Ps. 38.8 (numb and growling)

‘I have / become numb / and felt / terribly congested – I cried / in distress / because of my heart’s / growling.’ Some commentators have seen in this description of ‘numbness’ a type of respite for the psalmist, a lull in the torment of his sickness. I do not agree. The structure of the line as well as its context nowhere indicates that this is somehow positive. Rather, it seems to be simply another ailment in the long list of afflictions; this also applies to his later claim of becoming ‘deaf’ (although there may be slightly more warrant there). The line itself follows ‘numbness’ with ‘terrible congestion’, indicating that his inability to feel is probably related to ‘congestion’, a sense of blockage. Furthermore, the congestion is specifically described as ‘terrible’. Clearly, being ‘numb’ here does not mean respite but a body’s shutting down and withdrawal, something the psalmist finds terrible (and probably terrifying).  As we will see, the sin-sickness that has infected this man is something that withdraws from him every sensory, social and psychological capacity. This ‘withdrawal’ is a form of numbness, a cutting off, a beginning of the land of silence of Sheol. From this constancy of pressure the heart begins to ‘growl’ and the psalmist erupts in ‘cries of distress’.  The fact that the heart does not formulate words but instead ‘growls’ is indicative of what we have seen in his earlier parallelism: his distress is so acute, his pain so intense, that words falter in their ability to give expression. Often, the ability to find the precise word is a form of interior release; it can be pleasurable. Speaking is not merely given expression to the interior; it actually consummates the interior. Here, by contrast, words fail. There is a form of human communication that exists in this ‘growl’ that thwarts any attempt to reduce that communication to formula. Again, this was hinted at in the parallelism before regarding ‘bowing down’/stooping and burning loins/flesh has no soundness. The piling on of descriptions points to the fact that none of them adequately could convey what the psalmist was experiencing. Lastly, it seems interesting that ‘numbness’ and ‘growling’ are seen so closely together: in one we have the lack of feeling, in the other the overflow. What binds them together is the mutual extremity. The psalmist is clearly being pushed to the extremes of human capacity—to the point of numbness and growling. And in both of these (silence and noise) we witness a man ‘beyond the pail’, in a realm that is difficult to fathom because of its deterioration. And again, it was in a body like this that the covenant was ultimately fulfilled…