Let. — The optatives in the English are wrong. These verses express facts, and the imprecation follows in Psalms 109:19. Render —
He loved cursing; and it comes;
He delighted not in blessing; and it departs;
Yea, he clothed himself in cursing as with his cloak,
And it came like water into his bowels,
And like oil into his bones;
May it be, &c.
Comp. the proverb, “Curses, like chickens, always come home to roost.”
The fabled shirt of Nessus, which ate into the mighty form of Hercules, has suggested itself to commentators in illustration of this image. In a good sense the same figure is a favourite one with the Hebrews. (See Isaiah 11:5.)
Psalms 109:19 has struck most commentators as an anticlimax, and the quotation theory is supported by this fact. But imprecations show their impotence in this way; the angry soul can never be quite “unpacked with curses;” the language of passion exhausts itself too soon, and a violent speech often dies away in unintelligible mutterings or even gestures of rage.