Bible Strands
Psalms 102:9
For I have eaten ashes like bread and mixed my drink with tears
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist speaks to God during a period of acute distress, positioned between a report of daily enemy taunts and a declaration of being cast aside by divine wrath.
The words — אֵפֶר ('E.fer) carries the literal sense of ash[es], and בִּבְכִי (bi/v.Khi) translates to with/ weeping, anchoring the psalmist's description of his condition in tangible terms.
The thread — The imagery of consuming sorrow appears in Psalms 42:3, where tears function as daily food, and in Psalms 80:5, where God provides the bread of tears to the community.
Why it lands — The text records grief as a physical reality before drawing any theological conclusion, requiring the reader to face suffering as a present fact rather than a spiritual problem to be solved.
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
For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
Cross-references
- Psalms 42:3 My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”
- Job 3:24 I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.
- Psalms 80:5 You fed them with the bread of tears and made them drink the full measure of their tears.
- Psalms 69:21 They poisoned my food with gall and gave me vinegar to quench my thirst.
- Isaiah 44:20 He feeds on ashes. His deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”
- Lamentations 3:15 He has filled me with bitterness; He has intoxicated me with wormwood.
- Lamentations 3:48 Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people.
- Micah 1:10 Do not tell it in Gath; do not weep at all. Roll in the dust in Beth-leaphrah.
- Micah 7:17 They will lick the dust like a snake, like reptiles slithering on the ground. They will come trembling from their strongholds in the presence of the LORD our God; they will tremble in fear of You.