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Psalm 38:5

My wounds are loathsome and corrupt because of my foolishness.

3There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation, neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin.
4For my iniquities have gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.
5My wounds are loathsome and corrupt because of my foolishness.
6I am in pain and bowed down greatly. I go mourning all day long.
7For my waist is filled with burning. There is no soundness in my flesh.
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← Psalm 38:4Psalm 38:6 →
Notice

The speaker’s corrupt wounds make his confession hard to soften, as he links the suffering of his body to his own foolishness.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

What is hardest for you to read in the speaker’s description of his wounds?

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How does the phrase “because of my foolishness” shape your reading of this lament?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

8 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Psalm 14:3They have all gone aside. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, no, not one.Both use the word “corrupt,” though Psalm 14 describes people who have gone aside, while Psalm 38 describes the speaker’s wounds.
Isaiah 1:5–6Why should you be beaten more, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.Both passages connect wrongdoing with bodily suffering, using wounds or sickness to describe the severity of the trouble.
Job 2:8He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.Both portray bodily misery in concrete terms: corrupt wounds in the psalm, scraping and ashes in Job.
Jeremiah 8:22Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then isn’t the health of the daughter of my people recovered?Both describe an unresolved bodily affliction, though Jeremiah asks about healing while the psalm names wounds and foolishness.
Psalm 69:5God, you know my foolishness. My sins aren’t hidden from you.Both speakers acknowledge their own foolishness, with Psalm 69 stating that God knows it and sees their sins.
Job 30:18My garment is disfigured by great force. It binds me about as the collar of my tunic.Both describe distress in physical terms, though Job speaks of a binding garment rather than corrupt wounds.
Psalm 38:7For my waist is filled with burning. There is no soundness in my flesh.Both describe the same speaker’s bodily suffering, moving from corrupt wounds to burning and a lack of soundness.
Psalm 32:3When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.Both speakers describe bodily deterioration, linking it with foolishness in Psalm 38 and keeping silence in Psalm 32.
Where this verse fits

Guilt and confession. illness or diagnosis.

What the Bible says about guilt →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Read Psalm 38:3–7 and mark what the speaker confesses

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Encouragement

You do not have to read every illness as proof of sin. Here, the speaker brings his own foolishness and bodily suffering into his prayer to God.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 38:5. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

Keep goingPsalm 38 · the whole chapter with its connection mapPsalms · every chapterBuild a reading plan through Psalms

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).