Psalms 38:17
For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me.
BSB
ASV
For I am ready to fall, And my sorrow is continually before me.
KJV
For I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me.
For I am ready to halt. Like one who limps, or a person with tottering footsteps, in danger of falling. How well this befits us all. "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." How small a thing will lame a Christian, how insignificant a stumbling block may cause him to fall! This passage refers to a weakness caused by pain and sorrow; the sufferer was ready to give up in despair; he was so depressed in spirit that he stumbled at a straw.
So here: I was ready to halt, ready to say, I have cleansed my hands in vain. His sorrow was continual: All the day long have I been plagued. ( Ps. lxxiii. 13, 14 ), and it was continually before him; he could not forbear poring upon it, and that made him almost ready to halt between religion and irreligion.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Psalms 38:6I am bent and brought low; all day long I go about mourning.
leads to
I go about blackened, but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
I paced about as for my friend or brother; I was bowed down with grief, like one mourning for his mother.
I say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”
Through
Psalms 6:6I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.
leads to
My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”
I am weary from my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God.
O Lord, my every desire is before You; my groaning is not hidden from You.
Through
Psalms 35:15But when I stumbled, they assembled in glee; they gathered together against me. Assailants I did not know slandered me without ceasing.
leads to
For I have heard the whispering of many: “Terror is on every side! Report him; let us report him!” All my trusted friends watch for my fall: “Perhaps he will be deceived so that…
Then some of them began to spit on Him. They blindfolded Him, struck Him with their fists, and said to Him, “Prophesy!” And the officers received Him with slaps in His face.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.