Introduction
A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance.
Among the Penitential Psalms this is the third, (see on Psalms 6:0,) and is unsurpassed in the depth and tenderness of its spirit, and the vivid portraiture of the author’s sufferings. David is now prostrate with a malignant and loathsome disease; and, as his life is imperilled, his enemies are emboldened to circulate slanders, and secretly devise measures against him. Closely they watch the progress of his malady, and cautiously advance their secret plots. His affliction, meanwhile, is received by him as a judgment of God for his sins, and he meekly submits. His sins did not lie against his enemies, and they had no personal cause for their enmity. In relation to them he was innocent, but in relation to God he had sinned, and his sufferings were a public expression of the divine displeasure against sin, for the warning of others as well as of David himself against the recurrence of such offences, though personally he now stood atoned and forgiven. We must, therefore, assign the psalm to the period subsequent to David’s fall, after his forgiveness, and during the series of divine judgments which were visited upon his person, his house, and his kingdom. See 2 Samuel 12:10-14.Verses 1-8 are mainly a description of the physical force and symptoms of his complaint; Psalms 38:9-15 relate chiefly to the effect produced on friends and enemies by his sickness, and of his own conduct in relation to the latter; Psalms 38:16-22 are a profession of trust in God, of penitence, with glances at his enemies, concluding with earnest prayer.
TITLE:
To bring to remembrance The same occurs in title of Psalms 70:0, which see. The word is here to be taken in its memorialistic or historical sense, of to cause to remember; that is, to record, in order to call to mind, or to preserve the memory of past events, showing that it is a real experience of the author, and not an ideal picture. The same word is used of the office of a public historiographer, whose duty it is to record events, that their memorial should not perish, (2 Samuel 20:24; Isaiah 36:3; Isaiah 36:22,) or of a chronicler of the sacred archives. 1 Chronicles 16:4
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