Psalm 109:18

As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

109:6-20 The Lord Jesus may speak here as a Judge, denouncing sentence on some of his enemies, to warn others. When men reject the salvation of Christ, even their prayers are numbered among their sins. See what hurries some to shameful deaths, and brings the families and estates of others to ruin; makes them and theirs despicable and hateful, and brings poverty, shame, and misery upon their posterity: it is sin, that mischievous, destructive thing. And what will be the effect of the sentence, Go, ye cursed, upon the bodies and souls of the wicked! How it will affect the senses of the body, and the powers of the soul, with pain, anguish, horror, and despair! Think on these things, sinners, tremble and repent.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

As he clothed himself with cursing like as with a garment - Moral qualities are often compared with raiment - as that in which we "appear" to our fellow-men. See 1 Peter 5:5; Job 29:14.

So let it come into his bowels like water - Margin, "within him." Hebrew, "In his midst." Let it penetrate him through and through. Let no part of him be unaffected by it.

And like oil into his bones - As if oil flowed through all his bones, so let the effects of cursing pervade his whole frame. The prayer is, that his entire nature might feel the effects of cursing; that he might know to the full what he was endeavoring to bring on others.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

17-19. Let his loved sin, cursing, come upon him in punishment (Ps 35:8), thoroughly fill him as water and oil, permeating to every part of his system (compare Nu 5:22-27), and become a garment and a girdle for a perpetual dress.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

A garment; which a man wears constantly, and that as

Like water; which when a man drinks, goes bowels, and searcheth all the inwards of his belly.

Like oil; which is more piercing than water, and being applied to outward parts, reacheth even to the bones and marrow

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment,.... He was full of it; his mouth was full of cursing and bitterness; it was visible in him, easy to be discerned; he took pride as well as pleasure in it, it was in his esteem an ornament to him, as his clothes were. The Syriac version renders it, "as armour"; as if it was a protection to him, or he thought it to be so.

So let it come into his bowels like water; the meaning is, let the wrath of God and the curse of the law come into his conscience, and make sad work there, and fill him with dread and terror, and that in great abundance, and with great force; like a flood of waters that carry all before it; or like the waters of jealousy which made the belly to swell and the thigh to rot; or the flying roll of the curse, which entering into the house of the sinner destroyed it, and all in it, Numbers 5:22.

And like oil into his bones; which is more piercing and penetrating than water; and signifies the inward and quick sense he should have of his sins, and of the wrath of God for them; see Job 20:11.

Geneva Study Bible

As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

18. And he clad himself with cursing as with his robe,

And It came into his inward parts like water, and like oil into his bones:

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 18. - As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment (comp. Psalm 10:7; Psalm 59:12; Psalm 62:4). Extreme malevolence vents itself in curses, which tend to become frequent, and, so to speak, habitual. So let it come; rather, so it cams, or so it will come. Into his bowels like water. Dr. Kay sees here an allusion to the "water of cursing" which was drunk by the woman whose husband taxed her with unfaithfulness (Numbers 5:22); and so also Hengstenberg. But this is doubtful. Perhaps the mere penetrative power of water is alluded to. See the next clause. And like oil into his bones. The oil, wherewith it was usual to anoint the frame, was believed to penetrate, not only into the tissues, but into the very bones and marrow. Psalm 109:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

He whom he persecuted with a thirst for blood, was, apart from this, a great sufferer, bowed down and poor and נכאה לבב, of terrified, confounded heart. lxx κατανενυγμένον (Jerome, compunctum); but the stem-word is not נכא (נכה), root נך, but כּאה, Syriac bā'ā', cogn. כּהה, to cause to come near, to meet. The verb, and more especially in Niph., is proved to be Hebrew by Daniel 11:30. Such an one who without anything else is of a terrified heart, inasmuch as he has been made to feel the wrath of God most keenly, this man has persecuted with a deadly hatred. He had experienced kindness (חסד) in a high degree, but he blotted out of his memory that which he had experienced, not for an instant imagining that he too on his part had to exercise חסד. The Poel מותת instead of המית points to the agonizing death (Isaiah 53:9, cf. Ezekiel 28:10 מותי) to which he exposes God's anointed. The fate of the shedder of blood is not expressed after the manner of a wish in Psalm 109:16-18, but in the historical form, as being the result that followed of inward necessity from the matter of fact of the course which he had himself determined upon. The verb בּוא seq. acc. signifies to surprise, suddenly attack any one, as in Isaiah 41:25. The three figures in Psalm 109:18 are climactic: he has clothed himself in cursing, he has drunk it in like water (Job 15:16; Job 34:7), it has penetrated even to the marrow of his bones, like the oily preparations which are rubbed in and penetrate to the bones.n In Psalm 109:19 the emphasis rests upon יעטּה and upon תּמיד. The summarizing Psalm 109:20 is the close of a strophe. פּעלּה, an earned reward, here punishment incurred, is especially frequent in Isaiah 40:1, e.g., Psalm 49:4; Psalm 40:10; it also occurs once even in the Tra, Leviticus 19:13. Those who answer the loving acts of the righteous with such malevolence in word and in deed commit a satanic sin for which there is no forgiveness. The curse is the fruit of their own choice and deed. Arnobius: Nota ex arbitrio evenisse ut nollet, propter haeresim, quae dicit Deum alios praedestinasse ad benedictionem, alios ad maledictionem.