John Calvin Commentary Psalms 38

O Jehovah! rebuke me not in your wrath. As I have already expounded this verse at the beginning of Psalm 6, where it occurs, and so that I may not be tedious to the reader, I will address it more briefly here. David does not expressly ask that his afflictions should be removed, but only that God would moderate the severity of His chastisements.

Hence we may infer that David did not give free rein to the desires of the flesh, but offered up his earnest prayer in a duly chastened spirit of devotion. All people would naturally desire that they should be granted permission to sin with impunity. But David restrains his desires and does not wish the favor and indulgence of God to be extended beyond measure, but is content with a mitigation of his affliction; as if he had said, "Lord, I am not unwilling to be chastised by You, but I entreat You, meanwhile, not to afflict me beyond what I am able to bear, but to temper the fierceness of Your indignation according to the measure of my infirmity, lest the severity of the affliction should entirely overwhelm me."

This prayer, as I have said, was framed according to the rule of godliness, for it contains nothing but what God promises to all His children. It should also be noticed that David does not secretly indulge a fretful and complaining spirit, but spreads his complaint before God. This he does, not in the way of sinful complaining, but of humble prayer and unfeigned confession, accompanied with the hope of obtaining forgiveness. He has used anger and wrath as denoting extreme rigour, and has contrasted them with fatherly chastisement.

For thy arrows go down in me. He shows that he was compelled by urgent need to ask for relief from his misery, for he was crushed under the weight of the burden he bore. This rule should always be observed in our prayers: to keep God’s promises before us.

But God has promised that He will chastise His servants, not according to what they deserve, but as they are able to bear. This is the reason why the saints so often speak of their own weakness when they are severely oppressed with affliction. David very properly describes the affliction he suffered by the terms the arrows and the hand, or the chastisement of God. If he had not been convinced that it was God who afflicted him in this way, he could never have been led to seek deliverance from his affliction from Him.

We know that the great majority of people are blinded during God's judgments and imagine that these are entirely chance events; scarcely one in a hundred discerns God's hand in them. But, in his sickness, as in all his other adversities, David views the hand of God lifted up to punish him for his sins.

And certainly, the person who judges his affliction only by the pain it causes, and sees it in no other way, is no different from the beasts of the field. Since every chastisement from God should remind us of His judgment, the true wisdom of the saints is, as the prophet declares:

“to look to the hand of him who smiteth” (Isaiah 9:13).

The pronoun thy is therefore emphatic. David’s words are as if he had said: I do not contend with a mortal man, who can shoot his arrows only with a force proportional to his own strength, but I contend with God, who can discharge the arrows from His hand with an altogether overwhelming force.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of your anger. Others translate this as, There is no beauty; but this does not seem as suitable.

In the following clause, David ascribes to God the praise of righteousness. Without this, the acknowledgment he previously made would be of little use; indeed, instead of this, such an acknowledgment sometimes rather exasperates people's minds, so that they provoke God's wrath still more by accusing Him of cruelty and pouring forth horrible blasphemies against Him.

Therefore, nothing can be more preposterous than to imagine that there is in God a power so supreme and absolute (as it is called) as to deprive Him of His righteousness.

As soon as David recognized his affliction as coming from God, he turned to his own sin as the cause of the Divine displeasure. For he was already fully convinced in his own mind that God is not like a tyrant who exercises cruelty needlessly and randomly, but a righteous judge who never shows His displeasure by inflicting judgments unless He is grievously offended.

If, then, we would give God the praise that is due to Him, let us learn from David's example to connect our sins with His wrath.

For my iniquities have passed over my head. Here he complains that he is overwhelmed by his sins as by a heavy burden, so that he utterly faints under their weight. Yet he again confirms the doctrine we have already stated: that he deservedly suffered the wrath of God, which had been inflicted on him in such a severe and dreadful manner.

The word עון, avon, which we have translated iniquities, no doubt often signifies punishment, but this is only in a secondary and metaphorical sense. I am also willing to admit that David assigns to the effect what is proper to the cause when he describes by the term iniquities the punishment he had procured by his own sin. And yet, his object at the same time is plainly and distinctly to confess that all the afflictions he suffered were to be imputed to his sins.

He does not quarrel with God for the extreme severity of his punishment, as Cain did, who said,

“My punishment is greater than I can bear,” (Genesis 4:13).

It is true, indeed, that Moses uses the same word עון, avon, in that passage, so there is some similarity between the language of David and Cain. But David’s meaning is very different.

When such temptations as these were insinuating themselves into his mind: "Could God afflict you more severely than he does? Certainly, since he is doing nothing to relieve you, it is a sure sign that he wishes you destroyed and brought to nothing. He not only despises your sighs and groanings, but the more he sees you cast down and forsaken, he pursues you the more fiercely and with greater rigour."

To prevent the entrance of such evil thoughts and suspicions, he defended himself as with a shield by this consideration: that he was afflicted by the just judgment of God.

He has here attributed to his own sins, as the cause, the weight of the wrath of God which he felt. And, as we shall find in the following verse, he again acknowledges that what he is now suffering was procured by his own foolishness.

Although, then, in bewailing his own miseries, he may seem in some measure to quarrel with God, yet he still cherishes the humble conviction (for God does not afflict beyond measure) that there is no rest for him but in imploring Divine compassion and forgiveness. Whereas the ungodly, although convicted by their own consciences of guilt, murmur against God, like the wild beasts, which, in their rage, gnaw the chains with which they are bound.

My wounds have become putrid. In this verse, he pleads the long continuation of his disease as an argument for obtaining some alleviation. When the Lord declares, concerning his Church,

that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned,
for she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins (Isaiah 40:2).

His meaning is that when he has sufficiently chastised his people, he is quickly pacified towards them. Moreover, if he continues to manifest his displeasure for too long a time, he becomes through his mercy, as it were, weary of it, so that he hastens to give deliverance, as he says in another place,

For my name’s sake will I defer my anger, and for my praise will I refrain for you, that I do not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not with silver; I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction (Isaiah 48:9–10).

The object, therefore, which David has in view in complaining of the long continuance of his misery is that when he had endured the punishment which he had merited, he might at last obtain deliverance. It was certainly no slight trial to this servant of God to be thus kept in continual languishing and, as it were, to putrefy and be dissolved into corruption in his miseries.

In this, his constancy is the more to be admired, for it neither faltered due to the long period of delay nor failed under the immense load of suffering.

By using the term foolishness instead of sin, he does not seek in this way to extenuate his faults, as hypocrites do when they are unable to escape the charge of guilt. For, to excuse themselves in part, they allege the false pretense of ignorance, pleading and wishing it to be believed that they erred through imprudence and inadvertence.

But, according to a common mode of expression in the Hebrew language, by the use of the term foolishness, he acknowledges that he had been out of his right mind when he obeyed the lusts of the flesh in opposition to God.

The Spirit, by employing this term in so many places to designate the most atrocious crimes, certainly does not mean to extenuate the criminality of men, as if they were guilty merely of some slight offenses. Rather, the Spirit charges them with maniacal fury because, blinded by unhallowed desires, they willfully fly in the face of their Maker.

Accordingly, sin is always conjoined with folly or madness. It is in this sense that David speaks of his own foolishness; as if he had said that he was void of reason and transported with madness, like the infatuated rage of wild beasts, when he neglected God and followed his own lusts.