What Does Psalm 38:2 Mean?
For your arrows sink into me, and your hand comes down upon me heavily.
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 thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.THE KEY
One Hebrew verb makes the arrows inside you and the hand over you the same motion: both descend.
THE MEANING
The arrows sink into you, and the hand presses down upon you; the verse gives both sensations a single downward force. Your pain is spoken directly to God in the moment you feel it, without being explained away.
THE ROOT
נִחֲתוּ
niḥăṭû
GROWS FROM
נחת
n-ḥ-t
to descend, come down
“sink into me” in this verse is niḥăṭû. Alongside “stick fast” and “presseth me sore,” both Hebrew verbs carry the image of descending. The shared root joins the arrow sinking into you with the hand coming down upon you as one movement.
ALSO GROWS
niḥăṭû: they descended, sank down
נִחֲתוּ
The arrows are felt as coming down into the speaker.
vattinḥat: and it came down, descended
וַתִּנְחַת
The hand repeats the same descent upon the speaker, joining the inward wound to the weight pressing over him.
naḥat zeroʿo: the descent or “lighting down” of his arm
נַחַת זְרוֹעוֹ
Isaiah uses the same root for an arm coming down, echoing the hand’s descent in this verse.
THE PATTERN
Suffering is given direct speech at full force.
To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why do you leave me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my roaring.To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, A Psalm of David. Deliver me, O God, for the waters have come up to my living soul.For we would not have you unaware, brothers, of the pressure that came to us in Asia, that we were weighed down beyond measure, beyond strength, so that we were without a way through, even to live.THE THREAD
The LORD will cause the majesty of his voice to be heard, and will show the lowering of his arm, with the fury of his anger, and the flame of a fire that eats, with scattering, downpour, and hailstones.Isaiah uses נחת (naḥat, “descent”) for the visible coming down of the LORD’s arm. Here, that same descent is felt as arrows entering and a hand pressing; the shared root joins both images in one motion.
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