Bible Strands
Psalms 69:11
I made sackcloth my clothing, and I was sport to them.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses God and the community during a period of public reproach for his acts of mourning and fasting. He reports that his voluntary adoption of sackcloth as a garment of grief turned him into a target for social ridicule.
The words — The text foregrounds שָׂק (Sak), meaning sackcloth, and לְמָשָׁל (le.ma.Shal), literally "a byword" or object of mockery. These terms record the concrete shift from private devotion to public spectacle, where mourning attire becomes a marker of social exclusion.
The thread — The motif of the faithful becoming a byword runs through Job 17:6, where the sufferer is made a target for contempt, and Jeremiah 24:9, which declares that covenant failure produces an object of scorn. It echoes the covenant warning in 1 Kings 9:7, where national disgrace replaces divine presence.
Why it lands — The verse demands acknowledgment that religious devotion frequently incurs social cost and public mockery. It asks the reader to treat ridicule as a documented outcome of faithful practice rather than proof of divine rejection.
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 made sackcloth also my garment; and I became a proverb to them.
Cross-references
- 1 Kings 9:7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have sanctified for My Name. Then Israel will become an object of scorn and ridicule among all peoples.
- Job 17:6 He has made me a byword among the people, a man in whose face they spit.
- Jeremiah 24:9 I will make them a horror and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a disgrace and an object of scorn, ridicule, and cursing wherever I have banished them.
- Deuteronomy 28:37 You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the LORD will drive you.
- Psalms 35:13 Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting, but my prayers returned unanswered.
- Psalms 44:13 You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, a mockery and derision to those around us.
- Isaiah 20:2 the LORD had already spoken through Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, “Go, remove the sackcloth from your waist and the sandals from your feet.” And Isaiah did so, walking around naked and barefoot.
- Isaiah 22:12 On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
- Joel 1:8 Wail like a virgin dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth.
- Joel 1:13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.