ מִמֶּנִּי, they are heavier than I, i.e., than my power of endurance, too heavy for me. In Psa 38:6 the effects of the operation of the divine hand (as punishing) are wounds, חַבּוּרֹת (properly, suffused variegated marks from a blow or wheals, Isa 1:6; from חָבַר, Arab. ḥbr, to be or make striped, variegated), which הִבְאִישׁוּ, send forth an offensive smell, and נָמַקּוּ, suppurate. Sin, which causes this, is called אִוֶּלֶת, because, as it is at last manifest, it is always the destruction of itself. With emphasis does מִפְּנֵי אִוַּלְתִּי form the second half of the verse. To take נַֽעֲוֵיתִי out of Psa 38:7 and put it to this, as Meier and Thenius propose, is to destroy this its proper position. On the three מִפְּנֵי, vid., Ewald, §217, l. Thus sick in soul and body, he is obliged to bow and bend himself in the extreme. נַֽעֲוָה is used of a convulsive drawing together of the body, Isa 21:3; שָׁחַח, of a bowed mien, Psa 35:14; הִלֵּךְ, of a heavy, lagging gait. With כִּי in Psa 38:8 the grounding of the petition begins for the third time. His כְּסָלִים, i.e., internal muscles of the loins, which are usually the fattest parts, are full of נִקְלֶה, that which is burnt, i.e., parched. It is therefore as though the burning, starting from the central point of the bodily power, would spread itself over the whole body: the wrath of God works commotion in this latter as well as in the soul. Whilst all the energies of life thus yield, there comes over him a partial, almost total lifelessness. פּוּג is the proper word for the coldness and rigidity of a corpse; the Niphal means to be brought into this condition, just as נִדְכָּא means to be crushed, or to be brought into a condition of crushing, i.e., of violent dissolution. The מִן of מִנַּֽהֲמַת is intended to imply that the loud wail is only the utterance of the pain that is raging in his heart, the outward expression of his ceaseless, deep inward groaning.