When I kept silence - The psalmist now proceeds to state his condition of mind before he himself found this peace, or before he had this evidence of pardon; the state in which he felt deeply that he was a sinner, yet was unwilling to confess his sin, and attempted to conceal it in his own heart. This he refers to by the expression, "When I kept silence;" that is, before I confessed my sin, or before I made mention of it to God. The condition of mind was evidently this: he had committed sin, but he endeavored to hide it in his own mind; he was unwilling to make confession of it, and to implore pardon. He hoped, probably, that the conviction of sin would die away; or that his trouble would cease of itself; or that time would relieve him; or that employment - occupying himself in the affairs of the world - would soothe the anguish of his spirit, and render it unnecessary for him to make a humiliating confession of his guilt. He thus describes a state of mind which is very common in the case of sinners. They know that they are sinners, but they are unwilling to make confession of their guilt. They attempt to conceal it. They put off, or try to remove far away, the whole subject. They endeavor to divert their minds, and to turn their thoughts from a subject so painful as the idea of guilt - by occupation, or by amusement, or even by plunging into scenes of dissipation. Sometimes, often in fact, they are successful in this; but, sometimes, as in the case of the psalmist, the trouble at the remembrance of sins becomes deeper and deeper, destroying their rest, and wasting their strength, until they make humble confession, and "then" the mind finds rest.

My bones waxed old - My strength failed; my strength was exhausted; it seemed as if the decrepitude of age was coming upon me. The word here used, and rendered "waxed old," would properly denote "decay," or the wearing out of the strength by slow decay. All have witnessed the prostrating effect of excessive grief.

Through my roaring - My cries of anguish and distress. See the notes at Psalm 22:1. The meaning here is, that his sorrow was so great as to lead to loud and passionate cries; and this well describes the condition of a mind under deep trouble at the remembrance of sin and the apprehension of the wrath of God.

All the day long - Continually; without intermission.

When I kept silence - Before I humbled myself, and confessed my sin, my soul was under the deepest horror. "I roared all the day long;" and felt the hand of God heavy upon my soul.

When I kept silence,.... Was unthoughtful of sin, unconcerned about it, and made no acknowledgment and confession of it to God, being quite senseless and stupid; the Targum adds, "from the words of the law"; which seems to point at sin as the cause of what follows;

my bones waxed old; through my roaring all the day long; not under a sense of sin, but under some severe affliction, and through impatience in it; not considering that sin lay at the bottom, and was the occasion of it; and such was the violence of the disorder, and his uneasiness under it, that his strength was dried up by it, and his bones stuck out as they do in aged persons, whose flesh is wasted away from them; see Psalm 102:3.

3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.

4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.

5 I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

David now gives us his own experience; no instructor is so efficient as one who testifies to what he has personally known and felt. He writes well who like the spider spills his matter out of his own bowels.

Psalm 32:3

"When I kept silence." When through neglect I failed to confess, or through despair dared not to do so, "my bones," those solid pillars of my frame, the strongest portions of my bodily constitution, "waxed old," began to decay with weakness, for my grief was so intense as to sap my health and destroy my vital energy. What a killing thing is sin! It is a pestilent disease! A fire in the bones! While we smother our sin it rages within, and like a gathering wound swells horribly and torments terribly. "Through my roaring all the day long." He was silent as to confession, but not as to sorrow. Horror at his great guilt, drove David to incessant laments, until his voice was no longer like the articulate speech of man, but so full of sighing and groaning, that it resembled the hoarse roaring of a wounded beast. None know the pangs of conviction but those who have endured them. The rack, the wheel, the flaming fagot are ease compared with the Tophet which a guilty conscience kindles within the breast: better suffer all the diseases which flesh is heir to, than lie under the crushing sense of the wrath of almighty God. The Spanish inquisition with all its tortures was nothing to the inquest which conscience holds within the heart.

Psalm 32:4

"For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me." God's finger can crush us - what must his hand be, and that pressing heavily and continuously! Under terrors of conscience, men have little rest by night, for the grim thoughts of the day dog them to their chambers and haunt their dreams, or else they lie awake in a cold sweat of dread. God's hand is very helpful when it uplifts, but it is awful when it presses down: better a world on the shoulder, like Atlas, than God's hand on the heart, like David. "My moisture is turned into the drought of summer." The sap of his soul was dried, and the body through sympathy appeared to be bereft of its needful fluids. The oil was almost gone from the lamp of life, and the flame flickered as though it would soon expire. Unconfessed transgression, like a fierce poison, dried up the fountain of the man's strength, and made him like a tree blasted by the lightning, or a plant withered by the scorching heat of a tropical sun. Alas! for a poor soul when it has learned its sin but forgets its Saviour, it goes hard with it indeed. "Selah." It was time to change the tune, for the notes are very low in the scale, and with such hard usage, the strings of the harp are out of order: the next verse will surely be set to another key, or will rehearse a more joyful subject.

Psalm 32:5

"I acknowledged my sin unto thee." After long lingering, the broken heart bethought itself of what it ought to have done at the first, and laid bare its bosom before the Lord. The lancet must be let into the gathering ulcer before relief can be afforded. The least thing we can do, if we would be pardoned, is to acknowledge our fault; if we are too proud for this we doubly deserve punishment. "And mine iniquity have I not hid." We must confess the guilt as well as the fact of sin. It is useless to conceal it, for it is well known to God; it is beneficial to us to own it, for a full confession softens and humbles the heart. We must as far as possible unveil the secrets of the soul, dig up the hidden treasure of Achan, and by weight and measure bring out our sins. "I said." This was his fixed resolution. "I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord." Not to my fellow men or to the high priest, but unto Jehovah; even in those days of symbol the faithful looked to God alone for deliverance from sin's intolerable load, much more now, when types and shadows have vanished at the appearance of the dawn. When the soul determines to lay low and plead guilty, absolution is near at hand; hence we read, "And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." Not only was the sin itself pardoned, but the iniquity of it; the virus of its guilt was put away, and that at once, so soon as the acknowledgment was made. God's pardons are deep and thorough' the knife of mercy cuts at the roots of the ill weed of sin. "Selah." Another pause is needed, for the matter is not such as may be hurried over:

"Pause, my soul, adore and wonder,

Ask, O why such love to me?

Grace has put me in the number

Of the Saviour's family.

continued...

For, as his own experience has taught the poet, he who does not in confession pour out all his corruption before God, only tortures himself until he unburdens himself of his secret curse. Since Psalm 32:3 by itself cannot be regarded as the reason for the proposition just laid down, כּי signifies either "because, quod" (e.g., Proverbs 22:22) or "when, quum" (Judges 16:16; Hosea 11:10. The שׁאגה was an outburst of the tortures which his accusing conscience prepared for him. The more he strove against confessing, the louder did conscience speak; and while it was not in his power to silence this inward voice, in which the wrath of God found utterance, he cried the whole day, viz., for help; but while his heart was still unbroken, he cried yet received no answer. He cried all day long, for God's punishing right hand (Psalm 38:3; Psalm 39:11) lay heavey upon him day and night; the feeling of divine wrath left him no rest, cf. Job 33:14. A fire burned within him which threatened completely to devour him. The expression is בּחרבני (like בעשׂן in Psalm 37:20; Psalm 102:4), without כ, inasmuch as the fears which burn fiercely within him even to his heart and, as it were, scorch him up, he directly calls the droughts of summer. The בּ is the Beth of the state or condition, in connection with which the change, i.e., degeneration (Job 20:14), took place; for mutare in aliquid is expressed by הפך ל. The ל (which Saadia and others have mistaken) in לשׁדּי is part of the root; לשׁד (from לשׁד, Arab. lsd, to suck), inflected after the analogy of גּמל and the like, signifies succus. In the summer-heat of anxiety his vital moisture underwent a change: it burned and dried up. Here the music becomes louder and does its part in depicting these torments of the awakened conscience in connection with a heart that still remains unbroken. In spite of this διάψαλμα, however, the historical connection still retains sufficient influence to give אודיעך the force of the imperfect (cf. Psalm 30:9): "I made known my sin and my guilt did I not cover up (כּסּה used here as in Proverbs 27:13; Job 31:33); I made the resolve: I will confess my transgressions to the Lord (הודה equals חתודּה, Nehemiah 1:6; Nehemiah 9:2; elsewhere construed with the accusative, vid., Proverbs 28:13) - then Thou forgavest," etc. Hupfeld is inclined to place אמרתי before חטאתי אודיעך, by which אודיעך and אודה would become futures; but ועוני לא כסיתי sounds like an assertion of a fact, not the statement of an intention, and ואתה נשׂאת is the natural continuation of the אמרתי which immediately precedes. The form ואתה נשׂאת is designedly used instead of ותּשּׂא. Simultaneously with his confession of sin, made fide supplice, came also the absolution: then Thou forgavest the guilt (עון, misdeed, as a deed and also as a matter of fact, i.e., guilt contracted, and penance or punishment, cf. Lamentations 4:6; Zechariah 14:19) of my sin. Vox nondum est in ore, says Augustine, et vulnus sanatur in corde. The סלה here is the antithesis of the former one. There we have a shrill lament over the sinner who tortures himself in vain, here the clear tones of joy at the blessed experience of one who pours forth his soul to God - a musical Yea and Amen to the great truth of justifying grace.

When I kept {c} silence, my bones waxed old through my {d} roaring all the day long.

(c) Between hope and despair.

(d) Was not eased by silence nor crying, signifying that before the sinner is reconciled to God, he feels a perpetual torment.

32:3 Silence - From a full and open confession of my sins. Old - My spirit failed, and the strength of my body decayed. Roaring - Because of the continual horrors of my conscience, and sense of God's wrath.

3, 4. A vivid description of felt, but unacknowledged, sin.

When-literally, "for," as in Ps 32:4.

32:3-7 It is very difficult to bring sinful man humbly to accept free mercy, with a full confession of his sins and self-condemnation. But the true and only way to peace of conscience, is, to confess our sins, that they may be forgiven; to declare them that we may be justified. Although repentance and confession do not merit the pardon of transgression, they are needful to the real enjoyment of forgiving mercy. And what tongue can tell the happiness of that hour, when the soul, oppressed by sin, is enabled freely to pour forth its sorrows before God, and to take hold of his covenanted mercy in Christ Jesus! Those that would speed in prayer, must seek the Lord, when, by his providence, he calls them to seek him, and, by his Spirit, stirs them up to seek him. In a time of finding, when the heart is softened with grief, and burdened with guilt; when all human refuge fails; when no rest can be found to the troubled mind, then it is that God applies the healing balm by his Spirit.