Today’s Passage: Psalm 38
In this psalm every symptom comes with its cause attached to it. The wounds fester because of his own foolishness, and the ache in his bones he traces back to his sin. His friends stand off at a distance while his enemies draw close and lay their snares. Yet he does not blame his circumstances or the people around him. He confesses. And while nothing at all has lifted, he waits, saying to God, I wait for You, O LORD, and You will answer.
As you read, hold this: I confess my iniquity. I wait for You, O LORD.
Context Of David, for remembrance
“A Psalm of David, for remembrance.” The Hebrew word behind that last phrase, ləhazkir (H2142), is a heading this psalm shares with Psalm 70, and it marks a prayer meant to bring something before God rather than a private journal kept for himself. That fits everything that follows, for what he is doing here is asking God, over and over, not to look away.
Psalm 38:1-2 (BSB)
¹ A Psalm of David, for remembrance. O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your anger or discipline me in Your wrath. ² For Your arrows have pierced me deeply, and Your hand has pressed down on me.
These verses take the same shape as Psalm 6. He is not asking God to leave him, but asking instead that God be gentler in the way He stays. David already assumes that the arrows and the pressing hand are God’s own, and he does not dispute the discipline itself. He is only asking for mercy in the middle of it.
Psalm 38:3-4 (BSB)
³ There is no soundness in my body because of Your anger; there is no rest in my bones because of my sin. ⁴ For my iniquities have overwhelmed me; they are a burden too heavy to bear.
Because of Your anger, he says, and because of my sin. He traces the trouble in his body straight back to what he himself has done. His iniquities have overwhelmed him, a burden grown too heavy for him to bear.
Psalm 38:5-8 (BSB)
⁵ My wounds are foul and festering because of my sinful folly. ⁶ I am bent and brought low; all day long I go about mourning. ⁷ For my loins are full of burning pain, and no soundness remains in my body. ⁸ I am numb and badly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.
Here is the second metom, pronounced meh-TOME. Strong's H4974, soundness, wholeness, health. It means soundness, or wholeness, and here it stands negated. The same word returns again in verse 7, so that twice, four verses apart, he names the very same absence. Nothing in him is whole. , and between the two he piles up everything a body can register. There is infection, a frame bent low, a burning pain, a numbness, and a groan. None of this is held back as mere metaphor. It is the plain cost of carrying the guilt.
Psalm 38:9-10 (BSB)
⁹ O Lord, my every desire is before You; my groaning is not hidden from You. ¹⁰ My heart pounds, my strength fails, and even the light of my eyes has faded.
None of this is happening offstage, out of God’s sight. Every groan is already known to Him. Yet he does not offer that as a soft comfort to himself. It reads instead as an appeal: You already see all of this, so act.
Psalm 38:11-12 (BSB)
¹¹ My beloved and friends shun my disease, and my kinsmen stand at a distance. ¹² Those who seek my life lay snares; those who wish me harm speak destruction, plotting deceit all day long.
The people who might have stayed beside him keep their distance, while the people who wish him harm only move closer. In the space of two verses he is left both friendless and hunted.
Psalm 38:13-14 (BSB)
¹³ But like a deaf man, I do not hear; and like a mute man, I do not open my mouth. ¹⁴ I am like a man who cannot hear, whose mouth offers no reply.
He chooses not to answer his accusers at all, and holds himself as deaf and mute before them. It is the quiet of a guilty and exhausted man who has run out of any defense worth making. He knows that his own sin has handed his enemies real material to use, and he will not fight for his reputation while God Himself is the one disciplining him. The psalm does not ask us to pretend that silence belongs to someone innocent.
Psalm 38:15-16 (BSB)
¹⁵ I wait for You, O LORD; You will answer, O Lord my God. ¹⁶ For I said, “Let them not gloat over me—those who taunt me when my foot slips.”
The turn arrives while nothing else has changed at all. The wounds still fester, the friends are still distant, and the enemies are still circling. He has not been healed, and he has not been vindicated. He has simply decided that God will answer, and he says so out loud before the answer ever comes.
Psalm 38:17-18 (BSB)
¹⁷ For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. ¹⁸ Yes, I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.
The confession itself is almost bare. He tells no story about how it happened, and he makes no case for leniency. He simply names the fact of it, and sets beside it the honest admission that he is close to falling and that the pain has not let up.
Psalm 38:19-20 (BSB)
¹⁹ Many are my enemies without cause, and many hate me without reason. ²⁰ Those who repay my good with evil attack me for pursuing the good.
Even here, in the middle of confessing, he does not pretend that his enemies are righteous simply because he is not. Two things are true in the same breath. He is guilty before God, and the people attacking him are doing so unjustly, repaying his good with evil. Confession does not require him to agree with every accuser. We should teach the line as it stands, neither turning it into a permit for revenge nor sanding it smooth.
Psalm 38:21-22 (BSB)
²¹ Do not forsake me, O LORD; be not far from me, O my God. ²² Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior.
Twenty verses have named everything he has lost: his health, his friends, his safety, and his composure. Yet what he asks for at the very end is not the removal of every consequence. It is presence. He asks for God Himself, close at hand and quick to come.
I confess my iniquity. I wait for You, O LORD.