28
My soul melts from heaviness;
Strengthen me according to Your word.
My soul is heavy, give me strength in the promises of Your word
My Thoughts
As my Pastor is fond of telling people, I’ve been around for a minute. But in my time on this earth, I have not seen anyone who hasn’t struggled with grief or depression. The causes are too many to list; they can come from anywhere. But in all this, I want to point out that the Word says:
No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV
Don’t miss the “that you may be able to bear it” in the scripture above. It’s not saying that the temptation, the depression, the illness will necessarily be taken away, but God will make a way of escape from it. So come to the Lord in prayer and in that prayer lift the grief, the depression, the sin, whatever the situation is, and plead nothing but the word of God. The Bible is full of God’s answers, and when we are in situations where we have hit rock bottom, come to the Lord with an honest, open heart, and He will hear and take care of you. God wants to show His love for us; we need to come to Him and open up, and He will.
Psalm 119:28 expresses deep sorrow, as David laments the heaviness of his soul, feeling emotionally drained and burdened. Despite this anguish, he seeks strength through God’s word, affirming a reliance on divine promises for support during distress. The commentaries below illustrate David’s plight, with insights on the nature of sorrow as either intense or gradually wearing. Ultimately, the plea for strength highlights a hope rooted in faith, emphasizing the spiritual strength derived from scripture during times of emotional struggle.
Note: Psalm 119 is an acrostic pattern. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet; each of the 22 sections is given a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line in that section begins with that letter. Today, we’re looking at verse 28, which is in the 4th section, which is called ד DALETH. According to the hebrews4christians.com website, the letter Daleth is the 4th letter of the Aleph-Bet, having the numeric value of four. The pictograph for Dalet looks something like a closed (hanging) tent door. The bent shape of the valet symbolizes a needy person who is bent over; the meaning of the word Daleth is poor or impoverished, and it represents the lowliness of possessing nothing of one’s own. As a door, Daleth also symbolically represents the choice to open ourselves to the hope of our dreams or to remain closed off and alienated.
The eight verses of “ד DALETH” alphabetically arranged:
Verse 25. (D)epressed to the dust is my soul: quicken thou me according to thy word.
Verse 26. (D)eclared have I (to thee) my ways, and thou heardest me: teach me thy statutes.
Verse 27. (D)eclare thou to me the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.
Verse 28. (D)ropping (marg.) is my soul for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word.
Verse 29. (D)eceitful ways remove from me; and grant me thy law graciously.
Verse 30. (D)etermined have I upon the way of truth; thy judgments have I laid before me.
Verse 31. (D)eliberately I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, put me not to shame.
Verse 32. (D)ay by day I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.
—Theodore Kubber.
Bill
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Commentaries:
Charles Spurgeon
“My soul melteth for heaviness.” He was dissolving away in tears. The solid strength of his constitution was turning to liquid as if molten by the furnace heat of his afflictions. Heaviness of heart is a killing thing, and when it abounds, it threatens to turn life into a long death, in which a man seems to drop away in a perpetual drip of grief. Tears are the distillation of the heart; when a man weeps, he wastes away his soul. Some of us know what great heaviness means, for we have been brought under its power again and again, and often have we felt ourselves to be poured out like water, and near to being like water spilt upon the ground, never again to be gathered up. There is one good point in this downcast state, for it is better to be melted with grief than to be hardened by impenitence.
“Strengthen thou me according unto thy word.” He had found out an ancient promise that the saints shall be strengthened, and here he pleads it. His hope in his state of depression lies not in himself, but in his God; if he may be strengthened from on high, he will yet shake off his heaviness and rise to joy again. Observe how he pleads the promise of the word and asks for nothing more than to be dealt with after the recorded manner of the Lord of mercy. Had not Hannah sung, “He shall give strength unto his King, and exalt the horn of his anointed? God strengthens us by infusing grace through his word: the word which creates can certainly sustain. Grace can enable us to bear the constant fret of an abiding sorrow, it can repair the decay caused by the perpetual tear drip, and give to the believer the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Let us always resort to prayer in our despondent times, for it is the surest and shortest way out of the depths. In that prayer, let us plead nothing but the word of God; for there is no plea like a promise, no argument like a word from our covenant God.
Note how David records his inner soul life. In Psa 119:20 he says, “My soul breaketh;” in Psa 119:25, “My soul cleaveth to the dust;” and here, “My soul melteth.” Further on, in Psa 119:81, he cries, “My soul fainteth;” in Psa 119:109, “My soul is continually in my hand;” in Psa 119:167, “My soul hath kept thy testimonies;” and lastly, in Psa 119:175, “Let my soul live.” Some people do not even know that they have a soul, and here is David, all soul. What a difference there is between the spiritually living and the spiritually dead.
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Enduring Word
My soul melts from heaviness: The problems surrounding the psalmist (as seen in Psalm 119:17-24) made his soul heavy, as if it would melt. He felt that he had no strength or stability within. (Guzik)
Strengthen me according to Your word: Therefore, he prayed for strength, and that this strength would come both from and according to God’s word. (Guzik)
i. “The singer is bowed down, overwhelmed. He sorely needs succour and strength. How does he seek it? Not by asking for pity, but by a determined application to the law of his God.” (Morgan)
ii. “This melting heaviness has not wrought its work, until it has bowed us before the throne of grace with the pleading cry of faith – Strengthen thou me!” (Bridges)
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Albert Barnes
My soul melteth – Margin, “droppeth.” The Hebrew word here employed – דלף dâlaph – means to drop, to drip, to distill, spoken of a house, as when the rain drops through the roof, Ecclesiastes 10:18; then, to shed tears, to weep, Job 16:20 – and this seems to be the meaning here. The idea of melting is not properly in the word, and the term weep would better express the meaning. His soul seemed to drop tears. It overflowed with tears. Yet there is an idea of abundant or constant weeping. It is not a gush of emotion, as when we say of one that he is “bathed in tears;” it is the idea of a steady flow or dropping of tears – slow, silent, but constant – as if the soul were dripping away or dissolving. Thus, the idea is more striking and beautiful than that of melting. It is quiet but continuous grief that slowly wears away the soul. There are two kinds of sorrow:
(a) the one represented by floods of tears, like fierce torrents that sweep all away, and are soon passed;
(b) the other is the gentle dropping, the constant wearing – the slow attrition caused by inward grief, that secretly but certainly wears away the soul.
The latter is more common and more difficult to be borne than the other. The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate render this, “My soul slumbereth.”
For heaviness – This word means grief, sorrow, vexation. Proverbs 14:13; Proverbs 17:21. It is here silent grief; hidden sorrow. How many thus pine in secret, until life slowly wears away, and they sink to the grave.
Strengthen thou me – Give me strength to meet this constant wearing away – this slow work of sorrow. We need strength to bear great and sudden sorrow; we need it not less to bear that which constantly wears upon us, which makes our sleep uneasy; which preys upon our nerves, and slowly eats away our life.
According unto thy word – See Psalms 119:9, Psalms 119:25.
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John Gill
My soul melteth for heaviness,…. Like wax before the sun or fire; or flows like water; drops, as the word signifies, and dissolves into tears, through grief and sorrow for sins committed; or by reason of Satan’s temptations, or divine desertions, or grievous troubles and afflictions; which cause heaviness, lie heavy, and press hard;
strengthen thou me according unto thy word; to oppose corruptions, withstand temptations, bear up under trials and afflictions, and do the will of God. And the word of God is a means of strengthening his people to do these things; it is the spiritual bread which strengthens man’s heart, and in the strength of which, like Elijah, he walks many days, and goes from strength to strength: and there are many gracious words of promise, which may be pleaded with God to this purpose; that he will help, strengthen, and uphold his people; that he will renew their strength, and that as their day is their strength shall be.
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Matthew Henry
David’s representation of his own griefs: My soul melteth for heaviness, which is to the same purport with v. 25, My soul cleaveth to the dust. Heaviness in the heart of man makes it to melt, to drop away like a candle that wastes. The penitent soul melts in sorrow for sin, and even the patient soul may melt in the sense of affliction, and it is then its interest to pour out its supplication before God.
His request for God’s grace:
That God would enable him to bear his affliction well and graciously support him under it: “Strengthen thou me with strength in my soul, according to thy word, which, as the bread of life, strengthens man’s heart to undergo whatever God is pleased to inflict. Strengthen me to do the duties, resist the temptations, and bear up under the burdens of an afflicted state, that the spirit may not fail. Strengthen me according to that word (Deu. 33:25), As thy days so shall thy strength be.”
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Miscellaneous Quotes
“Strengthen thou me according unto thy word.” What is that word which David pleaded? “As thy days, so shall thy strength be,” Deu 33:25. “Will he plead against me,” said Job, “with his great power? No; but he will put strength in me,” Job 23:6.
—Charles Bridges.
“Strengthen thou me.” Gesenius translates this, “Keep me alive.” Thus, קיְּמֵנִי, in this verse, answers to חֵיֵּנִי, in the first verse [Psa 119:25]. This prayer for new strength, or life, is an entreaty that the waste of life through tears might be restored by the life-giving word.
—Frederick G. Marchant.
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Cross-References
Job 16:20 (KJV )
20 My friends scorn me:
But mine eye poureth out tears unto God.
Psalm 22:14 (KJV )
14 I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint:
My heart is like wax;
It is melted in the midst of my bowels.
Psalm 119:85–86 (KJV )
85 The proud have digged pits for me,
Which are not after thy law.
86 All thy commandments are faithful:
They persecute me wrongfully; help thou me.
Isaiah 40:29 (KJV )
29 He giveth power to the faint;
And to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
Deuteronomy 33:25 (KJV )
25 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass;
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
Psalm 27:14 (KJV )
14 Wait on the Lord:
Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart:
Wait, I say, on the Lord.
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Closing Thoughts
And I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall; And they will fight against you, But they shall not prevail against you; For I am with you to save you And deliver you,” says the Lord. “I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible.” Jeremiah 15:20-21 NKJV
ד DALETH
25
My soul clings to the dust;
Revive me according to Your word.
26
I have declared my ways, and You answered me;
Teach me Your statutes.
27
Make me understand the way of Your precepts;
So shall I meditate on Your wonderful works.
28
My soul melts from heaviness;
Strengthen me according to Your word.
29
Remove from me the way of lying,
And grant me Your law graciously.
30
I have chosen the way of truth;
Your judgments I have laid before me.
31
I cling to Your testimonies;
O Lord, do not put me to shame!
32
I will run the course of Your commandments,
For You shall enlarge my heart.
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