Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 119:83
For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; [yet] do I not forget thy statutes.
83. For I am become like a wineskin in the smoke; yet &c.] As a wineskin out of use hung up among the rafters of the roof grows shrivelled and blackened by the smoke till it almost loses its original appearance, so the Psalmist is growing emaciated and disfigured by suffering and sorrow till he can scarcely be recognised. Cp. Psa 109:24. Some commentators suppose that there is a reference to the custom of mellowing wine by putting it in the smoke (cp. “amphorae fumum bibere institutae,” Horace, Odes, iii. 8. 11), and that the figure means that the Psalmist is being exposed to suffering to soften and mature his character, though the process is being continued so long that he is becoming unsightly and unrecognisable. At first sight this explanation is attractive, but the simile is clearly intended to describe bad not good effects of suffering. In spite of these, he does not forget God’s commandments. The curious rendering of LXX, Symm., Syr., Jer., like a wineskin in hoar frost, has no claim to consideration.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For I am become like a bottle in the smoke – Bottles in the East were commonly made of skins. See the notes at Mat 9:17. Such bottles, hanging in tents where the smoke had little opportunity to escape, would, of course, become dark and dingy, and would thus be emblems of distress, discomfort, and sorrow. The meaning here is, that, by affliction and sorrow, the psalmist had been reduced to a state which would be well represented by such a bottle. A somewhat similar idea occurs in Psa 22:15 : My strength is dried up like a potsherd. See the notes at that place.
Yet do I not forget thy statutes – Compare the notes at Psa 119:51. Though thus deeply afflicted, though without comfort or peace, yet I do, I will, maintain allegiance to thee and thy law. The doctrine is that distress, poverty, sorrow, penury, and rags – the most abject circumstances of life – will not turn away a true child of God from obeying and serving him. True religion will abide all these tests. Lazarus from the deepest poverty – from beggary – from undressed sores – went up to Abrahams bosom.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 119:83
For I am become like a bottle in the smoke.
The wineskin in the smoke
Ewald and Delitzsch read, Although I am become as a wineskin hung in the smoke, yet do I not forget Thy statutes. As a possible alternative read, For I am become as a wineskin in the smoke, because I do not forget Thy statutes. The allusion is to the fidelity of a good man under severe pressures of trial and affliction. Though under these pressures he shrinks and wastes, and blackens like a wineskin hung in the smoke of the chimney fire, he still remembers the Divine statutes; he still holds fast his faith in God and duty. Or the allusion is to the secret and reward of this fidelity. For it was a custom of the ancients (Rosenmuller) to hang wineskins in the smoke of a fire for very much the same reason that we sometimes stand a claret bottle on the hearth, in order to mellow the wine by a gradual and moderate warmth, and to bring it to an earlier perfection. In that custom the psalmist finds an illustration of the meaning, and of the mercy of the afflictions to which he has been exposed. They have been sent to act on him like the warm smoke on the wine, to refine, mellow, and ripen his character; and because, under them all, he has refused to part with his faith in God and duty, because he has been true to God and Gods statutes, they have had their intended and proper effect upon him.
1. What was the character of the man who uses this quaint and homely figure? He lived in one of the latest periods of Hebrew literature; when the Jews were groaning under the tyranny of foreign, i.e. of Gentile, rulers, who hated the Hebrew superstition almost as much as the Hebrew obstinacy; and thus we get a valuable glimpse into the larger outward conditions of his life, which every section of the psalm verifies and confirms. He evidently loved the Word of God so dearly that he was never weary of meditating on its different aspects of law and promise, comfort and judgment. His love of Gods Word, his confidence in God, had been profoundly tried. The time was out of joint. The wicked were in power, and strained their power to injure and abase him. It was his very righteousness, his deference to Gods authority rather than theirs, his devotion to Gods will, which provoked their hostility. And yet no comfort came to him through prayer; there was no comfort, save from the Word, which he would not let go. Note one special quality in this man. He is not only a poet, and a man well versed in affairs; he is a poet of a quaint, a peculiar turn, who loves to set himself difficult feats, and takes a singular pleasure in achieving them. He is one who can express a very sincere and even passionate love in an elaborate artifice. We have all known a few such men as this. They have a remarkable power over as many as love them.
2. It is this psalmists constant loyalty of soul, his profound and steadfast devotion to God, Gods will, and Gods Word, which we most need to bear in mind. It is his good fidelity which entitles him to teach, and enables him to comfort us.
3. Turn the verse round, and let it suggest the reason of his indomitable faith, his brave and cheerful confidence under the sharpest pressures of trial. Read because I do not forget Thy statutes. Remember what has been said of the customs of the ancient vintners, and you will see the figure of the text suggests to those who do not forget Gods statutes, that trials are a discipline which refines, mellows, ripens their character, brings them to an earlier perfection than they could otherwise reach, and fits them more rapidly for the service of God and man. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)
A picture of a sad life
I. Here is a Shrivelled life. The empty leathern bottles, hung up in the unchimneyed houses of the East, get shrivelled in the heat. There are human lives–
1. Shrivelled in their thoughts. There is nothing broad or elastic in their conceptions, their whole mental natures run into a few miserable smoky dogmas.
2. Shrivelled in their sympathies. Narrow thinkings and selfish habits contract the soul that should expand into a seraph into a miserable grub.
II. Here is an unlovely life. A shrivelled leathern bottle, black with smoke, has nothing in it to admire, nothing to charm the eye or even to invite the touch. Unlovely lives are by no means uncommon.
III. Here is a useless life. So long as the bottle is hung up, shrivelled and black in the smoky apartment, it is of no service whatever. What millions there are of every generation who have been of no service to the universe. (Homilist.)
A bottle in the smoke
I. Gods people have their trials.
1. Sometimes these trials arise from poverty. It is the poverty of the Arab that puts his bottle in the Smoke; so the poverty of Christians exposes them to much trouble, and inasmuch as Gods people are for the most part poor, for that reason must they always be for the most part in affliction.
2. Our trials frequently result from our comforts. Christian men l you have extraordinary fires, which others have never kindled; expect them to have extraordinary smoke. You have the presence of Christ; but then you will have the smoke of fear lest you should lose it. You have the joy of assurance; but you have also the smoke of doubt, which blows into your eyes and well nigh blinds you. You have your trials, and your trials arise from your comforts. The more comfort you have, the more fire you have, the more sorrows shall you have, and the more smoke.
3. The poor bottle in the smoke keeps there for a long time till it gets black; it is not just one puff of smoke that comes upon it; the smoke is always going up, always girding the poor bottle; it lives in an atmosphere of smoke. So some of us hang up like bottles in the smoke for months, or for a whole year. No sooner do you get out of one trouble than you tumble into another. Well, that was the condition of David; he was not just sometimes in trial, but it seemed as if trials came to him every day. Well, if this is your case, fear not, you are not alone in your trials; but you see the truth of what is uttered here: you are become like bottles in the smoke.
II. Christian men feel their troubles. They are in the smoke; and they are like bottles in the smoke. There are some things that you might hang up in the smoke for many a day, and they would never be much changed, because they are so black now that they could never be made any blacker, and so shrivelled now that they never could become any worse. But the poor skin bottle shrivels up in the heat, gets blacker, and shows at once the effect of the smoke; it is not an unfeeling thing, like a stone, but it is at once affected. Now, some men think that grace makes a man unable to feel suffering; I have heard people insinuate that the martyrs did not endure much pain when they were being burned to death; but this is a mistake, Christian men are not like stones; they are like bottles in the smoke. In fact, if there be any difference, a Christian man feels his trials more than another, because he traces them to God.
III. Christians, though they have troubles, and feel their troubles, do not in their troubles forget Gods statutes. What are Gods statutes? God has two kinds of statutes, both of them engraved in eternal brass. The first are the statutes of His commands; and of these He has said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the law shall fail till all be fulfilled. These statutes are like the statutes of the Medea and Persians; they are binding upon all His people. Well, the psalmist said, In the midst of my trials I have not swerved from Thy statutes; I have not attempted to violate Thy commands; I have not in any way moved from the strict path of integrity; and in the midst of all my persecutions I have gone straight on, never once forgetting Gods statutes or commands. And then again: there are statutes of promise which are equally firm, each of them as immortal as God who uttered them. David did not forget these; for he said of them, Thy statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage; and he could not have sung about them if he had forgotten them. Why was it David still held fast by Gods statutes? First of all, David was not a bottle in the fire, or else he would have forgotten them. Our trials are smoke, but not fire; they are very uncomfortable, but they do not consume us. Another reason why, when David was in the smoke, he did not forget Gods statutes was this, that Jesus Christ was in the smoke with him, and the statutes were in the smoke with him too. Gods statutes have been in the fire, as well as Gods people. Both the promise and the precept are in the furnace; and if I hang up in the smoke, like a bottle, I see hanging up by my side Gods commands, covered with soot and smoke, subject to the same perils. Suppose I am persecuted: it is a comfort to know that men do not persecute me, but my Masters truth. Another reason why David did not forget the statutes was, they were in the soul, where the smoke does not enter. Smoke does not enter the interior of the bottle; it only affects the exterior. So it is with Gods children: the smoke does not enter into their hearts; Christ is there, and grace is there, and Christ and grace are both unaffected by the smoke. Come up, clouds of smoke! curl upward till ye envelop me! Still will I hang on the Nail, Christ Jesus–that sure Nail, which never can be moved from its place–and I will feel, that while the outward man decayeth, the inward man is renewed day by day; and the statutes being there, I do not forget them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 83. Like a bottle in the smoke] In the eastern countries their bottles are made of skins; one of these hung in the smoke must soon be parched and shrivelled up. This represents the exhausted state of his body and mind by long bodily affliction and mental distress.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
In the smoke; hung up in a smoking chimney. My natural moisture is dried and burnt up; I am withered, and deformed, and despised, and my case grows worse and worse every day.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
83. bottle in the smokeas askin bottle dried and shriveled up in smoke, so is he withered bysorrow. Wine bottles of skin used to be hung up in smoke to dry them,before the wine was put in them [MAURER].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For I am become like a bottle in the smoke,…. Like a bottle made of the skins of beasts, as was usual in those times and countries: hence we read of old and new bottles, and of their rending, Jud 9:13 Mt 9:17. Now such a bottle being hung up in a smoky chimney, would be dried and shrivelled up, and be good for nothing; so Jarchi’s note is,
“like a bottle made of skin, which is dried in smoke;”
and the Targum is,
“like a bottle that hangs in smoke.”
It denotes the uncomfortable condition the psalmist was in, or at least thought himself to be in; as to be in the midst of smoke is very uncomfortable, so was he, being in darkness, and under the hidings of God’s face; black and sooty, like a bottle in smoke, with sin and afflictions; like an empty bottle, had nothing in him, as he was ready to fear; or was useless as such an one, and a vessel in which there was no pleasure; like a broken one, as he elsewhere says, despised and rejected of men. It may also have respect unto the form of his body, as well as the frame of his mind; be who before was ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance, now was worn out with cares and old age, was become pale and wrinkled, and like a skin bottle shrivelled in smoke;
[yet] do I not forget thy statutes; he still attended to the word, worship, ways and ordinances of the Lord; hoping in due time to meet with comfort there, in which he was greatly in the right.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
83 For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget thy statutes.
David begs God would make haste to comfort him, 1. Because his affliction was great, and therefore he was an object of God’s pity: Lord, make haste to help me, for I have become like a bottle in the smoke, a leathern bottle, which, if it hung any while in the smoke, was not only blackened with soot, but dried, and parched, and shrivelled up. David was thus wasted by age, and sickness, and sorrow. See how affliction will mortify the strongest and stoutest of men! David had been of a ruddy countenance, as fresh as a rose; but now he is withered, his colour is gone, his cheeks are furrowed. Thus does man’s beauty consume under God’s rebukes, as a moth fretting a garment. A bottle, when it is thus wrinkled with smoke, is thrown by, and there is no more use of it. Who will put wine into such old bottles? Thus was David, in his low estate, looked upon as a despised broken vessel, and as a vessel in which there was no pleasure. Good men, when they are drooping and melancholy, sometimes think themselves more slighted than really they are. 2. Because, though his affliction was great, yet it had not driven him from his duty, and therefore he was within the reach of God’s promise: Yet do I not forget thy statutes. Whatever our outward condition is we must not cool in our affection to the word of God, nor let that slip out of our minds; no care, no grief, must crowd that out. As some drink and forget the law (Prov. xxxi. 5), so others weep and forget the law; but we must in every condition, both prosperous and adverse, have the things of God in remembrance; and, if we be mindful of God’s statutes, we may pray and hope that he will be mindful of our sorrows, though for a time he seems to forget us.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
83. For I have been as a bottle in the smoke. (426) The particle כי, ki, translated for, might also, not improperly, be resolved into the adverb of time, when; so that we might read the verse in one connected sentence, thus’ When I was like a dried bottle, I, nevertheless, did not forget thy law. The obvious design of the Psalmist is to teach us, that, although he had been proved by severe trials, and wounded to the quick, he yet had not been withdrawn from the fear of God. In comparing himself to a bottle or bladder, he intimates that he was, as it were, parched by the continual heat of adversities. Whence we learn, that that sorrow must have been intense which reduced him to such a state of wretchedness and emaciation, that like a shriveled bottle he was almost dried up. It, however, appears that he intends to point cut, not only the severity of his affliction, but also its lingering nature that he was tormented, as it were, at a slow fire; (427) even as the smoke which proceeds from heat dries bladders by slow degrees. The prophet experienced a long series of grief’s, which might have consumed him a hundred times, and that, by their protracted and lingering nature, had he not been sustained by the word of God. In short, it is a genuine evidence of true godliness, when, although plunged into the deepest afflictions, we yet cease not to submit ourselves to God.
(426) Bottles, among the Jews and other nations of the East, were made of goats’ or kids’ skins, as is the custom among the Eastern nations at this day. When the animal was killed, they cut off its feet and head, and drew it, in that manner, out of the skin without opening the belly. They afterwards sewed up the places where the legs were cut off, and the tail, and when it was filled, they tied it about the neck. In these bottles, not only water, milk, and other liquids were put, but every thing intended to be carried to a distance, whether dry or liquid. To these goat-skin vessels a reference is here undoubtedly made. The peasantry of Asia are in the habit of suspending them from the roof, or hanging them against the walls of their tents or humble dwellings: here they soon become quite black with smoke; for, as in their dwellings there are seldom any chimneys, and the smoke can only escape through an aperture in the roof, or by the door, whenever a fire is lighted the apartment is instantly filled with dense smoke. Accordingly, some suppose that the allusion here chiefly is to the blackness which a bottle contracts by hanging in the smoke; and the translators of our English Bible, by referring in the margin to Job 30:30, as parallel to this, seem to have supposed that the Psalmist refers to the blackness his face contracted by sorrow. “But,” says Harmer, “this can hardly be supposed to be the whole of his thought. In such a case, would he not rather have spoken of the blackness of a pot, as it is supposed the prophet Joel does, (Joe 2:6,) rather than to that of a leather bottle ?” — Harmer ’ s Observations, volume 1, page 218. When such bottles are suspended in the smoky tent of an Arab, if they do not contain liquids, or are not quite filled by the solids which they hold, they become dry, shrunk, and shriveled; and to this, as well as to their blackness, the Psalmist may allude. Long-continued bodily affliction and mental trouble produce a similar change on the human frame, destroying its beauty and strength by drying up the natural moisture. It has also been thought that there is a contrast between such mean bottles and the rich vessels of gold and silver which were used in the palaces of kings. “My appearance in the state of my exile is as different from what it was when I dwelt at court, as are the gold and silver vessels of a palace from the smoky skin bottles of a poor Arab’s tent, where I am now compelled to reside.” — Ibid. and Paxton ’ s Illustrations, volume 2, pages 409, 410.
(427) “ Comme a petit feu.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(83) A bottle in the smoke.The insertion of yet by our translators shows that they understood this as a figure of abject misery. The wine-skin would, of course, shrivel, if hung above a fire, and would afford an apt image of the effect of trouble on an individual or community. As wine-skin in the smoke my heart is sere and dried. Some think that as a bottle hung up anywhere in an ancient house would be in the smoke, nothing more is implied than its being set aside; but this is too weak.
We find in the ancient poets allusion to the custom of mellowing wine by heat:
Prodit fumoso condita vina cado.OVID: Fast. v. 517.
(Comp. Hor. Ode iii. 8, 9, 10). And so some understand the image here of the good results of the discipline of suffering. The LXX. and Vulg., instead of smoke, have hoar-frost. The Hebrew word has this meaning in Psa. 148:8, but in the only other place where it occurs (Gen. 19:28) it is smoke. The possibility of rendering hoar-frost here suggests another explanation. The word nd (bottle) may be used of a cloud, and as the psalmist has just spoken of his eyes failing, we may have here only another expression for weeping.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 119:83 For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; [yet] do I not forget thy statutes.
Ver. 83. For I am become like a bottle in the smoke ] Shrivelled, wrinkled, withered, dried up. My body by long suffering is but a bag of bones, and that black and sooty; confer Psa 32:3 ; Psa 102:3 . My soul in danger of being bereft of all spiritual moisture.
Yet do I not forget thy statutes
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
bottle = wine-skin: i.e. black and shrivelled. Compare Job 30:30.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
like a bottle in the smoke: As the bottles in the East are made of skin, it is evident that one of these hung up in the smoke must soon be parched, shrivelled up, lose all its strength, and become unsightly and useless. Thus the Psalmist appeared to himself to have become useless and despicable, through the exhausted state of his body and mind, by long bodily afflictions and mental distress. Psa 22:15, Psa 102:3, Psa 102:4, Job 30:30
yet do I: Psa 119:16, Psa 119:61, Psa 119:176
Reciprocal: Jos 9:4 – wine bottles Psa 31:12 – a broken vessel Psa 119:109 – yet do I not Lam 4:8 – their skin Lam 5:10 – skin Joe 2:6 – all Mat 9:17 – old Mar 2:22 – bottles Luk 5:37 – old Heb 12:5 – ye have forgotten
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
119:83 For I am become like a {b} bottle in the smoke; [yet] do I not forget thy statutes.
(b) Like a skin bottle or bladder that is parched in the smoke.