Psalms 38:7 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For my loins are filled, &c.— An anonymous writer on the psalms, who differs in opinion from Dr. Delaney, observes, that these words are not to be taken literally, but as figurative expressions, signifying the excessive misery and extreme wretchedness of the Psalmist's condition. We find the same way of speaking, and almost the same words, used in Scripture, for the same purpose, by the prophets. Thus Ezekiel 21:6. Sigh therefore, thou son of man! with the breaking of thy loins; and with bitterness sigh before their eyes: where the latter part of the verse explains the former, meaning the same thing. So Isaiah 21:3 exclaims upon a like occasion, Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman who travaileth; 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 properly; viz. as 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, Psalms 38:2 by the arrows of God sticking in him, and his hand pressing him sore? See also Ezekiel 29:7 which should be, and madest all their loins to shake; by which this seems to have been a sort of proverbial expression, to signify great fear, as well as grief; and so we find Daniel describing the horror which seized Belshazzar, chap. 5: Psalms 38:6, by the joints of his loins being loosed.