Psalm 73:21

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 21. Thus my heart was grieved, etc. Two similitudes are used, by which his grief and indignation or zeal are described. First, he says his heart boiled over like yeast. The passion which was stirred up in his thoughts he compares to the yeast which inflates the whole mass, and causes it to swell or boil over... The other simile is taken from the internal pains which calculi produce; I was pricked in my reins. They who have felt them are aware of the torture, and there is no need for a long description. It signifies that his great pain was mingled with indignation, and that this came fresh upon him as often as he looked upon the prosperity of the ungodly. Mollerus.

Verse 21. Reins. Before all the other intestines there are the kidneys (twylb, nefroi), placed on both sides of the lumbar vertebrae on the hinder wall of the abdomen, of which the Scripture makes such frequent mention, and in the most psychically significant manner. It brings the most tender and the most inward experience of a manifold kind into association with them. When man is suffering most deeply within, he is pricked in his kidneys ("reins"). When fretting affliction overcomes him, his kidneys are cloven asunder ( Job 16:13 ; compare La 3:13); when he rejoices profoundly, they exult ( Proverbs 23:16 ); when he feels himself very penetratingly warned, they chasten him ( Psalms 16:7 ); when he very earnestly longs, they are consumed away with his body ( Job 19:27 ). As the omniscient and all penetrating knower of the most secret hidden things of man, God is frequently called (from Psalms 7:10 to the Apocalypse) the Trier of the hearts and reins; and of the ungodly it is said, that God is far from their reins ( Jeremiah 12:2 ), that is, that he, being withdrawn back into himself, allows not himself to be perceived by them. Franz Delitzsch.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

None.