Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents

102:3-11 I Am in Distress as My Enemies Taunt Me. These verses go on to describe what the singer feels like amid his distress. The psalm leaves out the specifics of the external troubles in order to focus on the singer's sense of discouragement: bones burn, heart is struck down, forget to eat my bread, loud groaning, my bones cling to my flesh--these all are vivid images of what it feels like to be consumed by sorrow and tempted to despair, which has such withering effects on one's body. There is a terrible sense of being alone (the solitary birds of vv. 6-7), which makes the taunts of the enemies pierce all the more deeply. The situation is one of mourning (expressed by ashes and tears), because it makes one think that these circumstances must be due to God's indignation and anger; and yet there is no suggestion in the psalm that there are specific sins to be confessed and forsaken. A person feeling such things inevitably senses his own mortality: his days pass away like smoke (v. 3; i.e., quickly) and are like an evening shadow (v. 11; i.e., soon gone).