What Does Psalm 38:5 Mean?
My welts stink and rot, because of my folly.
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
My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.THE KEY
The verse refuses to separate a wound’s visible decay from the foolishness the speaker names as its cause.
THE MEANING
The verse holds your injury and your own foolishness together: the wounds are real, and the speaker names folly as part of why they stink and decay. Responsibility does not make the wound less real; the line lets both facts remain visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that admitting your part in a wound requires pretending that you are not hurt.
THE ROOT
נָמַקּוּ
nāmaqqū
GROWS FROM
מָקַק
To melt away, dissolve, or decay.
“rot” in this verse is nāmaqqū. The word translated “corrupt” carries the image of something losing its substance and melting away. Repeated in the verse, it makes the wounds’ decay feel like an ongoing undoing, not just a bad smell.
ALSO GROWS
maqaq: To melt away or decay.
מָקַק
The root form shows that corruption here includes a loss of firmness and substance.
yimmāq: Will melt away or be consumed (Zechariah 14:12).
יִמַּק
The same root describes flesh consuming away, giving this decay a bodily force.
wenāmaqqū: And they will be dissolved (Isaiah 34:4).
וְנָמַקּוּ
The same verb describes the heavens’ host dissolving, showing how fully the root can express things coming apart.
אִוַּלְתִּי
ʾiwwaltî
GROWS FROM
אול
Folly or foolishness; a failure of sound judgment.
The Hebrew says “my foolishness,” placing folly alongside the wounds as part of their cause. Its related words name both folly and the fool, so the language joins a way of thinking to the person living from it.
ALSO GROWS
ʾĕwîl: A fool, one characterized by folly.
אֱוִיל
The related word makes folly more than an isolated mistake; it can describe a way of being.
ʾiwwelet: Folly or foolishness.
אִוֶּלֶת
This noun shares the seed of the speaker’s “my foolishness,” tying the personal admission to the broader word for folly.
THE PATTERN
What takes root within can become visible as bodily harm and decay.
From the sole of the foot to the head there is no unbroken place in it, but wounds, welts, and fresh blows. They have not been closed, nor bound up, nor softened with oil.A healing heart is the life of the flesh, but envy is the rot of the bones.Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.THE THREAD
All the host of heaven wastes away, and the heavens are rolled up like a scroll. All their host withers, as a leaf falls from the vine, as a fig drops from the fig tree.The Hebrew root translated “are corrupt” here appears as “shall be dissolved” in Isaiah. In both verses, it describes something losing its substance and coming apart.
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