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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 109:21 - 109:21
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The thunder and lightning are now as it were followed by a shower of tears of deep sorrowful complaint. Ps 109 here just as strikingly accords with Ps 69, as Ps 69 does with Ps 22 in the last strophe but one. The twofold name Jahve Adonaj (vid., Symbolae, p. 16) corresponds to the deep-breathed complaint. עֲשֵׂה אִתִּי, deal with me, i.e., succouring me, does not greatly differ from לִי in 1Sa 14:6. The confirmation, Psa 109:21, runs like Psa 69:17 : Thy loving-kindness is טֹּוב, absolutely good, the ground of everything that is good and the end of all evil. Hitzig conjectures, as in Psa 69:17, חסדך כְּטֹוב, “according to the goodness of Thy loving-kindness;” but this formula is without example: “for Thy loving-kindness is good” is a statement of the motive placed first and corresponding to the “for thy Name's sake.” In Psa 109:22 (a variation of Psa 55:5) חָלַל, not חָלָל, is traditional; this חָלַל, as being verb. denom. from חָלָל, signifies to be pierced, and is therefore equivalent to חֹולַל (cf. Luk 2:35). The metaphor of the shadow in Psa 109:23 is as in Psa 102:12. When the day declines, the shadow lengthens, it becomes longer and longer (Virgil, majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae), till it vanishes in the universal darkness. Thus does the life of the sufferer pass away. The poet intentionally uses the Niph. נֶהְלַכְתִּי (another reading is נֶֽהֱלַכְתִּי); it is a power rushing upon him from without that drives him away thus after the manner of a shadow into the night. The locust or grasshopper (apart from the plague of the locusts) is proverbial as being a defenceless, inoffensive little creature that is soon driven away, Job 39:20. נִנְעַר, to be shaken out or off (cf. Arabic na‛ûra, a water-wheel that fills its clay-vessels in the river and empties them out above, and הַנַּעַר, Zec 11:16, where Hitzig wishes to read הַנֵּעַר, dispulsio = dispulsi). The fasting in Psa 109:24 is the result of the loathing of all food which sets in with deep grief. כָּחַשׁ מִשֶּׁמֶן signifies to waste away so that there is no more fat left.
(Note: The verbal group כחשׁ, כחד, Arab. ḥajda, kaḥuṭa, etc. has the primary signification of withdrawal and taking away or decrease; to deny is the same as to withdraw from agreement, and he becomes thin from whom the fat withdraws, goes away. Saadia compares on this passage (פרה) בהמה כחושׁה, a lean cow, Berachoth 32a. In like manner Targum II renders Gen 41:27 תֹּורָתָא כְהִישָׁתָא, the lean kine.)
In Psa 109:25 אֲנִי is designedly rendered prominent: in this the form of his affliction he is the butt of their reproaching, and they shake their heads doubtfully, looking upon him as one who is punished of God beyond all hope, and giving him up for lost. It is to be interpreted thus after Psa 69:11.