Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 141:7

Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth [wood] upon the earth.

7. As when one splitteth and cleaveth (wood) upon the earth,

Our bones are scattered at the mouth of Sheol.

Precipitation from a rock was a common method of execution in ancient times (cp. 2Ch 25:12; Luk 4:29), and the meaning would seem to be that when the judges or leaders of the “workers of iniquity” mentioned in Psa 141:4 (for it is to them that the pronoun their must refer) have met with the fate they deserve, their followers (or people in general) will welcome the Psalmist’s advice and exhortation. ‘Judges’ however, though it may mean ‘rulers’ (Mic 5:1; Dan 9:12), is not a natural word to use for the leaders of a class or party. Must not the reference be rather to the corrupt judges by whose help the rich and powerful procured the condemnation and even the judicial murder of the poor and defenceless? Cp. Mic 7:2-3.

Taken by itself the next verse would seem to describe a national disaster, some defeat after which the bodies of the slain lay unburied on the field of battle. Cp. Psa 53:5. But there is no hint of such a disaster in the rest of the Psalm, and we can only suppose that the Psalmist, when he uses the first person, ‘ our bones,’ is speaking on behalf of those with whom he is in sympathy, the godly who are the victims of persecution and oppression. While the wicked and their judges are still in power they are murdered, and their dead bodies call for vengeance; or, if the expression be taken as hyperbolical (cp. Mic 3:2-3), they are deprived of all that makes life worth living, and are no better than bleaching skeletons, ready to be swallowed up by the greedy jaws of Sheol. Some MSS of the LXX, and the Syriac, read their bones, i.e. the bones of the judges who have been executed, but this is probably only a conjectural correction to get rid of the difficulty.

The meaning of the last line is uncertain. Most of the Ancient Versions (Aq. Symm. Jer. Targ. Syr.), and most modern commentators, render as R.V., as when one ploweth and cleaveth the earth, on the ground that this rendering is required by the usage of the language. In Aramaic and in cognate languages the first verb means to plow, cultivate: it comes from the same root as the modern Arabic fellah. But neither it nor the second verb is used in the O.T. in this sense, and the comparison of the bodies or bones of the slain to the clods or stones turned up by the plough is not an obvious one. On the other hand the second verb may certainly mean to cleave wood (Ecc 10:9), and the first is used in 2Ki 4:39 of slicing up gourds; and the comparison of the scattered and bleaching bones of the slain to the splinters and chips made by the woodcutter at his work and left scattered and uncared for is forcible and graphic.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Our bones are scattered at the graves mouth – We are, indeed, now like bones scattered in the places of graves; we seem to be weak, feeble, disorganized. We are in a condition which of itself seems to be hopeless: as hopeless as it would be for dry bones scattered when they were buried to rise up and attack an enemy. The reference is to the condition of David and his followers as pursued by a mighty foe. His hope was not in his own forces, but in the power and interposition of God Psa 141:8.

As when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth – Like chips, blocks, splinters, that have no strength; as when these lie scattered around – a fit emblem of our feeble and scattered forces.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Psa 141:7-8

Our bones are scattered at the graves mouth.

The scattered bones and the uplifted look

The text presents in a very vivid way an aspect of death most familiar, but most striking, and it also expresses the thoughts and the earnest prayer that rise in a soul at such a sight. You have walked in an old graveyard and seen the bones scattered at the graves mouth. There are few whom this sight does not make to think. You remember Hamlet in the graveyard with the skull of Yorick, the kings jester. What a pathos and tenderness are there. With that text in his hand, how touchingly he discourses on our poor fleeting human life. The flashes of merriment that set the table in a roar–the infinite jest–all come to this. The bones that were so carefully nurtured, that cost so much, are knocked and tossed about and thrown into a heap. Every man who contemplates such a spectacle–bones strewn about as if they were but chips and sticks where men had been chopping wood, must either go away with a dangerous sense of the vanity and worthlessness of human life, or with a spirit made intense, and raised in prayer to the infinite God.

I. Our union wits past generations and the intense reality of our present life. Observe the use of the word our. He looks at the bones and speaks as if they were partly his own, as if they belonged partly to living men. He identifies himself with those past generations. This human life that we are living now is not a new thing. It is old, very old. I understand all the struggles and wide experience of the past, for it is all in me. That history is mine. It seems as if I had lived then and been a part of all this. It is good for us go look back over the past and feel our identity with our race. It makes us humble. It makes us tender and kindly. It fills us with compassion for the human family. We are ashamed at times and vexed and grieved; but we are also elevated and enlarged as we look back over the generations that are gone. They are gone, and how fleeting they have all been. It is like a dream to think of all these past generations of men. Their existence seems a shadow. But let us not think our present life shadowy. No; that is not the lesson which the writer of the psalm learnt from the scattered bones. He learnt intensity. But mine eyes are toward Thee, O God the Lord. In Thee is my trust. Leave not my soul destitute. Life is new and momentous to us. It is as momentous as if it had never been lived before and would never be lived again. When you think steadily of God, it seems as if there were none but God and you standing over against each other. The man who keeps his eyes directed toward God feels life new and fresh, although the bones of many generations are scattered around him.

II. In the text we see the littleness and the greatness of man.

1. The scattered bones proclaim the littleness of man. These are the remains of thinkers, poets, kings, lovers of men, great inventors, famous disputers.

2. Yet, when I think of man in his weakness turning his eyes to the infinite God; when I reflect that man can think of a boundless and perfect One, that man looks to Him, that he has an eye that sees the invisible God: that he claims the society of the Maker of all worlds, and is restless till he finds it; when I reflect on man as putting his trust in the living God amidst all the mysteries of time; when I think of man standing over the grave where his dearest ones lie, where the ruins of his hopes are, and saying there, I believe in God; I trust in God; He will not leave my soul destitute; then I see the greatness of man.

III. A melancholy prospect and a rising above it.

1. The prospect before us all is this: by and by our bones will be scattered about the graves mouth. By and by you are forgotten, and the white relics that are thrown up by the shovel of the grave-digger are quite unknown. They have no name. Does it not seem like a horrid dream that we should be all coming to this? Surely it cannot be true. We all know too well that it is true and no dream.

2. There is just one remedy, one antidote, one means of conquering all thoughts of this kind; and the text presents it. Mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the Lord. I see a glorious Being, infinite, eternal, everywhere present, absolute love and truth and holiness. The fact that I can think of this Being of itself inspires hope and courage. It cannot be that the eyes that look to Him can moulder into dust. Eyes that cannot but look to Him are not doomed to grow dim. He Himself has invited me to look to Him, and the sight of His face gives me joy. (J. Leckie, D. D.)

Mine eyes are unto Thee, O God.—

Eyes steadfastly fixed on God

The determination to do a certain thing involves the possibility and sometimes the probability of not doing it. The regal faculty of will controls the use of other faculties, which may be exercised in different ways and in different degrees according to its resolve. The desires and aspirations of the soul, like the organs of the body, may be employed in this direction or in that, and of all created beings on earth man has most freedom. Some creatures have eyes adapted for a use which is special and limited. The beast or bird of prey, for example, has for the pupil of its eye a vertical slit, in order that it may look up and down for its victims. The ruminants–oxen, horses, and the like–have a horizontal slit, in order that without special effort they may look for the succulent grass which spreads on each side of them in a fertile meadow. But we have circular pupils–in other words, we have no bias in one direction more than in another, and thus even in these lower capacities God gives us a hint of our responsibility for choice and of our power of will which makes our life a moral probation. Hence you may resolve as the psalmist did, I will look up, or you may not so resolve. (A. Rowland, B. A.)

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Psa 142:1-7

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Our bones; my bones, and the bones of my friends and followers. Our skin and flesh is in a manner consumed, and there is nothing left of us but a company of dead and dry belles; whereby he intimates that their condition was desperate. Compare Eze 37:11.

Are scattered at the graves mouth; either,

1. Literally and properly. So barbarously cruel were our enemies, that they not only killed us, but left our carcasses unburied, by which means our flesh and sinews, &c. were consumed or torn in pieces by wild beasts, and our bones dispersed ripen the time of the earth, our common grave; or if any of my followers were dead and buried, they pulled their bones out of the grave, and scattered them about. Or rather,

2. Metaphorically. So the sense is, Our case is almost as hopeless as of those who are dead, and whose bones are scattered in several places.

As when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth; as much neglected and despised by them as the chips which a carpenter makes when he is cutting wood, which he will not stoop to take up. Or rather, as the LXX., and Chaldee, and Syriac understand it, and as it is in the Hebrew, as when one (to wit, the husbandman) cutteth and cleaveth the earth, or in the earth, which he teareth without any mercy.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth,…. Into which they were not suffered to be put, but lay unburied; or from whence they were dug up, and lay scattered about; which is to be understood of such of David’s friends as fell into the hands of Saul and his men, and were slain: perhaps it may refer to the fourscore and five priests, and the inhabitants of Nob, slain by the order of Saul, 1Sa 22:18. Though the phrase may be only proverbial, and be expressive of the danger David and his men were in, and their sense of it, who looked upon themselves like dry bones, hopeless and helpless, and had the sentence of death in themselves, and were as it were at the mouth of the grave, on the brink of ruin;

as when one cutteth and cleaveth [wood] upon the earth: and the chips fly here and there, and are disregarded; such was their case: or as men cut and cleave the earth with the plough, and it is tore up by it, and falls on each side of it, so are we persecuted, afflicted, and distressed by our enemies, and have no mercy shown us; so the Targum,

“as a man that cuts and cleaves with ploughshares in the earth, so our members are scattered at the grave’s mouth.”

The Syriac and Arabic versions understand it of the ploughshare cutting the earth.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

7. As one who breaketh, etc. Here David complains that his enemies were not satisfied with inflicting upon him one death — death of a common description — but must first mangle him, and those associated with him, and then cast them into the grave. The common robber on the highway throws the body of his murdered victim whole into the ditch; David tells us, that he and those with him were treated more barbarously, their Bones being dispersed, as one cleaves wood or stones into fragments, or digs the earth. From this it appears, that David, like Paul, (2Co 1:9,) was delivered from deaths oft; (241) and we may learn the duty of continuing to cherish hope of life and deliverance even when the expression may apply to us, that our bones have been broken and scattered.

(241) If David here refers to the treatment he and his followers met with at the hands of Saul, this exhibits in dark colors the extreme inhumanity of that monarch. “We are not sufficiently informed,” says Walford, “respecting the cruelties which were perpetrated against David and those who adhered to him, to enable us to point out the instances to which he here alludes; but the murder of Abimelech, and of the priests who were with him, furnishes a pregnant proof of the atrocities which Saul and his agents were capable of perpetrating. (See 1Sa 22:0) It appears from the language of this verse that such enormities were not confined to a few cases, but must have been numerous, to give occasion to the image which is employed to describe them.” How striking the contrast between David’s treatment of Saul, and that which Saul adopted towards him! Mr. Peters in his Dissertations on Job, gives an exposition of this 7 verse which is ingenious, and which Archbishop Secker calls “admirable, though not quite unexceptionable.” Understanding the verse as referring to the slaughter of the priests at Nob, just now adverted to, he renders the words שאול לפי, (which Calvin translates, at the grave’s mouth,) at the mouth, that is, at the command of Saul. In support of this translation he produces similar expressions, על פי פרעה, at the command of Pharaoh, (Gen 45:21,) and על פיך, at thy command. (Job 39:17.) To this rendering there is, however, this strong objection, that we do not find David ever mentioning Saul by name in any of the Psalms. Peters, indeed, states that this objection was offered to him against his view, and he endeavors to remove it, though, as we think, with indifferent success.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(7) Our bones.The literal rendering of this verse is As when one cutteth and cleaveth in the earth our bones are scattered at the mouth of Shel.

The reading our bones necessarily makes this an abrupt transition from the fate of the unjust judges in the last verse to that of the afflicted people, but in a correction by a second hand in the Codex Alex. of the LXX. we find the much easier and more satisfactory their bonesa reading confirmed by the Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions; as also by the fact that the word here rendered cleave is that employed in 2Ch. 25:12 (see reference above, Psa. 141:6) of the Edomites thrown from the cliff. But the abrupt transition is not unlikely in Hebrew poetry, and the more difficult reading is according to rule to be preserved.

The figure is mistaken in the Authorised Version. The reference is not to the ground strewn with the logs left by a woodcutter, but to the clods of earth left by the plough. Keeping the present text, and making the figure refer to the righteous, we should naturally compare Psa. 129:3, where ploughing is used as an image of affliction and torture, as harrewing is with us. The verse might be paraphrased: We have been so harrowed and torn that we are brought to the brink of the grave, the image being, however, heightened by the recollection of some actual massacre.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

7. Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth Hebrew, At the mouth of sheol. A figure denoting wanton and indiscriminate destruction: See Psa 53:5; Eze 6:5

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

In the first of these verses we have more speakers than one; but the Psalmist, turning from the calamities there described, finds comfort in looking to the Lord; and takes sure confidence in the perfect conviction, that it shall be well with the righteous, and ill with the wicked. Isa 3:10-11 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Psa 141:7 Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth [wood] upon the earth.

Ver. 7. Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth] i.e. I and my company are in a dying condition, free among the dead; yea, if taken we should be put to most cruel deaths, hewn in pieces, or pulled limb from limb, and left unburied; and our dead bodies mangled by a barbarous inhumanity, as wood cleavers make the shivers fly hither and thither. This is the perilous case of me, and my partisans, Non una et simplici morte contenti sunt.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)