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Psalm 103:16

For the wind passes over it, and it is gone. Its place remembers it no more.

14For he knows how we are made. He remembers that we are dust.
15As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
16For the wind passes over it, and it is gone. Its place remembers it no more.
17But the LORD’s loving kindness is from everlasting to everlasting with those who fear him, his righteousness to children’s children,
18to those who keep his covenant, to those who remember to obey his precepts.
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← Psalm 103:15Psalm 103:17 →
Notice

The wind passes over the flower and leaves an empty place, a spare picture of how human life ends and familiar places cease to remember.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

What does the flower’s empty place bring to mind about someone you have lost?

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How does God’s remembrance of human dust shape your reading of the place that forgets?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

9 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Isaiah 40:7The grass withers, the flower fades, because the LORD’s breath blows on it. Surely the people are like grass.Both compare human life to grass or flowers that perish beneath a passing breath or wind.
Psalm 37:10For yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more. Yes, though you look for his place, he isn’t there.Both describe an empty place after someone is gone; Psalm 37 speaks of the wicked, while Psalm 103 describes human frailty.
Job 20:9The eye which saw him will see him no more, neither will his place see him any more.Both portray a person’s absence through a place that no longer sees or remembers its former occupant.
Job 14:10But man dies, and is laid low. Yes, man gives up the spirit, and where is he?Both face human death, with Job asking where the person has gone and the psalm picturing the place left behind.
Job 7:10He will return no more to his house, neither will his place know him any more.Both picture a familiar place that no longer knows or remembers the person who once belonged there.
Job 7:6–10My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.Both use images of passing to describe human life; Job stresses days spent without hope, while the psalm stresses disappearance.
Genesis 5:24Enoch walked with God, and he was not found, for God took him.The shared thread is disappearance: Enoch is no longer found because God took him, while the psalm pictures a vanished flower.
Ecclesiastes 2:16For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no memory forever, since in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. Indeed, the wise man must …Both connect human death with fading remembrance; Ecclesiastes makes clear that wisdom does not spare a person from either.
Daniel 2:35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors. The …Both use wind sweeping something away and the loss of its place, though Daniel describes a shattered image.
Where this verse fits

Grief. aging. death and what comes after.

What the Bible says about grief →What the Bible says about death →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Read Psalm 103:14–18 aloud, pausing after verse 16

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Encouragement

The empty place is a hard image. The surrounding lines name God’s knowledge of human frailty and his everlasting loving kindness toward those who fear him.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 103:16. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

Keep goingPsalm 103 · the whole chapter with its connection mapPsalms · every chapterBuild a reading plan through Psalms

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).