The Moral Outcast

My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness.  Psalm 38:5  NASB

Wounds/ foolishness – Umbrellas.  That’s how you must think when it comes to Hebrew vocabulary.  Big umbrellas.  Lots of space underneath.  Lots of places for words to shift and change and rearrange.  And all that moving around means we might find something important in the patterns, something that helps us see connections not apparent in translation.  ḥabbûrot, the word translated “wounds” is one of these.  It’s a derivative of ḥābar, a word that means, “be joined, coupled, league, heap up, have fellowship with, be compact; be a charmer.”^[1]  “The main idea of ḥābar in the ot is ‘to join or unite’ two or more things. However, the root idea of the term ‘to bind’ . . .”^[2]  Don’t you think that’s odd?  How can a word about unity in community have a derivative that means “wounds”?  Stretch your imagination.  A wound is something separated.  It is the dissolution of what is supposed to be joined.  Here we have a derivative that is the oppositeof the root.

This tells us something important.  A wound isn’t normal.  It’s an aberration of what should be united.  In this regard, ḥabbûrot are public.  When we read this verse, we might mistakenly think of the private world of personal guilt.  In our era, guilt has become a psychological matter.  But not so in the time of the psalmist.  Guilt was external, communal, visible.  The wounds of sin displayed themselves in the eyes of the public.  Separation from community was the ultimate consequence (as we recall in the wilderness experience).  A ḥăbarbūrâ is something that excludes me from fellowship—with God and with others.

Now we can understand the second term, ʾiwwelet, “folly.”  Once again, it isn’t our modern idea of a lack of good sense.  The fool is not a clown.  He’s a person who is morally deficient.

Such a person is lacking in sense and is generally corrupt. If one can posit a gradation in the words for fool, ʾĕwîlwould be one step below kĕsîl and only one step above nābāl (q.v.). An even stronger word in Prov is lēṣ, often translated “scoffer.” The ʾĕwîl is not only a kĕsîl because of his choices, but he is also insolent.^[3]

ʾĕwîl is the person who knows what is right but refuses to do it.  He’s in worse condition than the nābāl who is simply ignorant of the right thing to do.  But he’s a bit better than the kĕsîl, someone disobeys and leads others to disobey, because there is a possibility that he may reform.  The “wounds” of an ʾĕwîl are grievous to the community because they infect the entire group with an attitude of deliberate disobedience.  In Mosaic times, punishment followed.  These ḥabbûrot threaten the community’s existence.  That’s why such a person is publicly excluded.

This verse isn’t about feeling bad because of my sin.  It’s about the public humiliation that comes from my deliberate disobedience.  My deeds stink—and everyone knows it.  Could anything be worse than that?

Topical Index: ḥabbûrot, wounds, ʾiwwelet, foolishness, Psalm 38:5

^[1] (1999). 598 חָבַר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 259). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Goldberg, L. (1999). 44 אול. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 19). Chicago: Moody Press.