Psalms 102:3

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.

Ver. 3. For my days are consumed like smoke] Which the higher it mounteth the sooner it vanisheth. Some read it, in the smoke. So Psalms 119:83, "I am become like a bottle in the smoke," dried and withered, exsuccus et exsanguis.

And my bones are burnt as an hearth] Ossa mea quasi frixa contabuerunt. My strength is gone, Veluti sartagines (Arab.). Here, to the twelfth verse, is a most lively picture of a dejected person, such as can hardly be paralleled; teaching us to be deeply affected with the Church's afflictions.