Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 103:16

"For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; And the place thereof shall know it no more." — Psalms 103:16 (ASV)

The wind — that is, the hot, scorching blast, as in Isaiah 40:7. Even in our humid climate, it may be said of a flower—

“If one sharp wind sweep over the field,
It withers in an hour.”

But the pestilential winds of the East are described as bringing a heat like that of an oven, which immediately blasts every green thing.

Know it no more. — Compare to Job 7:10. Man vanishes away without leaving a trace behind. The pathos of the verse has been well caught in the well-known lines of Gray:—

“One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree:
Another came, nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.”