My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue hath cleaved to my jaws: and thou hast brought me down into the dust of death.
Rashi
my palate Heb. מלקוחי. This is the palate which is called palayc (palais) in Old French, gaumen in German. When a person is distressed, he has no saliva in his mouth. Menachem, however, interprets מלקוחי as etenayles in Old French (tongs), like (Isa. 6:6): “with tongs (במלקחים) he had taken it.” And the מלקוח is the teeth, which resemble a smith’s tongs. (The quotation from Menachem appears only in the Salonika edition of Rashi printed in 1515.) and in the dust of death To the crushing of death. You set me down Heb. תשפתני You set me down, an expression of setting a pot, as (in Ezek. 24:3, II Kings 4:38): “set on (שפת) the pot.” Menachem (p.179) interprets every expression of שפיתה as an expression of placing.
Hebrew and Aramaic words are the commentator’s citations of the sacred text; the English translation that follows each is the translator’s.
Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.