Psalms 119:82 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Mine eyes fail— That is with attentively looking around me, to see from whence that promised deliverance will come. A bottle in the smoke, Psalms 119:83 means a bottle of skin or leather, (the only bottles then in use,) which being hung up in the smoke, and by that means parched and dry, aptly represents one worn out and dried up with long suspence and expectation. The author of the Observations, however, gives a different interpretation. He observes, that leathern bottles were a necessary part of the furniture of an Arab tent; and out of them they frequently drink. These are very uncouth drinking vessels, in comparison of cups of silver or gold, such as were anciently used in the courts of princes; agreeably to what we read in 1 Kings 10:21 where we are told that the magnificence of Solomon suffered no drinking-vessels in his palace which were not of gold; none of silver, it being nothing accounted of in his days; whereas it should seem in the preceding reigns, cups of silver, as well as of gold, were used in the royal houses. And to the difference between these vessels of silver or of gold, and these goat-skin bottles, the Psalmist seems to refer when he says, I am become like a bottle in the smoke; "My appearance in my present state is as different from what it was when I dwelt at court, as the furniture of a palace differs from that of a poor Arab's tent, among whom I dwell (and which was remarkably smoky)." Just thus the prophet laments that the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, or vessels of fine gold, sunk in their estimation, and were considered as no better than earthen pitchers, the works of the hands of the potter. Lamentations 4:2.