The Treasury of David
by C.H. Spurgeon

EXPOSITION OF THE PSALMS
(Psalms 102 Verse 5)

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 5. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. He became emaciated with sorrow. He had groaned himself down to a living skeleton, and so in his bodily appearance was the more like the smoke-dried, withered, burnt-up things to which he had previously compared himself. It will be a very long time before the distresses of the church of God make some Christians shrivel into anatomies, but this good man was so moved with sympathy for Zion's ills that he was wasted down to skin and bone.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 5. My bones cleave to my skin. When the bones cleave to the skin, both are near cleaving to the dust. Joseph Caryl.

Verse 5. That grief readily causes the body to pine away is very well known. It is related of Cardinal Wolsey, by an eye-witness, that when he heard that his master's favour was turned from him, he was wrung with such an agony of grief, which continued a whole night, that in the morning his face was dwindled away into half its usual dimensions.