Take Two Aspirin
For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me. For I admit my guilt; I am full of anxiety because of my sin. Psalm 38:17-18 NASB
Sorrow – What is “continually before” the psalmist? If we thought he is experiencing “deep distress caused by loss, disappointment, or misfortune,” we would convert this ancient Hebrew into modern psychology. Maybe that’s appropriate, but we must first recognize that the root (kâʾab) is about pain. More than psychology is involved. The psalmist’s use of makʾôbâh covers the whole range of painful experience. John Oswalt remarks:
Although the root can be used to express physical suffering, it much more commonly has to do with mental anguish.[1]
makʾôb. Sorrow, grief, affliction, pain. (ASV similar. RSV almost always translates with “pain,” where KJV has “sorrow.”) Sixteen occurrences, of which at least eleven have to do with mental suffering.[2]
Have you felt this? Have you ever been so distressed that it caused physical pain? Have you had such terrible news that you felt as if you were having a heart attack? Have you experienced circumstances where mental anguish brought on physical collapse? That’s the picture here. Since Hebrew poetry often uses parallelism, where one thought is recreated in another thought, we can jump ahead just a few words and discover why this mental and physical despair is happening. The answer is ḥaṭṭāʾt, “sin.” The parallel is clear because the psalmist creates a chiasm, that is, a poem with the pattern A- B- C- C’- B’- A’. The center word is nāgad, used once in the derivative neged (“before”) and once in the verb (“admit”). But here, with makʾôbâh, we have the second step of the pyramid. makʾôbâh parallels ʿāwōn (“guilt,” “iniquity,” “crime”). What is true of makʾôbâh finds nuanced expression in ʿāwōn. If you want to know the nuances of makʾôbâh, you will have to look for them in ʿāwōn. Since ʿāwōn is about being bent or having crooked behavior, we can conclude that makʾôbâh is tied to this experience of distortion. In other words, it’s not just physical pain and mental anguish that the poet feels. It’s deeper than that. What he feels is the displacement within himself, that awareness that he’s somehow damaged, not true even to himself. And that doesn’t go away because it is built into him. At least this is how he feels now. Something’s wrong with the way he is, and whatever it is, it’s connected to his sense of guilt. Taking two aspirin isn’t going to help. He won’t feel better in the morning. If there’s a cure, it’s going to take a lot more than a BAND-AID approach.
What do you think? Oh, better, how do you feel? The core of this psalm isn’t a rationally constructed theology. It’s an existential awareness. Is there a remedy for that gnawing distress deep in your soul? We’ll see.
Topical Index: makʾôbâh, sorrow, grief, pain, Psalm 38:17-18
[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 940 כָאַב. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 425). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Ibid.
