Winding And Twining And Shrinking

Psalm 38:1-12

A psalm of David, to bring us to the LORD’s remembrance.

1O LORD, don’t rebuke me in your anger!

Don’t discipline me in your rage!

2Your arrows have struck deep,

and your blows are crushing me.

3Because of your anger, my whole body is sick;

my health is broken because of my sins.

4My guilt overwhelms me—

it is a burden too heavy to bear.

5My wounds fester and stink

because of my foolish sins.

6I am bent over and racked with pain.

My days are filled with grief.

7A raging fever burns within me,

and my health is broken.

8I am exhausted and completely crushed.

My groans come from an anguished heart.

9You know what I long for, Lord;

you hear my every sigh.

10My heart beats wildly, my strength fails,

and I am going blind.

11My loved ones and friends stay away, fearing my disease.

Even my own family stands at a distance.

12Meanwhile, my enemies lay traps for me;

they make plans to ruin me.

They think up treacherous deeds all day long.

Some scholars think David wrote this psalm shortly after his sin with Bathsheba. Others say he must have written it later when he was in ill health. Whenever it was that David wrote the psalm, he knew that he was sick and that he had sinned.

John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, records a similar time of anguish. Bunyan had just become a Christian when he succumbed to temptation. Spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical disturbances knotted him up. He wrote: “I struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that sometime I could, for whole days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of the dreadful judgment of God. . . . I felt also such a clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if my breast bone would have split in sunder. . . . Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden that was upon me, which burden did so oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.”

God has made us in such a way that our spiritual well-being is closely connected with our physical well-being. When we are plagued by guilt, all is anguish, fear, and loneliness. Is there any way out? Yes! We find it in 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.”

O my offended Lord,

Restore my inward peace.

I know you can; pronounce the word,

And bid the tempest cease.

CHARLES WESLEY

Bible Networking

Learn about a godly person who experienced similar trials as David in this psalm. Read Job 2:3-8 and 13:23.

Notable Quotable

“David was being punished for a serious transgression. Not all sickness is punishment, however; most is not. It is important to say this, because physical suffering often depresses us mentally and in such depressions we are inclined to see connections between our past sins and our present sickness that do not necessarily exist. We need to remember Job, who was a righteous man and yet suffered.”

JAMES MONTGOMERY BOICE