Psalms 102:23
He has broken my strength on the way; He has cut short my days.
BSB
ASV
He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened my days.
KJV
He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days.
He weakened my strength in the way. Here the Psalmist comes down again to the mournful string, and pours forth his personal complaint. His sorrow had cast down his spirit, and even caused weakness in his bodily frame, so that he was like a pilgrim who limped along the road, and was ready to lie down and die. He shortened my days. Though he had bright hopes for Jerusalem, he feared that he should have departed this life long before those visions had become realities; he felt that he was pining away and would be a shortlived man.
And then what becomes of the promise that Shiloh should arise out of Judah, the star out of Jacob, and the Messiah out of the family of David? If these fail, the promise fails. This the psalmist speaks of as in his own person, and it is very applicable to two of the common afflictions of this time:-- 1.
God's eternal existence is a pledge of faithfulness to His promises. in the way--of providence. weakened--literally, "afflicted," and made fearful of a premature end, a figure of the apprehensions of the Church, lest God might not perform His promise, drawn from those of a person in view of the dangers of early death (compare Ps 89:47).
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk5
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Job 21:21For what does he care about his household after him, when the number of his months has run out?
leads to
Since his days are determined and the number of his months is with You, and since You have set limits that he cannot exceed,
‘Then I beg you, father,’ he said, ‘send Lazarus to my father’s house,
But You, O God, will bring them down to the Pit of destruction; men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. But I will trust in You.
I say: “O my God, do not take me in the midst of my days! Your years go on through all generations.
I hated all for which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who comes after me.