Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 73:10

"Therefore his people return hither: And waters of a full [cup] are drained by them." — Psalms 73:10 (ASV)

Therefore his people — These are those who truly love God, the pious in the earth.

Return hither — This means to return to this subject. In their musings—their meditations on divine things—they come back to this inquiry. The subject occupies their minds, and they recur to it as a subject that perplexes them, as something incomprehensible.

They think it over repeatedly and become more and more perplexed and embarrassed. The difficulties that these facts suggest about God and his government are such that they cannot solve them.

And waters of a full cup are wrung out to them — This literally means “waters of fullness,” or “full waters.” The Chaldee renders this: “Many tears flow from them.” The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate translate it: “And full days shall be found by them.”

The word translated “are wrung out”—from the Hebrew מצה (mâtsâh)—properly means “to suck”; then, “to suck out”; or “to drink greedily” .

This imagery is applied to one who drinks greedily from an intoxicating cup, and then to one who drinks a cup of poison to the dregs (Psalms 75:8). The meaning here is that the facts of the case, and the questions that arose concerning those facts which so perplexed them, were like a bitter cup—a cup of poison or an intoxicating cup that overpowered their faculties. In their perplexities, they “exhausted” the cup.

They drank it all, even to the dregs. They did not merely taste it; they drank it. It was a subject full of perplexity, a subject that wholly overpowered all their faculties and “exhausted” all their powers.