Made old - Or, wasted: his strength slowly wasted as he pined away in sorrow.

He hath broken my bones - This clause completes the representation of the sufferer's physical agonies. Here the idea is that of acute pain.

My flesh and my skin hath he made old,.... His flesh with blows, and his skin with smiting, as the Targum; his flesh was so emaciated, and his skin so withered and wrinkled, that he looked like an old man; as our Lord, when little more than thirty years of age, what with his sorrows and troubles, looked like one about fifty:

he hath broken my bones; that is, his strength was greatly weakened, which lay in his bones; and he could not stir to help himself, any more than a man whose bones are broken; and was in as much pain and distress as if this had been his case; otherwise it was not literally true, either of the Jews, or of Jeremiah, or of Christ.

My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.

3:4 Made old - All my beauty is gone, and all my strength.

4-6. (Job 16:8).

3:1-20 The prophet relates the more gloomy and discouraging part of his experience, and how he found support and relief. In the time of his trial the Lord had become terrible to him. It was an affliction that was misery itself; for sin makes the cup of affliction a bitter cup. The struggle between unbelief and faith is often very severe. But the weakest believer is wrong, if he thinks that his strength and hope are perished from the Lord.