Bible Strands
Psalms 102:4
My heart is afflicted, and withered like grass; I even forget to eat my bread.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses God during a period of acute physical decline, immediately following a description of his days vanishing like smoke and his bones burning like embers. He speaks from a moment where severe affliction has overtaken his bodily functions.
The words — The text states לִבִּי (libbi, "my heart") is הוּכָּה (hukkāh, "struck") and כָּעֵשֶׂב (kaʿēśeḇ, "like vegetation"), which then וַיִּבָּשֵׁר (wayyibbāšer, "has withered"). These verbs describe a sudden, violent depletion of inner vitality.
The thread — This withering imagery runs through Isaiah 40:7 and Psalm 37:2, where grass and flowers fade under the breath of God or the pressure of human prosperity. The motif consistently links plant decay to the fragility of mortal existence.
Why it lands — The verse records how intense distress can paralyze appetite and disrupt routine eating. It requires the reader to acknowledge the physiological weight of sorrow without bypassing it for abstract comfort.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 40:7 The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the LORD blows on them; indeed, the people are grass.
- Psalms 37:2 For they wither quickly like grass and wilt like tender plants.
- Ezra 10:6 Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and walked to the chamber of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. And while he stayed there, he ate no food and drank no water, because he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.
- 1 Samuel 1:7 And this went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the LORD, her rival taunted her until she wept and would not eat.
- 2 Samuel 12:17 The elders of his household stood beside him to help him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat anything with them.
- Psalms 77:3 I remembered You, O God, and I groaned; I mused and my spirit grew faint. Selah
- Matthew 26:37 He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.
- Acts 9:9 For three days he was without sight, and he did not eat or drink anything.
- Job 6:4 For the arrows of the Almighty have pierced me; my spirit drinks in their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
- Job 10:1 “I loathe my own life; I will express my complaint and speak in the bitterness of my soul.