What Does Psalm 38:18 Mean?
For I set forth my crookedness; I am anxious over my falling short.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.THE KEY
To declare what is crooked is to set it before you, where it can no longer stay unnamed.
THE MEANING
Your crookedness can be spoken into the open, and your missing can be met with grief rather than concealment. The verse holds naming and distress together without making either one disappear. What you name is no longer only an unspoken burden within you.
THE ROOT
אַגִּיד
ʾaggid
GROWS FROM
נגד
נָגַד (nagad): to tell, announce, or make known; this family also carries the sense of what is before or in front.
“set forth” in this verse is ʾaggid. The verb belongs to a family that can also mean what stands before you: declaring brings what is hidden into view. The speaker’s words do not erase the crookedness; they make it visible.
ALSO GROWS
neged: Before, opposite, or in front of.
נֶגֶד
This branch gives declaration a spatial edge: what is named is brought before awareness.
nagid: Leader or prince; one who stands at the front.
נָגִיד
This branch keeps the root’s sense of coming to the front, echoing how the speaker brings the hidden matter forward.
אֶדְאַג
ʾedʾag
GROWS FROM
דאג
דָּאַג (daʾag): to worry, be anxious, or feel concern.
“am anxious over” in this verse is ʾedʾag. The Hebrew word translated sorry comes from a root of anxious concern. The speaker’s sorrow carries the strain of being troubled by what is missing, not detached regret.
ALSO GROWS
daʾag: To worry or be anxious.
דָּאַג
This verb is the root in the verse’s expression of sorrow, showing its note of distress.
deʾagah: Anxiety or worry.
דְּאָגָה
This noun makes the root’s emotional force explicit: the speaker is troubled by the missing.
חַטָּאתִי
ḥaṭṭaʾti
GROWS FROM
חטא
חָטָא (ḥaṭaʾ): to miss or go wrong.
“falling short” in this verse is ḥaṭṭaʾti. This root keeps the image of a miss intact, pointing to a deviation rather than an abstract label. Here the speaker names that missing aloud and feels its seriousness.
ALSO GROWS
ḥeṭʾ: A missing, fault, or offense.
חֵטְא
This noun names the same kind of missing that the speaker says is theirs.
ḥaṭṭaʾt: Missing or sin; in some contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
This form shows the root’s connection between naming the missing and what is brought in response to it.
THE PATTERN
Naming what is missing brings it into the open, where it can be faced and released rather than concealed.
I make my falling short known to you, and my crookedness I do not cover. I say, I will speak my rebellion into the open before the LORD, and you release the crookedness of my falling short. Selah.Whoever covers his rebellions shall not prosper, but whoever speaks them into the open and lets them go shall be shown compassion.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.The Hebrew מַגִּיד (magid, declaring or showing) comes from נגד (nagad, to declare or make known), with the root’s nun assimilated in that form. The same root underlies אַגִּיד (ʾaggid, I will declare) here: the heavens’ testimony and the speaker’s confession both bring what is hidden into view.
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