Heal my soul— As rational conjectures, says Dr. Delaney, are oftentimes useful inlets to knowledge, the candid reader will, I hope, be indulgent to mine, in relation to David's distemper, (see the note on the title of the 38th psalm,) which I am far from obtruding as a truth; for, after all, possibly, all his psalms upon this head may be no more than figurative descriptions of the state of his mind, sick with sin; nor is this supposition ill-grounded upon the present verse: And, agreeably to this way of thinking, we find sin figured out to us, in the prophetic style, under the ideas of bruises, and wounds, and putrifying sores, Isaiah 1:6, See on Psalms 38:7. We cannot any where introduce more properly the following judicious observations from Bishop Lowth's 8th Prelection.
"The Hebrew laws," says he, "are very much occupied in discriminating things clean and unclean, in removing and expiating what is foul, polluted, profane; in which ceremonies, as under a veil, the most holy and weighty meanings are couched, as is evident from the thing itself, as well as from many plain and express declarations. Amongst these, certain diseases and infirmities of the body have place; which, however light they may seem to a cursory, appear of great consequence to an attentive reader. It is on this account not to be wondered, that the sacred poets apply these images in expressing the most important matters, when they either lay open the defilement of the human mind, wholly depraved and contaminated; Isaiah 44:6 or Ezekiel 36:17 or lament the miserable, abject, and most contemptible lot of the virgin, the daughter of Zion, spoiled and made bare: Lamentations 1:8-9; Lamentations 1:17; Lamentations 2:2. Images which, considered in themselves, are truly deformed and hateful; if referred to their true origin, and to religion, are devoid neither of weight nor majesty. Of this kind, or at least analogous to this kind, are those which the royal poet (who in his divine poems generally sustains a character far more august than his own) pours forth full of sorrow and the most ardent affections; when he complains, as in Psalms 38 that he is worn down, and wearied out with punishments and sufferings, and entirely depressed with the most grievous burden of sin, to the support whereof human nature is absolutely unequal: In which passages some have enquired under what disease the writer then laboured; not less absurdly, in my judgment, than if they had sought after the situation and name of the river in which he was plunged, when he says that he was overwhelmed with great floods of waters."