22:14 My strength drains away like water; 1
all my bones are dislocated;
my heart 2 is like wax;
it melts away inside me.
109:18 He made cursing a way of life, 3
so curses poured into his stomach like water
and seeped into his bones like oil. 4
139:15 my bones were not hidden from you,
when 5 I was made in secret
and sewed together in the depths of the earth. 6
1 tn Heb “like water I am poured out.”
2 sn The heart is viewed here as the seat of the psalmist’s strength and courage.
3 tn Heb “he put on a curse as [if it were] his garment.”
4 tn Heb “and it came like water into his inner being, and like oil into his bones.” This may refer to this individual’s appetite for cursing. For him cursing was as refreshing as drinking water or massaging oneself with oil. Another option is that the destructive effects of a curse are in view. In this case a destructive curse invades his very being, like water or oil. Some who interpret the verse this way prefer to repoint the vav (ו) on “it came” to a conjunctive vav and interpret the prefixed verb as a jussive, “may it come!”
5 tc The Hebrew term אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “which”) should probably be emended to כֲּאַשֶׁר (ka’asher, “when”). The kaf (כ) may have been lost by haplography (note the kaf at the end of the preceding form).
6 sn The phrase depths of the earth may be metaphorical (euphemistic) or it may reflect a prescientific belief about the origins of the embryo deep beneath the earth’s surface (see H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 96-97). Job 1:21 also closely associates the mother’s womb with the earth.