Please Support the Bible Translation Work of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

$5.00

Psalm 6:1 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
¹ Jehovah, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.

Jehovah, rebuke me not in your anger. As if God was rebuking him by the affliction that he was bringing upon him. This is the point on which the attention of the psalmist is now fixed. He had been apparently contemplating his afflictions and inquiring into their cause, and he was led to the conclusion that it might be for his sins and that his trials were to be interpreted as proof that God was angry with him. He speaks, therefore, of God as visiting him in his anger and in his hot displeasure and pleads with him that he would not thus rebuke and chasten him. The word rebuke here, like the word rendered chasten, properly refers to the reproof of an offender by words but may also be used to denote the reproof which God administers by his providential dealings when he brings judgment upon anyone for his sins. This is the meaning here. The psalmist did not apprehend that God would openly reprove him for his sins, but he regarded his dealings with him as such a reproof, and he pleads that the tokens of the reproof might be taken away. The whole language is that which indicates a connection between suffering and sin; the feeling that we have when we are afflicted that it must be on account of our sins.

Nor discipline me. A word denoting substantially the same thing; is used here in the sense of punishing.

In your wrath. Literally, in your heat. We speak of anger or wrath as burning or consuming. Comp. Gen. 39:19; Num. 11:33; Deut. 11:17; Ps. 106:40; Job 19:11; 32:2, 3; Ps. 2:12.

By Albert Barnes and Edward D. Andrews