³⁰ For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.^[a]

¹⁹ I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.^(A)

Psalm 38

A Penitent Sufferer’s Plea for Healing

A Psalm of David, for the memorial offering.

¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.^[a](A)

²¹ and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, “Thus says the Lord: Because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the commandment that the Lord your God commanded you^{(A) 22} but have come back and have eaten food and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, ‘Eat no food, and drink no water,’ your body shall not come to your ancestral tomb.” ²³ After the man of God^[a] had eaten food and had drunk, they saddled for him a donkey belonging to the prophet who had brought him back. ²⁴ Then as he went away, a lion met him on the road and killed him. His body was thrown in the road, and the donkey stood beside it; the lion also stood beside the body.^(B)

¹⁴ Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord,^[a] the child born to you shall die.”^{(A) 15} Then Nathan went to his house.

Bathsheba’s Child Dies

The Lord struck the child whom Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill.^{(B) 16} David therefore pleaded with God for the child; David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.^{(C) 17} The elders of his house stood beside him urging him to rise from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. ¹⁸ On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, “While the child was still alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us; how then can we tell him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.”