Title. A prayer of the afflicted, &c. It was composed by one who was himself afflicted, afflicted with the church of God, and for it; and it is calculated for an afflicted state, and intended for the use of others that maybe in similar distress. It is the fifth of those Psalms styled Penitential.
Psalms 102:3. My days are consumed like smoke Which passeth away in obscurity, and swiftly, and irrecoverably. Hebrew, בעשׁן, into, or, in smoke. As wood, or any combustible matter put into the fire, wasteth away in smoke and ashes, so are my days wasted away. Or, as some interpret the words, “My afflictions have had the same effect on me as smoke has on things which are hung up in it, that is, have dried me up, and deformed me.” And my bones The most strong and solid parts of my body, which seemed least likely to suffer any injury by my trouble; are burned as a hearth Either as a hearth is heated, or burned up by the coals which are laid upon it; or, as the hearth, being so heated, burns up that Which is put upon it. But כמוקד, here translated, as a hearth, may be rendered, (as it is by many,) as a fire-brand, or, as dry wood, which seems most applicable to the subject here spoken of. For, as Dr. Horne observes, “The effects of extreme grief on the human frame are here compared to those which fire produces upon fuel. It exhausts the radical moisture, and by so doing consumes the substance. A man's time and his strength evaporate in melancholy, and his bones, those pillars and supports of his body, become like wood, on which the fire hath done its work, and left it without sap, and without cohesion.”