Read
Psalm 109:23
I fade away like an evening shadow. I am shaken off like a locust.
21But deal with me, GOD the Lord, for your name’s sake, because your loving kindness is good, deliver me;
22for I am poor and needy. My heart is wounded within me.
23I fade away like an evening shadow. I am shaken off like a locust.
24My knees are weak through fasting. My body is thin and lacks fat.
25I have also become a reproach to them. When they see me, they shake their head.
Notice
An evening shadow fades and a locust is shaken off: these images express the frailty of someone whose strength and place among others feel precarious.
Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.
Which image, the fading shadow or the shaken-off locust, comes closer to something you have experienced?
Write on thisWhat would you want to tell God about a time you felt as disposable as that locust?
Write on thisConnect
Where else Scripture says this
12 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
Psalm 102:11My days are like a long shadow. I have withered like grass.Both speakers compare their fading lives to a shadow, pairing it with another image of frailty.
Psalm 144:4Man is like a breath. His days are like a shadow that passes away.Both use a passing shadow to describe human frailty, with Psalm 109 speaking from personal distress.
Exodus 10:19The LORD sent an exceedingly strong west wind, which took up the locusts, and drove them into the Red Sea. There remained not one locust in all the borders of …Both depict locusts being removed: one is a comparison for the speaker, while Exodus describes wind driving locusts out of Egypt.
Job 14:2He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.Job's fleeing shadow and the psalm's evening shadow both portray a life that cannot hold its place.
1 Chronicles 29:15For we are strangers before you and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining.Both compare life to a shadow, expressing how little permanence human beings possess on earth.
Psalm 102:10–11because of your indignation and your wrath; for you have taken me up and thrown me away.Both speakers describe being cast aside, though Psalm 102 names God as the one who has thrown the speaker away.
Ecclesiastes 6:12For who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he spends like a shadow? For who can tell a man what will be after him under …Both describe human life through a shadow; Ecclesiastes also voices uncertainty about what is good and what comes afterward.
Job 17:7My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow. All my members are as a shadow.Both speakers use a shadow to describe their diminished condition, with Job naming sorrow as the cause.
James 4:14Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.The fading shadow and the vanishing vapor both express how brief and fragile human life is.
Ecclesiastes 8:13But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he lengthen days like a shadow, because he doesn’t fear God.Both connect shadows with life's duration, though Ecclesiastes speaks about the wicked and Psalm 109 describes the speaker's distress.
Exodus 10:13Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD brought an east wind on the land all that day, and all night; and when it was morning, the …Locusts are the shared detail: Exodus describes their arrival on the wind, while the psalm compares the speaker to one shaken off.
Job 7:4When I lie down, I say, ‘When will I arise, and the night be gone?’ I toss and turn until the dawning of the day.Both speakers describe distress, though Job recounts a sleepless night and the psalm pictures fading away and being shaken off.
Where this verse fits
Illness or diagnosis. aging. loneliness.
One step
Something small to carry out of this verse
Encouragement
The speaker brings his fading strength into a plea for God's help. Your prayer can include such frailty; his appeal rests on the goodness of God's loving kindness.
Now put it in your words.
Start an entry on Psalm 109:23. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.
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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).