Bible Strands
Psalms 109:23
I am fading away like a lengthening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The psalmist speaks in the first person to God during a period of acute physical depletion and emotional distress. This declaration follows his admission of poverty and a wounded heart, and immediately precedes his account of fasting-weakened knees and a gaunt body.
The words — The phrase כְּצֵל־כְּנִטוֹתוֹ (kəṣēl-ḵənitōtô) literally means "like a shadow that stretches out," paired with נִנְעַרְתִּי (ninnəʿartî), "I have been shaken off," to form the locust comparison. These terms describe rapid dissolution and involuntary displacement rather than gradual decline.
The thread — The shadow metaphor for human transience appears in 1 Chronicles 29:15 and Job 14:2, while the locust image of swift removal is used in Exodus 10:19. Both motifs trace a consistent biblical pattern of fragile existence subject to external, often divine, forces.
Why it lands — The verse requires acknowledgment of physical decline and mortality as observable facts. It asks the reader to accept human fragility without seeking consolation or spiritualizing the description.
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
I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.
Cross-references
- Exodus 10:19 And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind that carried off the locusts and blew them into the Red Sea. Not a single locust remained anywhere in Egypt.
- 1 Chronicles 29:15 For we are foreigners and strangers in Your presence, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.
- Job 14:2 Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
- Psalms 102:10 because of Your indignation and wrath, for You have picked me up and cast me aside.
- Exodus 10:13 So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and throughout that day and night the LORD sent an east wind across the land. By morning the east wind had brought the locusts.
- Psalms 144:4 Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.
- Ecclesiastes 6:12 For who knows what is good for a man during the few days in which he passes through his fleeting life like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will come after him under the sun?
- Ecclesiastes 8:13 Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.
- James 4:14 You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.