“For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet
do I not forget they statutes.”-Psalm 119:83.
The figure of “a bottle in the smoke” is essentially
oriental; we must therefore go to the East for its
explanation. This we will supply to our hearers and
readers in the words of the Author of the Pictorial
Bible: “This doubtless refers to a leathern bottle, of
kid or goat-skin. The peasantry of Asia keep many
articles, both dry and liquid, in such bottles, which,
for security, are suspended from the roof, or hung
against the walls of their humble dwellings. Here they
soon become quite black with smoke; for as, in the
dwellings of the peasantry, there are seldom any
chimneys, and the smoke can only escape through an
aperture in the roof, or by the door, the apartment is
full of dense smoke whenever a fire is kindled in it.
And in those nights and days, when the smokiness of the
hovels in which we daily rested during a winter’s
journey in Persia, Armenia, and Turkey, seemed to make
the cold and weariness of actual travel a relief, we
had ample occasion to observe the peculiar blackness of
such skin vessels, arising from the manner in which
substances offering a surface of this sort, receive the
full influence of the smoke, and detain the minute
particles of soot which rest upon them. When such
vessels do not contain liquids, and are not quite
filled by the solids which they hold, they contract a
shrunk and shrivelled appearance, to which the Psalmist
may also possibly allude as well as to the blackness.
But we presume that the leading idea refers to the
latter circumstance, as in the East blackness has an
opposite signification to the felicitous meaning of
whiteness. David had doubtless seen bottles of this
description hanging up in his tent when a wanderer; and
though he might have had but few in his palace, yet in
the cottages of his own poor people he had, no doubt,
witnessed them. Hence he says of himself, ‘I am
become,’ by trouble and affliction, by trial and
persecution, ‘like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not
forget thy statutes.’”
First, God’s people have their trials-they get put in
the smoke; secondly, God’s people feel their
trials-they “become like a bottle in the smoke;”
thirdly, God’s people do not forget God’s statutes in
their trials-”I am become like a bottle in the smoke;
yet do I not forget thy statutes.”
I. GOD’S PEOPLE HAVE THEIR TRIALS. This is an old
truth, as old as the everlasting hills, because trials
were in the covenant, and certainly the covenant is as
old as the eternal mountains. It was never designed by
God when he chose his people, that they should be an
untried people; that they should be chosen to peace and
safety, to perpetual happiness here below, and freedom
from sickness and the pains of mortality. But rather,
on the other hand, when he made the covenant, he made
the rod of the covenant too; when he drew up the
charter of privileges, he also drew up the charter of
chastisements; when he gave us the roll of heirship, he
put down the rods amongst the things to which we should
inevitably be heirs. Trials are a part of our lot; they
were predestinated for us in God’s solemn decrees; and
so surely as the stars are fashioned by his hands, he
has fixed their orbits, so surely are our trials
weighed in scales; he has predestinated their season
and their place, their intensity and the effect they
shall have upon us. Good men must never expect to
escape troubles; if they do, they shall be
disappointed; some of their predecessors have escaped
them.
“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”
Mark Job, of whose patience ye have heard; read ye well
of Abraham, for he had his trials, and by his faith
under them, when he offered up Isaac, he became “the
father of the faithful.” Note ye well the biographies
of all the patriarchs, of all the prophets, of all the
apostles and martyrs, and you shall discover none of
those, whom God made vessels of mercy, who were not
hung up like bottles in the smoke. It is ordained of
old, that the cross of trouble, even as the sparks fly
upwards; and when born again, it does seem as if we had
a birth to double trouble; and double toil and trouble
come to the man who hath double grace and double mercy
bestowed upon him. Good men must have their trials;
they must expect to be like bottles in the smoke.
Sometimes these trials arise from the poverty of their
condition. It is the bottle in the cottage which gets
into the smoke, not the bottle in the palace. The
Queen’s plate knows nothing of smoke; we have seen at
Windsor how carefully it is preserved; it knoweth
nothing of trial, no hands are allowed to touch that,
so as to injure it, although even it may be stolen by
accident when the guards are not careful over it.
Still, it was not intended to be subject to smoke. So
with God’s poor people; they must expect to have smoke
in their dwellings. We should suppose that smoke does
not enter into the house of the rich, although even
then our supposition would be false; but certainly we
must suppose there is more smoke where the chimney is
ill built, and the home is altogether of bad
construction. It is the poverty of the Arab that puts
his bottle in the smoke; so the poverty of Christians
exposes them to much trouble, and inasmuch as God’s
people are for the most part poor, for that reason must
they always be for the most part in affliction. We
shall not find many of God’s people in the higher
ranks; not many of them shall ever be illustrious in
this world. Until happier times come, when kings shall
be their nursing fathers, and queens their nursing
mothers, it must still be true that “God hath chosen
the poor in this world, rich in faith, that they should
be heirs of the kingdom.” Poverty hath its privileges,
for Christ hath lived in it; but it hath its ills, it
hath its smoke, it hath it trials. Ye know not
sometimes how ye shall be provided for; ye are often
pinched for food and raiment, ye are vexed with anxious
cares, ye wonder whence tomorrow’s food shall come, and
where ye shall obtain your daily supplies. It is
because of your poverty that ye are hung up like a
bottle in the smoke.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
