Psalms 38:8
I am numb and badly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.
BSB
ASV
I am faint and sore bruised: I have groaned by reason of the disquietness of my heart.
KJV
I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.
I am feeble. The original is "benumbed, "or frozen, such strange incongruities and contradictions meet in a distracted mind and a sick body—it appears to itself to be alternately parched with heat and pinched with cold. Like souls in the Popish fabled Purgatory, tossed from burning furnaces into thick ice, so tormented hearts rush from one extreme to the other, with equal torture in each. A heat of fear, a chill of horror, a flaming desire, a horrible insensibility—by these successive miseries a convinced sinner is brought to death's door. And sore broken.
The way to keep the heart quiet is to keep ourselves in the love of God and to do nothing to offend him. He acknowledges his sin to be the procuring provoking cause of all his troubles, and groans more under the load of guilt than any other load,
Herein David, in his sufferings, was a type of Christ, who, being in his agony, cried out, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful. This is a sorer affliction than any other in this world; whatever God is pleased to lay upon us, we have no reason to complain as long as he preserves to us the use of our reason and the peace of our consciences.
The loathsomeness, corruption, and wasting torture of severe physical disease set forth his mental anguish [Ps 38:6]. It is possible some bodily disease was connected. The loins are the seat of strength.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
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 32:3When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.
leads to
He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.
There is no soundness in my body because of Your anger; there is no rest in my bones because of my sin.
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning?
Even when I cry out and plead for help, He shuts out my prayer.
Through
Job 30:28I go about blackened, but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
leads to
For You are the God of my refuge. Why have You rejected me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?
I am bent and brought low; all day long I go about mourning.
I say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”
Through
Job 3:24I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.
leads to
For I have eaten ashes like bread and mixed my drink with tears