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 Testament believer, almost always calls to mind some sinful act that has become openly known. The foes, who would then prepare for his ruin, are the instruments of the Satanic power of evil (cf. Psa 38:21, ישׂטנוּני), which, as becomes perceptible to the New Testament believer even without the intervention of outward foes, desires the death of the sinning one, whereas God wills that he should live.

Verses 1-8
Psa 38:1-8 (Hebrew_Bible_38:2-9) David begins, as in Psa 6:1-10, with the prayer that his punitive affliction may be changed into disciplinary. Bakius correctly paraphrases. Psa 38:2 : Corripe sane per legem, castiga per crucem, millies promerui, negare non possum, sed castiga, quaeso, me ex amore ut pater, non ex furore et fervore ut judex; ne punias justitiae rigore, sed misericordiae dulcore (cf. on Psa 6:2). The negative is to be repeated in Psa 38:2, as in Psa 1:5; Psa 9:19; Psa 75:6. In the description, which give the ground of the cry for pity, נחת, is not the Piel, as in Psa 18:35, but the Niphal of the Kal נחת immediately following (root נח). קצף is anger as a breaking forth, fragor (cf. Hos 10:7, lxx φρύγανον), with ĕ instead of ı̆ in the first syllable, vowels which alternate in this word; and חמה, as a glowing or burning. חצּים (in Homer, κῆλα), God's wrath-arrows, i.e., lightnings of wrath, are His judgments of wrath; and יד, as in Psa 32:4; Psa 39:11, God's punishing hand, which makes itself felt in dispensing punishment, hence תּנחת might be attached as a mood of sequence. In Psa 38:4 wrath is called זעם as a boiling up. Sin is the cause of this experiencing wrath, and the wrath is the cause of the bodily derangement; sin as an exciting cause of the wrath always manifests itself outwardly even on the body as a fatal power. In Psa 38:5 sin is compared to waters that threaten to drown one, as in Psa 38:5 to a burden that presses one down. ככבּדוּ ממּנּי, they are heavier than I, i.e., than my power of endurance, too heavy for me. In Psa 38:6 the effects of the operation of the divine hand (as punishing) are wounds, חבּוּרת (properly, suffused variegated marks from a blow or wheals, Isa 1:6; from חבר, Arab. ḥbr, to be or make striped, variegated), which הבאישׁוּ, send forth an offensive smell, and נמקּוּ, suppurate. Sin, which causes this, is called אוּלת, because, as it is at last manifest, it is always the destruction of itself.