Psalm 109:25

I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

109:21-31 The psalmist takes God's comforts to himself, but in a very humble manner. He was troubled in mind. His body was wasted, and almost worn away. But it is better to have leanness in the body, while the soul prospers and is in health, than to have leanness in the soul, while the body is feasted. He was ridiculed and reproached by his enemies. But if God bless us, we need not care who curses us; for how can they curse whom God has not cursed; nay, whom he has blessed? He pleads God's glory, and the honour of his name. Save me, not according to my merit, for I pretend to none, but according to thy-mercy. He concludes with the joy of faith, in assurance that his present conflicts would end in triumphs. Let all that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him. Jesus, unjustly put to death, and now risen again, is an Advocate and Intercessor for his people, ever ready to appear on their behalf against a corrupt world, and the great accuser.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I became also a reproach unto them - They reproached or reviled me as a bad man. Compare the notes at Psalm 22:6. The plural here - "unto them" - shows that there were more than one to whom the psalm had reference, though one of them was so prominent that a considerable part of the psalm might properly be spoken of him alone.

When they looked upon me, they shaked their heads - In contempt. See Psalm 22:7. Compare Matthew 27:39.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

24, 25. Taunts and reproaches aggravate his afflicted and feeble state (Ps 22:6, 7).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Instead of that pity which either religion or humanity should have taught them to a man in extreme misery, they loaded me with reproaches and scorns.

Shaked their heads; a gesture of contempt and derision; of which see Job 16:4 Psalm 22:7.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I became also a reproach unto them,.... Or they reproached him; not only in life, traducing his conversation, blaspheming his miracles, calling him a Samaritan, saying he had a devil, and charging him with sedition; but at the time of his death they reviled him, and treated him in the most opprobrious manner.

When they looked upon me, they shaked their heads; which was verified in the Jews as they passed by the cross of Christ, whither they came to stare upon him and scoff at him, Matthew 27:39.

Geneva Study Bible

I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

25. And I—I am become a reproach unto them:

When they see me, they shake their head,

a gesture of contempt and abhorrence, as though I were the object of the wrath of God. Cp. Psalm 22:7; Psalm 69:10-12; Lamentations 2:15; Job 16:4.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 25. - I became (rather, am become) also a reproach unto them; i.e. to my enemies. I am an object of their reproach and scorn. When they looked upon me they shaked their heads. In derision (comp. Psalm 22:7; Psalm 44:14; Matthew 27:39). Psalm 109:25

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The thunder and lightning are now as it were followed by a shower of tears of deep sorrowful complaint. Psalm 109 here just as strikingly accords with Psalm 69, as Psalm 69 does with Psalm 22 in the last strophe but one. The twofold name Jahve Adonaj (vid., Symbolae, p. 16) corresponds to the deep-breathed complaint. עשׂה אתּי, deal with me, i.e., succouring me, does not greatly differ from לי in 1 Samuel 14:6. The confirmation, Psalm 109:21, runs like Psalm 69:17 : Thy loving-kindness is טּוב, absolutely good, the ground of everything that is good and the end of all evil. Hitzig conjectures, as in Psalm 69:17, חסדך כּטוב, "according to the goodness of Thy loving-kindness;" but this formula is without example: "for Thy loving-kindness is good" is a statement of the motive placed first and corresponding to the "for thy Name's sake." In Psalm 109:22 (a variation of Psalm 55:5) חלל, not חלל, is traditional; this חלל, as being verb. denom. from חלל, signifies to be pierced, and is therefore equivalent to חולל (cf. Luke 2:35). The metaphor of the shadow in Psalm 109:23 is as in Psalm 102:12. When the day declines, the shadow lengthens, it becomes longer and longer (Virgil, majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae), till it vanishes in the universal darkness. Thus does the life of the sufferer pass away. The poet intentionally uses the Niph. נהלכתּי (another reading is נהלכתּי); it is a power rushing upon him from without that drives him away thus after the manner of a shadow into the night. The locust or grasshopper (apart from the plague of the locusts) is proverbial as being a defenceless, inoffensive little creature that is soon driven away, Job 39:20. ננער, to be shaken out or off (cf. Arabic na‛ûra, a water-wheel that fills its clay-vessels in the river and empties them out above, and הנּער, Zechariah 11:16, where Hitzig wishes to read הנּער, dispulsio equals dispulsi). The fasting in Psalm 109:24 is the result of the loathing of all food which sets in with deep grief. כּחשׁ משּׁמן signifies to waste away so that there is no more fat left.

(Note: The verbal group כחשׁ, כחד, Arab. ḥajda, kaḥuṭa, etc. has the primary signification of withdrawal and taking away or decrease; to deny is the same as to withdraw from agreement, and he becomes thin from whom the fat withdraws, goes away. Saadia compares on this passage (פרה) בהמה כחושׁה, a lean cow, Berachoth 32a. In like manner Targum II renders Genesis 41:27 תּורתא כהישׁתא, the lean kine.)

In Psalm 109:25 אני is designedly rendered prominent: in this the form of his affliction he is the butt of their reproaching, and they shake their heads doubtfully, looking upon him as one who is punished of God beyond all hope, and giving him up for lost. It is to be interpreted thus after Psalm 69:11.