Hebrew Word Study – Discouragement – Pug      Pei Vav Gimmel  

Psalms 38:8 “I am feeble and sore broken, I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.”

This appears to be written at a time when David is really getting serious about his relationship with God. He is very aware of his past sins and failings.  He has confessed them, he has sought mercy from God and yet he is still in complete despair. 

He says: I am feeble.  This is the word pug which is in a Niphal participle form.  Traditionally when a word is in a Niphal participial form it becomes reflexive.  I am causing myself to become feeble or to cease activity.   Probably a better understanding of what David is feeling is to render this as I am ready to give up.  Do you ever feel like giving up?  That is rhetorical, of course, we all have reached a point in our lives when we just want to give up.  We’ve wanted to give up on a job, a project, a marriage, or even a friendship.   For many of us, there were times we actually did give up. I gave up writing, teaching, and a few other things I love because things were just not going the way I had hoped or planned.  Many times we give up but often we come back to it once we have had a chance to air out our frustrations.  Anyways, I interpret “I am feeble” as feeling like “just giving up.”  What is really odd is when you are drawing closer to the heart of God and you begin to feel like giving up.  I have been on a search for the heart of God going on fifteen years now and there were many times I came close to giving up. I wasn’t getting anywhere and how did I know if I reached the heart of God or not?  That is an odd thing to feel when you are drawing closer to the heart of God.  

David further states that he is sorely broken.  This is also a Nipal participle. The root word for sore broken is dakah which has the idea of being broken or crushed, it is an emotional crushing. It is the word we would use for being heartbroken. I had a 33-year-old on my bus today who is totally blind. Once she went blind her husband of eight years told her he did not want to be married to a blind woman and left her.  Just what part of for better or for worse did he not get in his marriage vows?  Anyways, poor Abbie said she was heartbroken, left with a small autistic child, blind and broke.  She was pug and dekah.

So, here we have this man David who is drawing closer to the heart of God and the closer he gets the more he is feeling discouraged and heartbroken. This is so intense that he says he roars by reason of the disquietness in his heart.  The words roar and disquietness are sa’ag and naham which both mean to moan, groan or roar.  The first groaning (sa’ag)is really a loud cry of anguish.   The second groaning is one like the sea, it isn’t just an outcry like sa’ag  a loud outburst, but the second is a constant moan, like one wearing down, giving up.

The overall picture here is that as David is drawing closer to the heart of God he is becoming more and more discouraged.  As Paul declared, he was the chief among sinners.  The great British preacher, Charles Spurgeon, looked in a mirror and declared his heart was the worst in all of London. It seems that as we draw closer to the heart of God we begin to see more clearly how unworthy we really are, how useless we are without  Jesus. You would expect to be filled with joy and happiness as you approach the heart of God, but instead, it becomes one of the most challenging times in our Christian experience.  On the positive side, God is stripping us of all our trust in ourselves so that the world can see that our trust is in God alone.  On the negative side, the enemy is using this to wear us down, to bring us to the point where we want to give up.  

There is an old story that Satan was going to go out of business, so he had a garage sale.   At this sale, he was selling all the tools of his trade.   Everything was laid out, each with a price tag.  The demons came and snatched up all the tools, fear, anger, financial problems, health problems, bitterness, selfishness, etc.  At the end of the day Satan had sold off all his tools but one. This was his most valuable tool.  This was the one with a price tag that no demon could afford. Satan looked at this tool and realized that he needed no other tool, he could stay in business with just this one tool. That tool was – discouragement.

This is what he struck David with in Psalms 38.  This is what he will strike you and me with as we grew closer to the heart of God.   Do you ever notice that when you make the decision to go all the way with God, to really seek and search for Him with all your heart, you begin to face obstacles that seem to overwhelm you? You begin to feel like a total failure, that you have sinned too much to be of any use to God.  This is the way David felt, he didn’t feel as if God could really use him, he was feeling totally discouraged, yet he still reached out to God.  

The last thing the enemy wants is for you to reach out and touch the heart of God.  He will throw everything he has at you including his prized possession – discouragement.  Yet, as we are stripped of all our trust in ourselves, we can reach out to God like David and realize what the Apostle Paul declared in II Corinthians 4:7: “For we have this treasure (that is the life of Jesus Christ) in earthen vessels (our bodies) that the surpassing greatness may be of God and not of ourselves. It is, for this reason, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ so that life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies.” 

Thus, we can look the enemy right in the eye and say: “You’re right, on my own I am a dud.  But with the blood of Jesus Christ, I can be a useful vessel.”

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