Psalms 103:16

Psa 103:16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

Ver. 16. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone] Heb. it is not; that is, it neither continues any longer in being nor returns any more into being: so here, Job 14:7-12.

And the place thereof shall know it no more] Though, while it stood and flourished, the place of it seemed as it were to know nothing but it, the glory and beauty of it drew all eyes to it, &c. Think the same of men in their flourish, soon forgotten, as dead men out of mind, Psa 31:12.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psa_103:16

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

The autumn wind: an emblem of death

I. The autumn wind works gradually. Blade by blade, the herbs wither under its influence; and leaf by leaf, the tree is stripped of its foliage. Thus on gradually until all is dust. So death works gradually. We die daily.

II. The autumn wind works universally. It is on all herbage, in all forests, it withers all, sows death everywhere. All are dying, individuals, families, nations, the whole generation.

III. The autumn wind works insidiously. Only occasionally does it come with the rush of violence, and scatter the leaves. Quietly, invisibly, insidiously it works. So does death. It is working in their systems when men are utterly unconscious of it. The wind passeth over it and it is gone. And when the wind of death passeth over us, we are gone, gone for ever. (Homilist.)

Soon forgotten

We shall sleep none the less sweetly, though none be talking about us over our heads. The world has a short memory, and, as the years go on the list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is harder and harder to find room to write a new name on it, or to read the old. The letters on the tombstones are soon erased by the feet that tramp across the churchyard. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16. (Psa 103:16) For a breath passes over him and he is not, and no more shall his place know him. The pronouns may with equal grammatical correctness, be referred to the grass and rendered it, its. The primary meaning of the first noun (breath) is, in this connection, stronger than the secondary (wind). The wind may be a whirlwind; but to say that a mere breath is sufficient to destroy one is the strongest possible expression of fragility. That the wind is called the breath of God, as the thunder is his voice, is a striking and poetical but needless supposition. He is not or no more, there is none of him, no such thing or person. See above, on Psa 37:10. With the first clause compare Isa 40:7; with the second, Job 7:10. The last verb means to recognise or know again, as in Psa 142:4, and the whole clause, that death makes men strangers to the objects with which they have been most familiar.

Joseph Addison Alexander, The Psalms Translated and Explained (1850) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Verse 16. The wind passeth over it] Referring perhaps to some blasting pestilential wind.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(16) The wind—i.e., the hot, scorching blast, as in Isa_40:7. Even in our humid climate, it may be said of a flower—

“If one sharp wind sweep o’er the field,

It withers in an hour.”

But the pestilential winds of the East are described as bringing a heat like that of an oven, which immediately blasts every green thing.

Know it no more.—Comp. Job_7:10. Man vanishes away without leaving a trace behind. The pathos of the verse has been well caught in the well-known lines of Gray:—

“One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite tree:

Another came, nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.”

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16. The verse may refer to the withering of the flower (A.V.), but it is more poetical to understand it metaphorically of the disappearance of the man.

For a wind passeth over him, and he is not,

And his place shall know him no more.

“The east wind, blowing over the desert in summer, is dry and parching, and withers up all vegetation.” Tristram, Nat. Hist. p. 34. Cp. Hos_13:15. The second line is from Job_7:10; cp. Job_8:18, Job_20:9.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

To such as keep his covenant,.... The covenant of grace, which is peculiarly the Lord's covenant, as distinct from man's; and which he keeps himself, and is ever mindful of it. This he makes known to his people at conversion; his secret is with them, and he shows them his covenant; the blessings and promises of it; their interest in them, and in himself, as their covenant God: which they "observe" (c), as the word here used signifies; and observing it, they lay hold upon it by faith, as belonging to them; and laying hold upon it, they "keep" it as their own, and keep it fast, and will not part with their interest in it for all the world.

And to those that remember his commandments to do them; some read them and hear them, but forget them, at least to do them: these are like a man that beholds his face in a glass, and forgets what manner of man he is; so James compares one that is a forgetful hearer, and not a doer of the word, Jam 1:23. The commandments of God are best remembered, so as to be done, when he puts his laws into the minds of men, and writes them in their hearts, and puts his Spirit within them, to cause them to walk in his statutes, and do them, Jer 31:34.

(c) "observantes", Junius & Tremellius; so Piscator, Gejerus.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone - Margin, as in Hebrew, “it is not.” The reference is either to a hot and burning wind, that dries up the flower; or to a furious wind that tears it from its stem; or to a gentle breeze that takes off its petals as they loosen their hold, and are ready to fall. So man falls - as if a breath - a breeze - came over him, and he is gone. How easily is man swept off! How little force, apparently, does it require to remove the most beautiful and blooming youth of either sex from the earth! How speedily does beauty vanish; how soon, like a fading flower, does such a one pass away!

And the place thereof shall know it no more - That is, It shall no more appear in the place where it was seen and known. The “place” is here personified as if capable of recognizing the objects which are present, and as if it missed the things which were once there. They are gone. So it will soon be in all the places where we have been; where we have been seen; where we have been known. In our dwellings; at our tables; in our places of business; in our offices, counting-rooms, studies, laboratories; in the streets where we have walked from day to day; in the pulpit, the court-room, the legislation-hall; in the place of revelry or festivity; in the prayer-room, the Sabbath-school, the sanctuary - we shall be seen no longer. We shall be gone: and the impression on those who are there, and with whom we have been associated, will be best expressed by the language, “he is gone!” Gone; - where? No one that survives can tell. All that they whom we leave will know will be that we are absent - that we are “gone.” But to us now, how momentous the inquiry, “Where shall we be, when we are gone from among the living?” Other places will “know” us; will it be in heaven, or hell?

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

A blasting or stormy wind bloweth upon it, and there is no more any appearance nor remembrance of it in the place where it stood and flourished.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ver. 16. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. Only a little wind is needed, not even a scythe is demanded, a breath can do it, for the flower is so frail.

"If one sharp wind sweep over the field,

It withers in an hour."

How small a portion of deleterious gas suffices to create a deadly fever, which no art of man can stay. No need of sword or bullet, a puff of foul air is deadlier far, and fails not to lay low the healthiest and most stalwart son of man.

And the place thereof shall know it no more. The flower blooms no more. It may have a successor, but as for itself its leaves are scattered, and its perfume will never again sweeten the evening air. Man also dies and is gone, gone from his old haunts, his dear home, and his daily labours, never to return. As far as this world is concerned, he is as though he never had been; the sun rises, the moon increases or wanes, summer and winter run their round, the rivers flow, and all things continue in their courses as though they missed him not, so little a figure does he make in the affairs of nature. Perhaps a friend will note that he is gone, and say,

"One morn. I missed him on the accustomed hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;

Another came, nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he."

But when the "dirges due" are silent, beyond a mound of earth, and perhaps a crumbling stone, how small will be the memorial of our existence upon this busy scene! True there are more enduring memories, and an existence of another kind coeval with eternity, but these belong, not to our flesh, which is but grass, but to a higher life, in which we rise to close fellowship with the Eternal.

Ver. 16. The wind passeth over it, and it is gone, etc. A breath of air, a gentle wind (xwr) passes over him and he is gone. It would not be so strange if a tempest, a whirlwind, passing over should sweep him away. The Psalmist means much more than this. The gentlest touch, the whispering breeze, bears him off. He soon becomes a stranger, no more known in the little space he once filled, going out and coming in. Henry Cowles.

Ver. 16. The wind passeth over it, and it is gone. It is well known that a hot wind in the east destroys at once every green thing. Nor is this to be wondered at, if, as Dr. Russell says, the winds sometimes "bring with them a degree and kind of heat, which one would imagine came out of an oven, and which, when it blows hard, will affect metals within the houses, such as locks of room doors, nearly as much as if they had been exposed to the rays of the sun." The blasting effect which seems to be here alluded to, of certain pestilential winds upon the animal frame, is by no means exaggerated by the comparison to the sudden fading of a flower. Maillet describes hundreds of persons in a caravan as stifled on the spot by the fire and dust, of which the deadly wind, that sometimes prevails in the eastern deserts, seems to be composed. And Sir John Chardin describes this wind "as making a great hissing noise, "and says that "it appears red and fiery, and kills those whom it strikes by a kind of stifling them, especially when it happens in the day time." Richard Mant.

Ver. 16. The place thereof shall know him no more, &c. Man, once turned to dust, is blown about by every wind, from place to place; and what knows the place, when dust falls upon it; whether it be the dust of a prince, or of a peasant; whether of a man, or of a beast? And must not man then needs be very miserable, when time and place, the two best helps of life, do both forsake him? for what help can he have of time, when his days are but as grass? What help of place, when his place denies him, and will not know him? Sir R. Baker.

Psalms 103:17*

Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

16. The wind passeth over it—The allusion is to the east and southeast winds, which, coming from the hot desert of Arabia, pass over Palestine with vehemence, destroying life, withering grass and herbage, and exhausting the strength of men and animals. See Eze_17:10; Eze_19:12; Hos_13:15.

It is gone—Hebrew, It is not. Such is our transient, mortal life. But the language applies specially to wicked and worldly men who have their portion in this life and forget God. See Job_20:9; Psa_37:10; Psa_73:19-20.

The place thereof shall know it no more— Taken almost literally from Job_7:8

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; literally, it is not. The burning sirocco, the wind of the desert, variously named in various places, blows upon the flower, and almost immediately scorches it up. So man, when he flourishes most, is for the most part brought low by the wind of suffering, trouble, sickness, calamity, and sinks out of sight. And the place thereof shall know it no more; rather, knows it no more. Seeing it not, forgets it, as if it had never been. So with the greatest men they pass away and are forgotten. (comp. Job_7:10)

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For a wind passes over him If mortal illness passes over him.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.