Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say. In her present hour of trial she may remember her former afflictions and speak of them for her comfort, drawing from them the assurance that he who has been with her for so long will not desert her in the end.

Many a time have they afflicted, me from my youth. Israel repeats her statement of her repeated afflictions. The fact was uppermost in her thoughts, and she could not help soliloquizing upon it again and again.

The plowers plowed up on my back. The scourgers tore the flesh as ploughmen furrow a field. The people were maltreated like a criminal given over to the lictors with their cruel whips; the back of the nation was scored and furrowed by oppression.

The LORD is righteous. Whatever men may be, Jehovah remains just, and will therefore keep covenant with his people and deal out justice to their oppressors. Here is the hinge of the condition: this makes the turning point of Israel's distress.

Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion. And so say we right heartily: and in this case vox populi is vex Dei, for so it shall be. If this be an imprecation, let it stand; for our heart says "Amen" to it.

Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up. Grass on the housetop is soon up and soon down. It sprouts in the heat, finds enough nutriment to send up a green blade, and then it dies away before it reaches maturity, because it has neither earth nor moisture…

Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. When with his sickle the husbandman would cut down the tufts, he found nothing to lay hold upon: the grass promised fairly enough, but there was no fulfilment, there was nothing to cut or to carry, nothing for the hand…

Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD be upon you: we bless you in the name of the LORD. In harvest times men bless each other in the name of the Lord; but there is nothing in the course and conduct of the ungodly man to suggest the giving or receiving of a benediction.

Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth. 1. How old these afflictions are: "From my youth." Aye, from my infancy, birth and conception. 2. There is the frequency and iteration of these afflictions. They were oft and many: "many a time." 3.

Many a time, etc. The Christian Church may adopt the language of the Hebrew Church: "Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me." What afflictions were endured by the Christian Church from her youth up! How feeble was that youth! How small the number of…

The plowers plowed, etc. There does not seem to be any need to look for an interpretation of this in scourging, or any other bodily infliction of pain; it seems to be "a figurative mode of expressing severe oppression." Roberts informs us that when, in the East, a man is in much trouble through…

The LORD is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked; i.e., he has put an end to their domination and tyranny over us. In the Hebrew word which is rendered "cords" there is a reference to the harness with which the oxen were fastened to the plough; and so to the involved machinations…

If any one be desirous to accept these words, Let them be confounded and turned backward, as they sound, he will devoutly explain the imprecation: that is to say, it may be an imprecation of good confusion, which leads to repentance, and of turning to God from sin: thus Bellarmine.

Let them be as the grass upon the housetops. They are rightly compared to grass on the housetops; for more contemptuously the Holy Ghost could not speak of them. For this grass is such, that it soon withereth away before the sickle be put into it.

The mower filleth not his hand, etc. The grain was rather pulled than cut, and as each handful was taken the reaper gave it a flourishing swing up into his bosom.—Mrs. Finn, in "Home in the Holy Land", 1866. He that bindeth sheaves his bosom.