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Read the Bible

THE MESSAGE

Psalms 38:5

The cuts in my flesh stink and grow maggots because I've lived so badly. And now I'm flat on my face feeling sorry for myself morning to night. All my insides are on fire, my body is a wreck. I'm on my last legs; I've had it— my life is a vomit of groans.

Bible Study Resources

Concordances:

- Nave's Topical Bible - Afflictions and Adversities;   Conviction;   Prayer;   Remorse;  

Dictionaries:

- American Tract Society Bible Dictionary - Fool;   Psalms, the Book of;   Bridgeway Bible Dictionary - Disease;   Suffering;   Baker Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology - Pit;   Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible - English Versions;   Greek Versions of Ot;   Medicine;   Psalms;   Sin;   People's Dictionary of the Bible - Psalms the book of;   Zion;   Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types - Stink;   Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary - Fool;  

Encyclopedias:

- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Fool;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
My wounds are foul and festeringbecause of my foolishness.
Hebrew Names Version
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt, Because of my foolishness.
King James Version
My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.
English Standard Version
My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness,
New Century Version
My sores stink and become infected because I was foolish.
New English Translation
My wounds are infected and starting to smell, because of my foolish sins.
Amplified Bible
My wounds are loathsome and foul Because of my foolishness.
New American Standard Bible
My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my foolishness.
World English Bible
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt, Because of my foolishness.
Geneva Bible (1587)
My woundes are putrified, and corrupt because of my foolishnes.
Legacy Standard Bible
My wounds stink and rotBecause of my folly.
Berean Standard Bible
My wounds are foul and festering because of my sinful folly.
Contemporary English Version
Because of my foolishness, I am covered with sores that stink and spread.
Complete Jewish Bible
for my iniquities loom high over my head as a heavy burden, too heavy for me.
Darby Translation
My wounds stink, they are corrupt, because of my foolishness.
Easy-to-Read Version
I did a foolish thing, and now I have infected sores that stink.
George Lamsa Translation
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt because of my foolishness.
Good News Translation
Because I have been foolish, my sores stink and rot.
Lexham English Bible
My wounds start to stink; they rot because of my foolishness.
Literal Translation
My wounds have putrefied and rotted because of my foolishness.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
My woundes styncke & are corrupte, thorow my folishnesse.
American Standard Version
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt, Because of my foolishness.
Bible in Basic English
My wounds are poisoned and evil-smelling, because of my foolish behaviour.
JPS Old Testament (1917)
For mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
King James Version (1611)
My wounds stinke, and are corrupt: because of my foolishnesse.
Bishop's Bible (1568)
My woundes stinke and are corrupt: through my foolishnes.
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
My bruises have become noisome and corrupt, because of my foolishness.
English Revised Version
My wounds stink and are corrupt, because of my foolishness.
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Myn heelid woundis weren rotun, and ben brokun; fro the face of myn vnwisdom.
Update Bible Version
My wounds are loathsome and corrupt, Because of my foolishness.
Webster's Bible Translation
My wounds are offensive, [and] are corrupt because of my foolishness.
New King James Version
My wounds are foul and festering Because of my foolishness.
New Living Translation
My wounds fester and stink because of my foolish sins.
New Life Bible
My sores smell and grow bigger because I do foolish things.
New Revised Standard
My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness;
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
My wounds are of bad odour - they have festered, by reason of my folly:
Douay-Rheims Bible
(37-6) My sores are putrefied and corrupted, because of my foolishness.
Revised Standard Version
My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness,
Young's Literal Translation
Stunk -- become corrupt have my wounds, Because of my folly.
New American Standard Bible (1995)
My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my folly.

Contextual Overview

1A David Psalm Take a deep breath, God ; calm down— don't be so hasty with your punishing rod. Your sharp-pointed arrows of rebuke draw blood; my backside smarts from your caning. 3I've lost twenty pounds in two months because of your accusation. My bones are brittle as dry sticks because of my sin. I'm swamped by my bad behavior, collapsed under gunnysacks of guilt. 5The cuts in my flesh stink and grow maggots because I've lived so badly. And now I'm flat on my face feeling sorry for myself morning to night. All my insides are on fire, my body is a wreck. I'm on my last legs; I've had it— my life is a vomit of groans. 9Lord, my longings are sitting in plain sight, my groans an old story to you. My heart's about to break; I'm a burned-out case. Cataracts blind me to God and good; old friends avoid me like the plague. My cousins never visit, my neighbors stab me in the back. My competitors blacken my name, devoutly they pray for my ruin. But I'm deaf and mute to it all, ears shut, mouth shut. I don't hear a word they say, don't speak a word in response. What I do, God , is wait for you, wait for my Lord, my God—you will answer! I wait and pray so they won't laugh me off, won't smugly strut off when I stumble.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

My wounds: The soul being invisible, its distempers are also so; therefore the sacred writers describe them by the distempers of the body. - See the parallel texts on these verses. On reading these and similar passages, say Bp. Lowth, some, who were but little acquainted with the genius of Hebrew poetry, have pretended to enquire into the nature of the disease with which the poet was afflicted; not less absurdly, in my opinion, than if they had perplexed themselves to discover in what river he was plunged, when he complains that "the deep waters had gone over his soul." Psalms 38:7, Psalms 32:3, Isaiah 1:5, Isaiah 1:6, Jeremiah 8:22

Reciprocal: Job 2:8 - took him Job 7:5 - flesh Job 30:18 - By the great Psalms 14:3 - filthy Psalms 109:24 - my flesh Nahum 3:6 - I will cast

Cross-References

Genesis 38:11
So Judah stepped in and told his daughter-in-law Tamar, "Live as a widow at home with your father until my son Shelah grows up." He was worried that Shelah would also end up dead, just like his brothers. So Tamar went to live with her father.
Genesis 38:26
Judah saw they were his. He said, "She's in the right; I'm in the wrong—I wouldn't let her marry my son Shelah." He never slept with her again.
Genesis 46:12
Judah's sons: Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah (Er and Onan had already died in the land of Canaan). The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul.
1 Chronicles 4:21
The sons of Shelah son of Judah: Er the father of Lecah, Laadah the father of Mareshah and the family of linen workers at Beth Ashbea, Jokim, the men of Cozeba, and Joash and Saraph, who ruled in Moab and Jashubi Lehem. (These records are from very old traditions.) They were the potters who lived at Netaim and Gederah, resident potters who worked for the king.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

My wounds stink, [and] are corrupt,.... Meaning his sins, which had wounded him, and for which there is no healing but in a wounded Saviour, and by his stripes we are healed, Isaiah 53:5; where the same word is used as here; Christ's black and blue stripes and wounds, as the word signifies, are the healing of ours, both of sins, and of the effects of them; which, to a sensible sinner, are as nauseous and loathsome as an old wound that is festered and corrupt;

because of my foolishness: as all sin arises from foolishness, which is bound in the hearts of men, and from whence it arises, Mark 7:22; perhaps the psalmist may have respect to his folly with Bathsheba, which had been the occasion of all the distress that is spoken of both before and afterwards.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

My wounds stink - The word rendered “wounds” here means properly the swelling or wales produced by stripes. See the notes at Isaiah 1:6; notes at Isaiah 53:5. The meaning here is, that he was under chastisement for his sin; that the stripes or blows on account of it had not only left a mark and produced a swelling, but that the skin itself had been broken, and that the flesh had become corrupt, and the sore offensive. Many expositors regard this as a mere figurative representation of the sorrow produced by the consciousness of sin; and of the loathsome nature of sin, but it seems to me that the whole connection rather requires us to understand it of bodily suffering, or of disease.

And are corrupt - The word used here - מקק mâqaq - means properly to melt; to pine away; and then, to flow, to run, as sores and ulcers do. The meaning here is, My sores run; to wit, with corrupt matter.

Because of my foolishness - Because of my sin, regarded as folly. Compare the notes at Psalms 14:1. The Scripture idea is that sin is the highest folly. Hence, the psalmist, at the same time that he confesses his sin, acknowledges also its foolishness. The idea of sin and that of folly become so blended together - or they are so entirely synonymous - that the one term may be used for the other.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Psalms 38:5. My wounds stink and are corrupt — Taking this in connection with the rest of the Psalm, I do not see that we can understand the word in any figurative or metaphorical way. I believe they refer to some disease with which he was at this time afflicted; but whether the leprosy, the small pox, or some other disorder that had attacked the whole system, and showed its virulence on different parts of the outer surface, cannot be absolutely determined.

Because of my foolishness. — This may either signify sin as the cause of his present affliction, or it may import an affliction which was the consequence of that foolish levity which prefers the momentary gratification of an irregular passion to health of body and peace of mind.


 
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