Disease in the ancient Levant carried absolute social isolation. Men with weeping sores left their homes and walked into the arid hills. A diagnosis of severe skin affliction meant immediate removal from the community. Relatives threw rations from a distance of 20 feet to avoid contagion. The sick sat alone in the heat and waited for their flesh to heal or fail.
Archaeological excavations near Jerusalem reveal isolation practices from 700 b.c. Graves outside the eastern walls show skeletons with severe osteological bone scarring. These burial sites sit 400 feet past the city limits. Ancient Near Eastern medical tablets describe these exact symptoms of festering wounds and crushed bones. Physicians of the era recorded treatments using cedar oil and hyssop to mask the smell of rotting tissue.
The author of Psalm 38 records a specific physical collapse. He describes arrows piercing his flesh and a lack of soundness in his bones. Friends and companions stand far away from the plague. This mirrors the strict quarantine laws enforced in the region. The sufferer becomes a physical landmark of agony on the edge of the desert. He watches three enemies plot while his body breaks down.
Disease strips a man of his allies before it takes his breath.
This isolation turns a physical ailment into a social execution. The infected man looks at the stone walls he cannot enter. He speaks to a God who offers silence in return. He asks him for a swift end to the suffering. The text leaves the man sitting in the dirt with his festering wounds.