For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.
Parallel translations
- WEB For your arrows have pierced me, your hand presses hard on me.
- BSB For Your arrows have pierced me deeply, and Your hand has pressed down on me.
- NKJV For Your arrows pierce me deeply, And Your hand presses me down.
- NASB For Your arrows have sunk deep into me, And Your hand has pressed down on me.
- NLT Your arrows have struck deep, and your blows are crushing me.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
David feels God's arrows piercing him and His hand pressing hard. He experiences his suffering as a heavy weight of divine displeasure.
Overview
Using vivid imagery, David describes his affliction as God's arrows sunk into him and God's hand bearing down. He connects his physical and spiritual distress to his sin and God's chastening. This honest acknowledgment of God's heavy hand drives him to repentance and mercy, the very path the gospel opens, for the crushing weight of sin was ultimately laid on Christ (Isaiah 53:5).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Job 6:4For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.
- Ps 32:4For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
- Deut 2:15For indeed the hand of the LORD was against them, to destroy them from among the host, until they were consumed.
- Lam 3:12He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
- 1 Sam 5:6But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.
- Ps 64:7But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded.
- Ps 39:10–11Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand.
- Ruth 1:13Would ye tarry for them till they were grown? would ye stay for them from having husbands? nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the LORD is gone out against me.
- 1 Sam 6:9And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to Bethshemesh, then he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote us: it was a chance that happened to us.
- 1 Sam 5:11So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to his own place, that it slay us not, and our people: for there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there.
- Ps 21:12Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them.
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 38:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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