1). The Psalmist Describes the Chastening that He is Experiencing and Acknowledges the Heinousness of His Sin (Psalms 38:1-8).
He commences with a prayer that, while God may rebuke and chasten him as he deserves, He will not do it so much in anger as in grieved love (Psalms 38:1). He cannot bear the thought that God could be wholly at odds with him. And he then goes on to describe the experience that he is going through, the depths of his spiritual anguish (Psalms 38:2), his deep sense of sin (Psalms 38:3-4), and the consequent spiritual chastening which he is enduring (Psalms 38:5-8), because of what he has done. It is clear that he is going through a period of deep conviction of sin.
Whether he was actually physical experiencing fever and illness, or was simply describing his spiritual darkness of spirit in similar terms is debatable. But either way it was making him search out his heart before God. He was experiencing the chastening of God for the good of his soul (Hebrews 12:3-11).
‘O YHWH, rebuke me not in your wrath,
Nor chasten me in your hot displeasure.
For your arrows stick fast in me,
And your hand presses me sore.
Initially his prayer is to his covenant God, the One Whom he knows watches over him and cares for him. But he does not pray on the basis of a cosy relationship, for he knows that he has sinned, and sinned deeply. He knows that he must thus endure God's displeasure. He does, however, know that he does it to One Who will welcome his repentance, and has the remedy for his sin. Chastening may be his lot, but he does not want it to turn out to be condemnation.
So as one who is enduring the hand of God pressing heavily on him, and as one who is aware of God's arrows being fired at him, and ‘piercing his body', an apt picture of the ways in which God brings home conviction of sin, he yet prays that God will deal with him in mercy and chastening rather than in wrath. Acknowledging fully that he is receiving his just deserts, he does not want to feel that God is dealing with him only in judgment. He accepts God's rebukes, and God's manifestation of displeasure, as just, but he wants to be able to see them in terms of the chastening of a stern Father, rather than as evidence that he is cut off from God's mercy. Let YHWH then remember that He is his God, and not treat him as one for whom there is no forgiveness. Let Him rather have compassion on him in his failure.
There is no soundness in my flesh,
Because of your indignation,
Nor is there any health in my bones,
Because of my sin.
For my iniquities are gone over my head,
As a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.'
He describes the state in which he finds himself as God's chastening strikes home. His chastening may have been spiritual chastening which is being described here in vivid pictorial language, or it may well have included physical illness as one of God's means of chastening (1 Corinthians 11:30), but either way he is finding it difficult to cope with, not because of the fact of the spiritual pressure or the illness, but because of the deep underlying sense of the sin that was responsible for it. And this is because he is aware of God's indignation against his sin, and feels totally corrupt. He feels as though his flesh is rotten, and that he has no vestige of life within him, no ‘life in his bones'. (The bones of a man were often seen as representing his inner man). He feels that he is ‘dead in his sin'. Indeed he feels that his iniquities are so heavy that they are weighing him down, and that they are so many that they are overwhelming him. They are flowing over his head as though he were drowning in a river of them. For the truth is that he has seen himself as he really is in God's sight.
Thus in Paul's words he could say, ‘in me, that is in my flesh, there is no good thing, for to will is present with me, but how to do what is good I cannot discover' (Romans 7:18). And he really meant it. That is why he feels totally lost and unworthy, even though he knows in his heart that a merciful God will offer him hope.
Note the two contrasts, ‘because of Your indignation --- because of my sin'. Both are bringing home to him the poverty of his spiritual condition, something which he now describes in more detail.