Psalms 38:6-16

6 I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.
7 For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 I am feeble and sore broken; I roar by reason of the disquietness of my heart.
9 Lord, all my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee.
10 My heart pants, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also is gone from me.
11 My friends and my companions stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off.
12 Those that seek after my life lay snares for me, and those that seek my hurt speak calamities and imagine deceits all the day long.
13 But I, as a deaf man, that heard not, and as a dumb man that did not open his mouth.
14 Thus I was as a man that does not hear, and in whose mouth are no reproofs.
15 For thee, O LORD, do I wait; thou wilt respond, O Lord my God.
16 For I said, Let them not rejoice over me; let them not magnify themselves against me when my foot slips.

Psalms 38:6-16 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 38

\\<>\\. This psalm was composed by David under some sore affliction, and when in great distress of mind by reason of sin, perhaps his sin with Bathsheba; and was written as a memorial of his sense of sin, of his great afflictions, and deliverance from them; and therefore is said to be "to bring to remembrance", or to refresh his memory with the said things. Kimchi and Ben Melech think the psalm was made for the sake of such as are in distress, to put them in mind and teach them how to pray. The Targum calls the psalm, ``a good remembrance concerning Israel;'' and Jarchi says it was to remember the distress of Israel before the Lord, and that it is said with respect to all Israel; though others think the word "lehazcir" is the name of a psalm tune; and Aben Ezra was of opinion that it was the first word of some pleasant poem. The Septuagint version adds, ``concerning the sabbath,'' as if it was wrote to put persons in mind of that day; whereas there is nothing in the whole psalm that has any such tendency.

The Jubilee Bible (from the Scriptures of the Reformation), edited by Russell M. Stendal, Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2010