For the body and soul worn down by sorrow.

The psalm shows sorrow as a wasting of the whole person, not a private ache sealed inside the mind. The eye grows dim, the soul and body waste away with grief, life is spent with sorrow, and even the bones are wasted. The image is a person reduced by affliction until strength seems to have no reserve left.

The speaker does not pretend that prayer requires a strong body or an undisturbed soul. He brings distress itself before Yahweh and asks for mercy. Yet the line about iniquity also keeps the prayer honest: sometimes grief is tangled with guilt, and weakness can be intensified by what we have done. I often want to explain my sorrow quickly, either by blaming myself entirely or by denying any need for repentance. Scripture does neither. It names the wasting, confesses iniquity, and still turns toward mercy. Grief can spend the body without spending Christ’s mercy.

That mercy is secured at Christ’s cross. Jesus entered genuine bodily distress, bore the judgment due to iniquity, and gave his life where sinners deserved to lose theirs. Therefore, the exhausted believer does not approach Yahweh hoping to manufacture enough strength to be received. Christ’s crucified body is the ground beneath the prayer of a wasting soul. His mercy meets the person whose eye, body, strength, and bones can no longer pretend.