Psalm 119:83

We are working our way through the octave of Psalm 119 entitled Caph.  Today’s verse connects with the previous verse by the word for.  In the previous verse the psalmist was in a low and dark condition of soul.  His eyes were failing for the comfort of God’s word wondering when it would come.  Now the psalmist gives a graphic description of himself in this comfortless state:

Psalms 119:83  For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget thy statutes.

In Bible times animal skins were used to make bottles.  Therefore, such a bottle in the smoke would have been charred, dried, and shriveled up.  This is how the psalmist felt.  David experienced this same dismal frame of mind when he wrote:  “I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel” (PSA 31:12).  Or we hear the lament of the author of Psalm 102 pouring out a similar complaint: 

Psalms 102:3  For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.

And it is not out of the question that his comfortless soul was affecting his body so that he appeared withered physically.

Proverbs 17:22  A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones. 

The prophet Job took on a charred aspect as he underwent his afflictions:

Job 30:30  My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.

But even if you aren’t physically withered, if you are as I, you have times when you feel withered under the weight of stress with no comfort in sight.  Charles Spurgeon eloquently expressed this:

“Some of us know the inner meaning of this simile, for we, too, have felt dingy, mean, and worthless, only fit to be cast away.  Very black and hot has been the smoke which has enveloped us; it seemed to come not alone from the Egyptian furnace, but from the bottomless pit; and it had a clinging power which made the soot of it fasten upon us and blacken us with miserable thoughts.” 

Although the psalmist felt so utterly miserable, he still remembered his Bible:  yet do I not forget thy statutes.  No matter what condition the psalmist found himself in, he always referred it to the Scriptures.  He brought everything before the word of God.  It was indeed his court of appeal in every situation.  I cannot improve upon Matthew Henry’s comment on this point:

"We must in every condition, both prosperous and adverse, have the things of God in remembrance; and, if we be mindful of God’s statutes, we may pray and hope that he will be mindful of our sorrows, though for a time he seems to forget us.”