Psalms 119:83

For I am become like a bottle in the smoke.

The wineskin in the smoke

Ewald and Delitzsch read, “Although I am become as a wineskin hung in the smoke, yet do I not forget Thy statutes.” As a possible alternative read, “For I am become as a wineskin in the smoke, because I do not forget Thy statutes.” The allusion is to the fidelity of a good man under severe pressures of trial and affliction. Though under these pressures he shrinks and wastes, and blackens like a wineskin hung in the smoke of the chimney fire, he still remembers the Divine statutes; he still holds fast his faith in God and duty. Or the allusion is to the secret and reward of this fidelity. For it was a custom of the ancients (Rosenmuller) to hang wineskins in the smoke of a fire for very much the same reason that we sometimes stand a claret bottle on the hearth, in order to mellow the wine by a gradual and moderate warmth, and to bring it to an earlier perfection. In that custom the psalmist finds an illustration of the meaning, and of the mercy of the afflictions to which he has been exposed. They have been sent to act on him like the warm smoke on the wine, to refine, mellow, and ripen his character; and because, under them all, he has refused to part with his faith in God and duty, because he has been true to God and God’s statutes, they have had their intended and proper effect upon him.

1. What was the character of the man who uses this quaint and homely figure? He lived in one of the latest periods of Hebrew literature; when the Jews were groaning under the tyranny of foreign, i.e. of Gentile, rulers, who hated “the Hebrew superstition” almost as much as the Hebrew obstinacy; and thus we get a valuable glimpse into the larger outward conditions of his life, which every section of the psalm verifies and confirms. He evidently loved the Word of God so dearly that he was never weary of meditating on its different aspects of law and promise, comfort and judgment. His love of God’s Word, his confidence in God, had been profoundly tried. The time was out of joint. The wicked were in power, and strained their power to injure and abase him. It was his very righteousness, his deference to God’s authority rather than theirs, his devotion to God’s will, which provoked their hostility. And yet no comfort came to him through prayer; there was no comfort, save from the Word, which he would not let go. Note one special quality in this man. He is not only a poet, and a man well versed in affairs; he is a poet of a quaint, a peculiar turn, who loves to set himself difficult feats, and takes a singular pleasure in achieving them. He is one who can express a very sincere and even passionate love in an elaborate artifice. We have all known a few such men as this. They have a remarkable power over as many as love them.

2. It is this psalmist’s constant loyalty of soul, his profound and steadfast devotion to God, God’s will, and God’s Word, which we most need to bear in mind. It is his good fidelity which entitles him to teach, and enables him to comfort us.

3. Turn the verse round, and let it suggest the reason of his indomitable faith, his brave and cheerful confidence under the sharpest pressures of trial. Read “because I do not forget Thy statutes.” Remember what has been said of the customs of the ancient vintners, and you will see the figure of the text suggests to those who do not forget God’s statutes, that trials are a discipline which refines, mellows, ripens their character, brings them to an earlier perfection than they could otherwise reach, and fits them more rapidly for the service of God and man. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)

A picture of a sad life

I. Here is a Shrivelled life. The empty leathern bottles, hung up in the unchimneyed houses of the East, get shrivelled in the heat. There are human lives--

1. Shrivelled in their thoughts. There is nothing broad or elastic in their conceptions, their whole mental natures run into a few miserable smoky dogmas.

2. Shrivelled in their sympathies. Narrow thinkings and selfish habits contract the soul that should expand into a seraph into a miserable grub.

II. Here is an unlovely life. A shrivelled leathern bottle, black with smoke, has nothing in it to admire, nothing to charm the eye or even to invite the touch. Unlovely lives are by no means uncommon.

III. Here is a useless life. So long as the bottle is hung up, shrivelled and black in the smoky apartment, it is of no service whatever. What millions there are of every generation who have been of no service to the universe. (Homilist.)

A bottle in the smoke

I. God’s people have their trials.

1. Sometimes these trials arise from poverty. It is the poverty of the Arab that puts his bottle in the Smoke; so the poverty of Christians exposes them to much trouble, and inasmuch as God’s people are for the most part poor, for that reason must they always be for the most part in affliction.

2. Our trials frequently result from our comforts. Christian men l you have extraordinary fires, which others have never kindled; expect them to have extraordinary smoke. You have the presence of Christ; but then you will have the smoke of fear lest you should lose it. You have the joy of assurance; but you have also the smoke of doubt, which blows into your eyes and well nigh blinds you. You have your trials, and your trials arise from your comforts. The more comfort you have, the more fire you have, the more sorrows shall you have, and the more smoke.

3. The poor bottle in the smoke keeps there for a long time till it gets black; it is not just one puff of smoke that comes upon it; the smoke is always going up, always girding the poor bottle; it lives in an atmosphere of smoke. So some of us hang up like bottles in the smoke for months, or for a whole year. No sooner do you get out of one trouble than you tumble into another. Well, that was the condition of David; he was not just sometimes in trial, but it seemed as if trials came to him every day. Well, if this is your case, fear not, you are not alone in your trials; but you see the truth of what is uttered here: you are become like bottles in the smoke.

II. Christian men feel their troubles. They are in the smoke; and they are like bottles in the smoke. There are some things that you might hang up in the smoke for many a day, and they would never be much changed, because they are so black now that they could never be made any blacker, and so shrivelled now that they never could become any worse. But the poor skin bottle shrivels up in the heat, gets blacker, and shows at once the effect of the smoke; it is not an unfeeling thing, like a stone, but it is at once affected. Now, some men think that grace makes a man unable to feel suffering; I have heard people insinuate that the martyrs did not endure much pain when they were being burned to death; but this is a mistake, Christian men are not like stones; they are like bottles in the smoke. In fact, if there be any difference, a Christian man feels his trials more than another, because he traces them to God.

III. Christians, though they have troubles, and feel their troubles, do not in their troubles forget God’s statutes. What are God’s statutes? God has two kinds of statutes, both of them engraved in eternal brass. The first are the statutes of His commands; and of these He has said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the law shall fail till all be fulfilled.” These statutes are like the statutes of the Medea and Persians; they are binding upon all His people. Well, the psalmist said, “In the midst of my trials I have not swerved from Thy statutes; I have not attempted to violate Thy commands; I have not in any way moved from the strict path of integrity; and in the midst of all my persecutions I have gone straight on, never once forgetting God’s statutes or commands.” And then again: there are statutes of promise which are equally firm, each of them as immortal as God who uttered them. David did not forget these; for he said of them, “Thy statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage”; and he could not have sung about them if he had forgotten them. Why was it David still held fast by God’s statutes? First of all, David was not a bottle in the fire, or else he would have forgotten them. Our trials are smoke, but not fire; they are very uncomfortable, but they do not consume us. Another reason why, when David was in the smoke, he did not forget God’s statutes was this, that Jesus Christ was in the smoke with him, and the statutes were in the smoke with him too. God’s statutes have been in the fire, as well as God’s people. Both the promise and the precept are in the furnace; and if I hang up in the smoke, like a bottle, I see hanging up by my side God’s commands, covered with soot and smoke, subject to the same perils. Suppose I am persecuted: it is a comfort to know that men do not persecute me, but my Master’s truth. Another reason why David did not forget the statutes was, they were in the soul, where the smoke does not enter. Smoke does not enter the interior of the bottle; it only affects the exterior. So it is with God’s children: the smoke does not enter into their hearts; Christ is there, and grace is there, and Christ and grace are both unaffected by the smoke. Come up, clouds of smoke! curl upward till ye envelop me! Still will I hang on the Nail, Christ Jesus--that sure Nail, which never can be moved from its place--and I will feel, that “while the outward man decayeth, the inward man is renewed day by day”; and the statutes being there, I do not forget them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)