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Psalm 109:24

My knees are weak through fasting. My body is thin and lacks fat.

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.
26Help me, LORD, my God. Save me according to your loving kindness;
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← Psalm 109:23Psalm 109:25 →
Notice

Weak knees and a thinning body make the cost of fasting tangible here, within a prayer spoken from need and under the gaze of mockers.

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

How does this account of fasting compare with what you expect devotion to look like?

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What would you want to tell God about your own body after reading this prayer?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

10 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
Matthew 6:16“Moreover when you fast, don’t be like the hypocrites, with sad faces. For they disfigure their faces that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Most …Both passages mention fasting and bodily appearance; the psalm describes weakness, while Jesus warns against altering appearance to gain attention.
Psalm 22:14I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me.Both prayers describe distress through the body, with weak knees in one and disjointed bones and a melting heart in the other.
Hebrews 12:12Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees,Weak knees appear in both texts: the psalm reports them, while Hebrews urges its readers to strengthen feeble knees.
Psalm 32:3–4When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.Both speakers describe bodily wasting, though Psalm 109 names fasting and Psalm 32 describes silence and groaning.
Matthew 4:2When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.Both texts acknowledge the physical cost of fasting: weakness and thinness in the psalm, hunger in Matthew.
Job 16:8You have shriveled me up. This is a witness against me. My leanness rises up against me. It testifies to my face.Both speakers describe their own thinness in distress; Job also portrays his leanness as a witness against him.
Psalm 102:4–5My heart is blighted like grass, and withered, for I forget to eat my bread.Both prayers connect distress with going without food, through fasting in Psalm 109 and forgotten bread in Psalm 102.
Psalm 35:13–14But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I afflicted my soul with fasting. My prayer returned into my own bosom.Both psalms describe fasting within prayerful distress, with Psalm 35 specifying that others' sickness prompted the fasting.
Job 19:20My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.Both speakers describe severe thinness in concrete bodily terms, naming lost fat or bones that stick to skin.
2 Corinthians 11:27in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, and in cold and nakedness.Both texts include fasting in accounts of bodily hardship; Paul also names hunger, thirst, cold, and nakedness.
Where this verse fits

Burnout. illness or diagnosis. grief.

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One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Name one bodily limit in prayer to God

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Encouragement

The prayer continues from a body worn down by fasting. You do not need to hide bodily weakness from God; the plea for help rests on his loving kindness.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 109:24. 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 109 · 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).