Psalms 101:4
For my days are vanished like smoke: and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire.
Open Psalms 101:4 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quia defecerunt sicut fumus dies mei, et ossa mea sicut cremium aruerunt.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὅτι ἐξέλιπον ὡσεὶ καπνὸς αἱ ἡμέραι μου, καὶ τὰ ὀστᾶ μου ὡσεὶ φρύγιον συνεφρύγησαν.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 102:4
- כִּֽי כָל֣וּ בְעָשָׁ֣ן יָמָ֑י וְ֝עַצְמוֹתַ֗י כְּמוֹ קֵ֥ד נִחָֽרוּ
Haydock's commentary
Fire. Cremium denotes any combustible matter. (Colum. xii. 19.) (St. Jerome) (Calmet)
While in mortal sin, our best actions, alms, &c., avail nothing, 1 Corinthians xiii. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CII
4. “For my days are consumed away like smoke” ( ver. 3 ). O days! if days: for where day is heard of, light is understood. “My days,” my times; wherefore, “like smoke,” unless from the puffing up of pride?…See smoke, like pride, ascending, swelling, vanishing: deservedly therefore failing, and not stedfast. “And my bones are scorched up as it were in an oven.” Both my bones, and my strength, not without tribulation, not without burning. The bones of the body of Christ, the strength of His body, is it anywhere greater than in the Holy Apostles? And yet see that the bones are scorched. “Who is offended, and I burn not?” They are brave, faithful, able interpreters and preachers of the word, living as they speak, speaking as they hear; they are clearly brave, yet all who suffer offences, are an oven to them. For there is love there, and more so in the bones. …