True Confession

For my life is exhausted in sorrow and my years in sighing.  Through my crime my strength stumbles and my limbs are worn out.  Psalm 31:11 (Hebrew Bible)  Robert Alter

Crime – Note Robert Alter’s remark: “The translation follows the Masoretic Text, which has ba’awoni here.  But the Septuagint and the Peshitta read be’onyi, ‘in my affliction.’”[1]  At least Alter tells us which Hebrew text he uses.  Not so with other English Bibles:

For my life is spent with sorrow and my years with sighing; my strength has failed because of my guilt, and my body has wasted away.   31:10  NASB

My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.   31:10  NIV

For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. 31:10   NKJV

So, is it “crime,” or “guilt,” or “affliction,” or “iniquity”?  They’re not equivalent terms, are they?  The meanings and nuances take us in different directions.  There are no footnotes in these translations to tell us that some of this comes from the MT and some from the LXX.

Does it matter?  At least the NKJV and Alter’s translation hint at David’s distress.  He is reflecting on his one culpability.  The other translations seem as if David complains about the stresses of life.  If the MT suggests David is struggling with his personal guilt, why would translations like the NASB and the NIV choose to follow the LXX and remove this connection?  Were they motivated to avoid the scandal of David’s past?  And, for that matter, why does the LXX use a completely different word, hiding the possibility that David is overwhelmed by his guilt?  We’re not given any information that helps us answer these questions?

So, once again, we ask, “Does it matter?”

Maybe it doesn’t, if we’re only after the “sense” of this verse, but I think there’s more than that at stake.  You see, if I read “crime” or “iniquity,” I can personally relate.  The use of “affliction” isn’t quite as condemning.   Affliction isn’t necessarily my fault.  “Guilt” might lean in the right direction, but everyone is in some sense “guilty.”  It’s a condition of being human.  But “iniquity” and “crime,” well, those are, ah . . . uncomfortably close to home.  Why does this matter?  Well, it matters to me because I see myself in David’s life.  I see the struggle, the blessing, the failure, the remorse, the family disaster, the naïveté, the zeal, and the lust.  Then this becomes my poem, and when it becomes my poem, amazingly, I have hope, not despair.  Why?  Because God still loved David.  Maybe He can still love me.

Topical Index:  crime, iniquity, affliction, ba’awoni, Psalm 31:11 (Hebrew)

[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: Vol. 3 The Writings, p. 87, fn. 11.