Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth
Into which they were not suffered to be put, but lay unburied; or from whence they were dug up, and lay scattered about; which is to be understood of such of David's friends as fell into the hands of Saul and his men, and were slain: perhaps it may refer to the fourscore and five priests, and the inhabitants of Nob, slain by the order of Saul, ( 1 Samuel 22:18 1 Samuel 22:19 ) . Though the phrase may be only proverbial, and be expressive of the danger David and his men were in, and their sense of it, who looked upon themselves like dry bones, hopeless and helpless, and had the sentence of death in themselves, and were as it were at the mouth of the grave, on the brink of ruin; as when one cutteth and cleaveth [wood] upon the earth:
and the chips fly here and there, and are disregarded; such was their case: or as men cut and cleave the earth with the plough, and it is tore up by it, and falls on each side of it, so are we persecuted, afflicted, and distressed by our enemies, and have no mercy shown us; so the Targum,
``as a man that cuts and cleaves with ploughshares in the earth, so our members are scattered at the grave's mouth.''The Syriac and Arabic versions understand it of the ploughshare cutting the earth.