a foot (as used in walking) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
hurt
עִנּ֣וּ'i.Nu
H6031
to depress literally or figuratively · verb, piel perfect, 3rd person common plural
fetters
בַכֶּ֣בֶלva.Ke.vel
H3525
a fetter · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
he
נַפְשֽׁוֹnaf.Sho
H5315
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
laid
בָּ֣אָהBa.'ah
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
iron
בַּ֝רְזֶ֗לbar.Zel
H1270
iron (as cutting) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 39:20 And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison.
Genesis 40:15 For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.
Acts 16:24 Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks.
Psalms 107:10 Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 105:8-24
We are here taught, in praising God, to look a great way back, and to give him the glory of what he did for his church in former ages, especially when it was in the founding and forming, which those in its latter ages enjoy the benefit of and therefore should give thanks for. Doubtless we may fetch as proper matter for praise from the histories of the gospels, and the acts of the apostles, which relate the birth of the Christian church, as the psalmist here does from the histories of Genesis and Exodus, which relate the birth of the Jewish church; and our histories greatly outshine theirs. Two things are here made the subject of praise: -
I. God's promise to the patriarchs, that great promi…
Whose feet they hurt with fetters,.... For it seems Joseph was not only cast into prison, upon the calumny of his mistress; but had fetters put upon him, and his feet were made fast with them; and these were so close and heavy, as to pinch and gall and hurt him; which, though not mentioned in his history, was undoubtedly true; see Genesis 39:20.
He was laid in iron: or "the iron" (or, as the Targum, "the iron chain") "went into his Soul" (f); his body; it ate into him, and gave him great pain: or rather, as it is in the king's Bible, "his soul went into the iron chain"; there being, as Aben Ezra observes, an ellipsis of the particle and which is supplied by Symmachus, and so in the Targum;…
Psalm 105:16-19
16. And he called a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread. 17. He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a slave. 18. They afflicted his feet in the stocks: the iron entered into his soul. 19. Until the time that his word came: the word of Jehovah tried him.
16. And he called a famine upon the land Here the inspired writer recounts a most illustrious proof of divine providence towards the chosen people, at the time when the covenant might seem to be void and disannulled. The inheritance of the land of Canaan (as has been stated above) was added, as an earnest or pledge for confirmation. The descent of Jacob into Egypt, which deprived his house of the…
The Church Fathers
They humbled his feet in fetters. Because he refused to consent to the Egyptian mistress. They humbled his feet in fetters: but they could not humble his righteousness. For when he was sixteen years old, he was loved passionately by the mistress, and though set in such an age, which is more given over to pleasure, he refused to consent to iniquity, but rather feared the peril of his soul. The iron passed through his soul. By the iron he means sin itself, which slays the soul. In another sense: because he was in peril, accused by the mistress of such a crime. For the mistress burned for him, as it is written: 'All the adulterers, their hearts are like an oven.'
Next he doth relate the story, mentioning what Joseph suffered in his low estate, and how he was raised on high. "His feet they hurt in the stocks: the iron entered into his soul, until his word came" (ver. 18). That Joseph was put in irons, we do not indeed read; but we ought no ways to doubt that it was so. For some things might be passed over in that history, which nevertheless would not escape the Holy Spirit, who speaketh in these Psalms. We understand by the iron which entered into his soul, the tribulation of stern necessity; for he did not say body, but "soul." There is a somewhat similar expression in the Gospel, where Simeon saith unto Mary, "A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also." That is, the Passion of the Lord, which was a fall unto many, and in which the secrets of many hearts were revealed, since their sentiments respecting the Lord were extorted from them, without doubt made His own Mother exceeding sorrowful, heavily struck with human bereavement. Now Joseph was in this tribulation, "until his word came," with which he truly interpreted dreams: whence he was introduced to the king, that unto him also he might foretell what would happen in respect to his dreams. But since he said, "Until his words were heard," that we might not altogether so understand "his," that any one might think so great an event was to be ascribed unto man; he at once added, "The word of the Lord inflamed him" (ver. 19); or, as other copies have it more closely from the Greek, "The word of the Lord fired him," that he also might be reputed amongst those to whom it is said, "Receive ye praise in His holy Name."
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Fetters — Fetters were for the feet only, while chains were for any part of the body. They were usually made of brass, and also in pairs, the word being in the dual number. Iron was occasionally employed for…
Afflicted Saints · Examples of afflicted Saints:: Joseph — Examples of afflicted Saints:: Joseph
Feet, The · Of criminals: Bound with fetters — Of criminals: Bound with fetters
Iron · Fetters — Fetters
Joseph · friendship of another pri — friendship of another pri
Predestination · 19:25; — 19:25;
Prisons · Persons confined in: Often subjected to extreme suffering — Persons confined in: Often subjected to extreme suffering
Punishments · Secondary kinds of: Binding with chains and fetters — Secondary kinds of: Binding with chains and fetters
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
"To call up a famine" is also a prose expression in Kg2 8:1. To break the staff of bread (i.e., the staff which bread is to man) is a very old metaphor, Lev 26:26. That the selling of Joseph was, providentially regarded, a "sending before," he himself says in Gen 45:5. Psa 102:24 throws light upon the meaning of ענּה ב. The Kerמ רגלו is just as much without any occasion to justify it as עינו in Ecc 4:8 (for עיניו). The statement that iron came upon his soul is intended to say that he had to endure in iron fetters sufferings that threatened his life. Most expositors take בּרזל as equivalent to בּבּרזל, but Hitzig rightly takes נפשׁו as an object, following the Targum; for ברזל as a name of an…
These verses tell the story of Joseph (see Gen 37–41).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 105:18
Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron:
Whose feet they hurt with fetters. From this we learn a little more of Joseph's sufferings than we find in the book of Genesis: inspiration had not ceased, and David was as accurate an historian as Moses, for the same Spirit guided his pen. He was laid in iron, or "into iron came his soul." The prayer book version, "the iron entered into his soul, "is ungrammatical, but probably expresses much the same truth. His fetters hurt his mind as well as his body, and well did Jacob say, "The archers shot at him, and sorely grieved him." Under the cruelly false accusation, which he could not disprove, his mind was, as it were, belted and bolted…
