Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 102:4
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.
4. My heart is smitten like grass, and withered;
Yea, I forget to eat my bread.
His heart, the centre of vital force and vigour, is dried up like a plant struck by the fierce heat of the sun and withered (Psa 121:6; Hos 9:16). Sorrow and sickness have deprived him of all appetite for food. Cp. 1Sa 1:7-8; Job 33:20.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
My heart is smitten – Broken; crushed with grief. We now speak of a broken heart. Even death is often caused by such excessive sorrow as to crush and break the heart.
And withered like grass – It is dried up as grass is by drought, or as when it is cut down. It loses its support; and having no strength of its own, it dies.
So that I forget to eat my bread – I am so absorbed in my trials; they so entirely engross my attention, that I think of nothing else, not even of those things which are necessary to the support of life. Grief has the effect of taking away the appetite, but this does not seem to be the idea here. It is that of such a complete absorption in trouble that everything else is forgotten.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 4. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass] The metaphor here is taken from grass cut down in the meadow. It is first smitten with the scythe, and then withered by the sun. Thus the Jews were smitten with the judgments of God; and they are now withered under the fire of the Chaldeans.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Like grass; which is smitten and withered by the heat of the sun, either whilst it stands, or after it is cut down.
I forget to eat my bread, because my mind is wholly swallowed up with the contemplation of my own miseries.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. (Compare Ps121:6).
so that I forgetor,”have forgotten,” that is, in my distress (Ps107:18), and hence strength fails.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass,…. Like grass in the summer solstice d, which being smitten with the heat of the sun, or by some blast of thunder and lightning, is dried up, and withers away; so his heart was smitten with a sense of sin, and of God’s wrath and displeasure at him, and with the heat of affliction and trouble, that it failed him, and he could not look up with joy and comfort:
so that I forget to eat my bread; sometimes, through grief and trouble, persons refuse to eat bread, as Jonathan and Ahab, which is a voluntary act, and purposely done; but here, in the psalmist, there was such a loss of appetite, through sorrow, that he forgot his stated meals, having no manner of inclination to food: some understand this of spiritual food, the bread of life, refusing to be comforted with it; so the Targum,
“for I forgot the law of my doctrine.”
d “Quasi solstitialis herba paulisper fui”, Plauti Pseudolus, Act. 1. Sc. 1. v. 36.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
4 My heart is smitten, and dried up like grass Here he employs a third similitude, declaring that his heart is withered, and wholly dried up like mown grass. But he intends to express something more than that his heart was withered, and his bones reduced to a state of dryness. His language implies, that as the grass, when it is cut down, can no longer receive juice from the earth, nor retain the life and rigor which it derived from the root, so his heart being, as it were, torn and cut off from its root, was deprived of its natural nourishment. The meaning of the last clause, I have forgotten to eat my bread, is, My sorrow has been so great, that I have neglected my ordinary food. The Jews, it is true, during their captivity in Babylon, did eat their food; and it would have been an evidence of their having fallen into sinful despair, had they starved themselves to death. But what he means to say is, that he was so afflicted with sorrow as to refuse all delights, and to deprive himself even of food and drink. True believers may cease for a time to partake of their ordinary food, when, by voluntary fasting, they humbly beseech God to turn away his wrath, but the prophet does not here speak of that kind of abstinence from bodily sustenance. He speaks of such as is the effect of extreme mental distress, which is accompanied with a loathing of food, and a weariness of all things. In the close of the verse, he adds, that his body was, as it were, consuming or wasting away, so that his bones clave to his skin.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(4) Smitten.As by the sun. Exactly as in Hos. 9:16.
So that I forget.Better, for I have forgotten, &c. For this mark of deep sorrow comp. 1Sa. 1:7; 1Sa. 20:34, &c. (Comp. Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 129.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass The word here translated “smitten,” in Psa 121:6, denotes a sunstroke. “Withered like grass,” is an allusion to the effect of the sirocco, or, perhaps, to the June sun, which, in that climate, withers the grass upon the hills to a brown and desolate appearance. On the sirocco, see note on Psa 103:16, and on the heat of the sun in May and June, see Mat 13:6.
Forget to eat my bread The loss of appetite is a natural effect of great sorrow. Psa 107:18; Job 33:20
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 102:4. So that I forget Because I forget. Green. Mudge joins the end of this to the next verse, I forget to eat my bread for the voice of my groaning.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 102:4 My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.
Ver. 4. My heart is smitten ] Blasted with thine indignation, that ventus urens et exsiccans.
So that I forget to eat my bread
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
bread. Put by Figure of speech Synecdoche (of Part), App-6, for food in general.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
heart: Psa 6:2, Psa 6:3, Psa 42:6, Psa 55:4, Psa 55:5, Psa 69:20, Psa 77:3, Psa 143:3, Psa 143:4, Job 6:4, Job 10:1, Lam 3:13, Lam 3:20, Mat 26:37, Mat 26:38
withered: Psa 102:11, Psa 37:2, Isa 40:7
so that: Psa 102:9, 1Sa 1:7, 1Sa 1:8, Ezr 10:6, Act 9:9
Reciprocal: Psa 32:4 – moisture Psa 109:22 – and my Psa 109:24 – my flesh Psa 119:83 – like a bottle in the smoke Psa 142:3 – my spirit Isa 38:14 – a crane Jer 4:9 – that the heart Eze 12:18 – General 1Pe 1:24 – all flesh
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 102:4-7. My heart is withered like grass Which is smitten and withered by the heat of the sun, either while it stands, or after it is cut down. So that I forget to eat my bread Because my mind is wholly swallowed up with the contemplation of my own miseries. My bones cleave to my skin My flesh being quite consumed with excessive sorrow. I am like a pelican in the wilderness There are two species of pelicans, one of which lives in the water on fish, the other in the wilderness, upon serpents and reptiles. The word , kaath, here used, is rendered cormorant, (which is a corruption of corvorant,) Isa 34:11; Zep 2:14. By the owl of the desert many understand the bittern, and by the bird that sits solitary on the house-top, the owl. Dr. Waterland and Houbigant, instead of sparrow alone, read the solitary bird; and the latter, for pelican, reads onocrotalus.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
102:4 My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget {d} to eat my bread.
(d) My sorrows were so great that I did not eat.