Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 32:4

"For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: My moisture was changed [as] with the drought of summer. Selah" — Psalms 32:4 (ASV)

Your hand was heavy. —The verb, as in kept silence in Psalm 32:3, is properly present—the agony is still vividly present.

My moisture. —The Hebrew word is found only once elsewhere (Numbers 11:8), where the Authorized Version has fresh oil; the Septuagint and Vulgate, an oily cake. Aquila has of the breast of oil, reading the word erroneously.

Here, both the Septuagint and Vulgate seem to have had a different reading for the passage in Psalms: I was turned to sorrow while the thorn was fixed in. Symmachus translates somewhat similarly, but with to destruction instead of to sorrow. Aquila offers to my spoiling in summer desolation.

These readings, however, mistake the lamed, which is part of the word, for a preposition. Gesenius connects the Hebrew word with an Arabic root meaning to suck, and so derives the meaning juice or moisture.

Into the drought of summer. —This is the best rendering of the Hebrew, though it might be either as in summer dryness or with summer heat. Some understand it literally as a fever, but it is better to take it figuratively as the soul-fever which the whole passage describes.