Texts in Conversation
Psalm 38 shares Ugaritic language for illness as a god's hand, making bodily suffering a sign of divine anger that calls for mercy.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 2.10:12
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
Message of Iwrdr. To Pilsiya say: May it be well with you. To Trgds and to Kalbiya: I have heard of the defeat. They are defeated. Now if they have not been defeated, then send to me. And the hand of the gods here is like death, very strong. If they have been overcome, your answer […] And whatever word you hear there, put in a letter to me.
Psalm 38:2
Hebrew Bible
1 A psalm of David, written to get God’s attention. O Lord, do not continue to rebuke me in your anger. Do not continue to punish me in your raging fury. 2 For your arrows pierce me, and your hand presses me down. 3 My whole body is sick because of your judgment; I am deprived of health because of my sin. 4 For my sins overwhelm me; like a heavy load, they are too much for me to bear. 5 My wounds are infected and starting to smell, because of my foolish sins. 6 I am dazed and completely humiliated; all day long I walk around mourning. 7 For I am overcome with shame, and my whole body is sick. 8 I am numb with pain and severely battered; I groan loudly because of the anxiety I feel. 9 O Lord, you understand my heart’s desire; my groaning is not hidden from you.
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Notes and References
“... 162 To list a few, Hebrew יד יהוה or the like in Exod 9:3; 1 Sam 6:9; Ps 38:3. For Ugaritic “yd ỉlm,” e.g., KTU
2.10:11–12; see Dennis Pardee, “As Strong as Death,” in in Love & Death in the Ancient Near East: Essays in
Honor of Marvin H. Pope, eds. John H. Marks and Robert M. Good (Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987), 65–69,
esp. 67–68. For Akkadian “qāt DN” or the like, see KAR 44:r10 with Cynthia Jean, La Magie Néo-assyrienne En
Contexte: Recherches Sur le métier d’exorciste et le Concept d’āšipūtu, SAAS 17 (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text
Corpus Project, 2006), 70; Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi I:9, 11 and III:1 in Oshima, Babylonian Poems, 78–79, 94–95, 175;
and many diagnostic cases in Scurlock and Andersen, Diagnoses, 429–528. Cf. J. V. Kinnier Wilson, “Medicine in
the land and times of the Old Testament,” in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays: Papers
Read at the International Symposium for Biblical Studies, Tokyo, 5–7 December 1979, ed. Tomoo Ishida (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1982), 337–365, esp. 349, 349n36; van der Toorn, Sin and Sanction, 78, 199n302, 199n304;
Magdalene, On the Scales, 17. ...”
Bae, Sun Bok
Ethics and Morality in the Priestly Law and Narrative
(p. 297) The University of Chicago, 2021
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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