My soul melts for heaviness: strengthen me according unto your word.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
28. Finally he addeth, "Intimate to me the way of Thy righteousness" (ver. 27); or, as some copies have it, "instruct me;" which is expressed more closely from the Greek, "Make me to understand the way of Thy righteousnesses; so shall I be exercised in Thy wondrous things." These higher commandments, which he desireth to understand by edification, he calleth the wondrous things of God. There are then some righteousnesses of God so wondrous, that human weakness may be believed incapable of fulfilling them by those who have not tried. Whence the Psalmist, struggling and wearied with the difficulty of obeying them, saith, "My soul hath slumbered for very heaviness: O stablish Thou me with Thy word!" (ver. 28). What meaneth, hath slumbered? save that he hath cooled in the hope which he had entertained of being able to reach them. But, he addeth, "Stablish Thou me with Thy word:" that I may not by slumbering fall away from those duties which I feel that I have already attained: stablish Tho...
Slumbered. Enustaxen, for which Origen, thinking it a mistake of copyists, substituted estaxen, "has melted "(Calmet) or "distilled "(Aquila, Heracleot.) as more conformable to the original, though the sense is much the same. Loss of blood often causes people to slumber. (Berthier)
St. Hilary would not abandon the Septuagint. (Calmet)
Heaviness, being in such anxiety, as to be almost distracted. (Worthington)
Chaldean, "has been in an agony. "Sleep is often put for death. (Calmet)
My soul perishes through grief. (Houbigant)
Hence the three apostles slept, Luke xxii. (Haydock)
Akedia, or torpor of mind, hinders the persecution of any business. (Menochius)
