Psalms 38:7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

With a loathsome disease Hebrew, נקלה, nikleh, with vileness, or with scorching heat. “The disease,” says Poole, “might be some burning fever, breaking forth outwardly in carbuncles, or biles. It is true, this and the other expressions may be taken figuratively; but we should not forsake the literal sense of the words without necessity.” Others, however, are of opinion, that “these are figurative expressions, signifying the excessive misery and extreme wretchedness of the psalmist's condition. And it must be acknowledged that we find the same way of speaking, and almost the same words used in Scripture, by the prophets, for the same purpose. Thus the Lord says to Ezekiel, Ezekiel 21:6, Sigh therefore, with the breaking of thy loins; and with bitterness sigh before their eyes, where the latter clause explains the former. So Isaiah 21:3, exclaims, upon a like occasion, Therefore are my loins filled with pain, &c.; I was bowed down at the hearing of it. Now no man ever imagined that Ezekiel's loins were broken, or that Isaiah had a pain in his back like that of a woman in labour: but every one understands these expressions as only denoting the prophet's great grief and concern. And why should we not conclude that the Prophet David used the like expressions in a like sense; especially as he almost begins this Psalm with bold figurative expressions, and describes his miserable condition by the arrows of God sticking in him, and his hand pressing him sore.” An anonymous writer quoted by Dodd.