The Bigger Picture
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
Sin – Before we can understand the psalmist’s anxiety, we need to know what he means by the Hebrew term ḥaṭṭāʾt, translated “sin.” As we’ve mentioned, sin is a religious concept, not a rational ethical idea. It assumes a divine standard. TWOT tells us that ḥaṭṭāʾt is about a “failure to live up to expectations.”[1] It is not necessarily tied to morality. You’ll recognize that the word translated “guilt” (or “crime” in Alter’s version) in the same sentence is not the word we encounter here. “Guilt” is ʿāwōn, that sense of being bent out of shape. But here we have ḥaṭṭāʾt. “The root occurs about 580 times in the Old Testament and is thus its principle word for sin. The basic meaning of the root is to miss a mark or a way.”[2] It should properly be understood as “nothing missing,” i.e., anything less than the total. Our imagery of missing the center of a bull’s eye overlooks the full implication. Nothing less than complete performance will do. It’s not the fact that the archer’s arrow misses the center. It’s that missing the center is the equivalent of missing the entire target. This is why ḥaṭṭāʾt is both personal and communal. The impact of sin affects both the person and his or her community. “Close enough” isn’t good enough. The assessment of complete obedience must be viewed both personally and corporately. What affects one affects all. “Extended to religious obligations, the form, ḥāṭāʾ min, in Lev 4:2 designates a failure to observe God’s laws and in Lev 5:16 denotes action which gives less than is due, a failure of full duty.”[3]
Now we can draw some conclusions about the psalmist’s dilemma. He’s on the verge of humiliation. He is constantly faced with physical and mental anguish over his disjoined condition. He makes known this sense of being bent. It fills him with dāʾag (translated “anxiety”) because he knows it is all related to the fact that he hasn’t lived up to the full expectations of God. If that describes you like it does me, then we’re in good company. As far as I can tell, the psalmist has just summarized the experience of all men before the Supreme Being.
What do we learn? If we thought that “sin” was just breaking the rules, we were tragically naïve. Michael Wyschogrod clarifies: “Sin is possible only when the transgression is a violation of the command of a divine lawgiver.”[4] As a result, “He [Man] is determined to make his own judgment as to what is good or bad and thus become God-like. The inner meaning of sin is not simply an act of disobedience against God but an attempt to overthrow God by making man into a God-like creature.”[5] Perhaps this is what the psalmist discovers about himself. There is within each of us the desire to run our own lives, to determine what is good and what is not good for us. This desire is the yetzer ha’ra attempting to replace God with our own decisions, and this is the source of our bent condition, but it is an essential and constitutive part of who we are. If we took away the motivation to have the world our way, we would stop being human. We would either live by instinct as do the animals or we would become demonic, with no regard for God at all. In fact, it is only because we are somehow aware of the inner battle between the yetzer ha’ra and the yetzer ha’tov that we feel out of alignment with ourselves. “Let conscience be your guide” might seem relativistic, but in one sense it is absolutely true. Conscience is the reason for all our troubles—and our triumphs. The paradox of being human.
The psalmist does not despair over his “sins,” his violations of the divine lawgiver’s expectations. He despairs over the fact that he has to fight within himself to do what is right. Berkouwer informed us that sin is insanity. The psalmist decries that fact that we are all just a bit mad.
Topical Index: ḥaṭṭāʾt, sin, yetzer ha’ra, conscience, Psalm 38:17-18
[1] Livingston, G. H. (1999). 638 חָטָא. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 277). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham’s Promise, ed. and trans. R. Kendall Soulen (Eerdmans, 2004), p. 55.
[5] Ibid., p. 56.
