Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 42:10
[As] with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where [is] thy God?
10. My bones are smitten asunder with mine adversaries’ reproaches,
While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
Lit. with crushing in my bones do mine adversaries reproach me. They stab him to the heart with their taunts. ‘The bones,’ in the language of Hebrew poetry, denote the whole physical organism of the living man, as being the framework of it. They are the seat of pain; and mental torture affects the body. Cp. Psa 6:2 (note); Lam 3:4; Isa 38:13.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
As with a sword in my bones – Margin, killing. The treatment which I receive in their reproaches is like death. The word rendered sword – retsach – means properly killing, slaying, breaking in pieces, crushing. It occurs only here and in Eze 21:22, where it is rendered slaughter. The Septuagint renders it, In the bruising of my bones they reproach me. The Vulgate, While they break my bones they reproach me. Luther, It is as death in my bones, that my enemies reproach me. The idea in the Hebrew is, that their reproaches were like breaking or crushing his very bones. The idea of the sword is not in the original.
Mine enemies reproach me – That is, as one forsaken of God, and as suffering justly under his displeasure. Their argument was, that if he was truly the friend of God, he would not leave him thus; that the fact of his being thus abandoned proved that he was not a friend of God.
While they say daily unto me – They say this constantly. I am compelled to hear it every day.
Where is thy God? – See the notes at Psa 42:3.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 42:10
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me: while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
The sword of the wicked
I. The carriage, disposition and expression of others to David.
1. They were his enemies. Gods children will never want such.
2. They reproached him. Their tongues were tipped from hell, and they did but utter that which was in their hearts. But such reproach is grievous. See Gal 4:1-31., how Ishmael persecuted Isaac.
3. The specialty of their reproach was, They say unto me, Where is thy God? They touch him in his religion. They did not deny that there was any God, but they upbraid him with his singularity, Where is thy God? And this is an ordinary reproach to be east at a good man in trouble. They seek to shake his faith. So did Satan try our Lord (Mat 4:3).
4. And they say out their reproach to his face. They are that impudent. Malice is so, and will always be so.
5. And they say it daily. They are unwearied: their malice is fed with a spring; it never wants for words.
6. And that which they say is–Where is now thy God? God does at times hide Himself (Isa 45:15; Mat 27:46). God was never nearer Christ in all His life than then, and yet He thus cries out. But our life is hid with Christ in God (Col 3:3). As in winter the life of a tree is hid in its roots. But God was not gone from David. God was never nearer Moses than when he was sprawling upon the water in that ark they had made for him (Exo 2:8). David might have said to them, Where are your eyes? For God was not only in heaven, but in his soul.
II. How did this reproach affect David? As with a sword in my bones. Now, this was so
1. Because it tended to the reproach of God. It disparaged God, and so touched David, who loved God.
2. And it touched upon religion itself. As if it were vain to serve God. It was a base thought to think that God would do no good to them that serve Him. Even the devil does that.
3. This reproach was for the damping of the spirits of all good men. Words affect strangely; they have a strange force with men, especially in such as are weak (Num 13:32).
III. Conclusion. To make some use of all this–how does hearing God reproached affect us? Is it as a sword in our bones? It should be. That which hath no grief when there is cause of grief is to be accounted but as dead flesh. When Gods enemies persecute His people we ought to be stirred. Paul (Act 13:10). And we may learn here how to enlarge the commandments. The swords spoken of here were but words. He is a murderer in Gods esteem that wounds another with his tongue (Rom 3:13; Pro 12:18). (R. Sibbes.)
Where is thy God? How God is known
During the prevalence of the disease known as the Black Death, in the fourteenth century, the people in some of the European cities, attributing the disorder to poison secretly disseminated by Jews, furiously murdered these Israelites, it is said, by thousands, and then built Christian churches and church belfries out of the houses and estates of the slaughtered victims. See, too, the atrocities of the Inquisition, who tormented mankind in the name of God. Also the malignity of the Jews in Joh 9:1-41. toward the blind man cured by our Lord. These and other such facts move two questions–What is our knowledge of God? and, What has such knowledge to do with personal character? We speak of God as if there were a common understanding about Him, which is far from being the case. There are as many impressions of God as there are persons, and no uniformity will be attained by any attempts at definitions, for all these will be modified by our own individuality. Still we are told in Scripture that we ought to know God, and that the people that know Him shall be strong. But our apprehensions of Gods character depends, and was meant to depend, very largely on conditions for which we are ourselves responsible. The text implies this. The mere idea of God–however derived–may be said to be natural, but the conception of the Divine character is compounded of many elements. Christians deem the grand essentials of that character to be wisdom, power, goodness. Find these three in perfect degree and balance in a living person, and He will be the Christians God–All-wise, Almighty, All-good. But we can only realize these as we possess them in ourselves. If we have no goodness in us we cannot understand goodness. In the measure that we receive Gods Spirit shall we know God, and so only. Slavish peoples crouch before a despotic deity. Given the character of the people, and you may know what their gods will be. As to character, God is what we look to as the best goodness embodied in an unseen person. Even Revelation, in all its many and varied forms, its combined voices and cross lights, will not produce uniformity of conception, for that must depend upon what our minds are. We must long to be better men would we know how good God is. (Bishop Huntington.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
In my bones, or in my body, the bones being oft put for the body, whereof they are a very considerable part. Or, as a sword, which pierceth and cutteth my flesh even to the bones, and cutteth or breaketh the very bones also. So painful and vexatious are their reproaches.
Where is thy God? of which See Poole “Psa 42:3“.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
[As] with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me,…. The reproaches of his enemies were grievous and cutting to him, as if a sword pierced through the marrow in his bones, which, being very sensitive, gives exquisite pain. There is a various reading here: some copies, as Vatablus observes, read , “in”, or with, and others , “as”, which seems to be the truest; and our translators supply “as”, to make the sense, though they read “with”; but some n only read “as”; and the sense is, the reproaches cast upon the psalmist were as a sword cutting and killing; and these reproaches were as follow;
while they say daily unto me, where [is] thy God?
[See comments on Ps 42:3].
n , Symmachus in Drusius; “ut occisio”, Pagninus, Amama; so Aben Ezra interprets it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
10 It is as a slaughter in my bones. This verse is somewhat involved in point of expression; but as to the meaning of it there is no obscurity. David here affirms that the grief which he experienced from the reproaches of his enemies, wounded him in no degree less than if they had pierced through his bones. The word ברצה , beretsach, signifies killing; and, therefore, I have retained this idea in the translation of it. And yet I do not condemn the opinion of those who render it a slaughtering sword. (124) There is here a difference as to the reading, arising from the great similarity which there is between the two letters ב , beth, and כ , caph, the mark of similitude. As the letter ב beth, is often superfluous, I would rather be disposed, in a doubtful matter like this, to omit it altogether. But as I have said, the sense is perfectly plain, except that interpreters do not seem to take this sufficiently into their consideration, that by the terms my bones, the bitterness of grief is referred to; for we feel much more acutely any injury which is done to the bones, than if a sword should pierce the bowels, or the other parts of the body which are soft and yielding. Nor should the children of God regard this similitude as hyperbolical; and if one should wonder why David took so sorely to heart the derision of his enemies, he only manifests in this his own insensibility. For of all the bitter evils which befall us, there is nothing which can inflict upon us a severer wound than to see the wicked tear in pieces the majesty of God, and endeavor to destroy and overturn our faith. The doctrine taught by Paul, (Gal 4:24,) concerning the persecution of Ishmael, is well known. Many consider his childish jesting as of little moment, but as it tended to this effect, that the covenant of God should be esteemed as a thing of no value, it is on that account, according to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, to be accounted a most cruel persecution. David, therefore, with much propriety, compares to a slaughtering sword, which penetrates even within the bones and marrow, the derision of his enemies, by which he saw his own faith and the word of God trampled under foot. And would to God that all who boast themselves of being his children would learn to bear their private wrongs more patiently, and to manifest the same vehement zeal for which David is here distinguished, when their faith is assailed to the dishonor of God, and when the word also which gives them life is included in the same reproach!
(124) The original word רצח retsach, is constantly used in prose for a homicide, or murderer, being derived from the verb רצח ratsach, which signifies to slay, to murder; and although it is not used in any other passage for a sword, “it may,” as Horsley observes, “very naturally, in poetry, be applied to the instrument of slaughter, the sword.” In support of this view, he refers to a passage in one of the tragedies of Sophocles, in which Ajax calls his sword, upon which he is about to fall, Ο σφαγεὺς which gives the literal rendering of the Hebrew רצח, retsach, murderer Horsley’s rendering is, “While the sword is in my bones.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(10) As with a sword.Margin, killing; better, crushing. The insertion of the conjunction is erroneous. Render, with a shattering of my bones. This, no doubt, refers to actual ill-treatment of the exile by his conductors, who heaped blows, as well as insults, on their captives. We may even suppose this violence especially directed at this particular sufferer, who could not refrain from lingering and looking back, and so irritating his convoy, who would naturally be in a hurry to push forwards. How vividly, too, does the picture of the insulting taunt, Where is thy God? rise before us, if we think of the soldiers overhearing the exiles ejaculations of prayer.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
10. With a sword in my bones The reproaches of my enemies pierce me to the bones like a dagger, or they are as a crushing “in my bones.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 42:10. As with a sword in my bones The reproaches which my adversaries cast upon me are as a sword in my bones. Bishop Hare. i.e. “Their reproaches and calumnies are as painful to my soul, as the stab of a sword would be to my heart.” See Psa 55:21; Psa 59:7.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 42:10 [As] with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where [is] thy God?
Ver. 10. As with a sword in my bones ] Heb. a murdering weapon, which, when thrust into the bones, causeth most exquisite pain; so deeply was good David affected with the dishonour done to God by his blasphemous enemies; it went to the very heart of him, as a dagger.
While they say daily
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
As with. Some codices read “Like”.
enemies = adversaries. The second Psalm of each book has for its subject the enemy. See App-10.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
As with: Psa 42:3, Pro 12:18, Luk 2:35
sword: or, killing
while: Psa 42:3, Joe 2:17, Mic 7:10
Reciprocal: Gen 21:9 – mocking 1Sa 4:18 – when he made 2Ki 2:14 – Where is 2Ch 32:11 – The Lord our God Job 19:2 – vex Psa 3:2 – no Psa 13:2 – exalted Psa 14:6 – Ye Psa 22:8 – let him Psa 55:22 – Cast Psa 69:20 – Reproach Psa 71:11 – God Psa 79:10 – Wherefore Psa 115:2 – General Psa 119:22 – Remove Psa 119:42 – So shall Pro 18:14 – but Pro 24:17 – General Isa 36:4 – What Isa 36:7 – We trust Mat 27:43 – trusted
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 42:10. As with a sword in my bones Or, in my body, the bones being often put for the body, whereof they are a very considerable part. Or, as a sword which pierceth and cutteth my flesh even to the bones, and cutteth or breaketh the very bones also. So painful and vexatious are their reproaches. While they say, Where is thy God? What is become of thy God. in whom thou trustedst? Why does he make no more haste to send thee deliverance?
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
42:10 [As] with a sword in my {i} bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where [is] thy God?
(i) That is, I am most grievously tormented.