Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 56:8

"Thou numberest my wanderings: Put thou my tears into thy bottle; Are they not in thy book?" — Psalms 56:8 (ASV)

Wanderings.—Rather, in the singular, wandering, which, from the parallelism with “tears,” must mean “mental restlessness,” the “tossings to and fro of the mind.” Symmachus, “my inmost things.”

Put thou my tears into thy bottle.—There is a play of words in the original of “bottle,” and “wandering.” We must not, of course, think of the lachrymatories, as they are called, of glass, which have been found in Syria (see Thomson, Land and Book, page 103). If these were really in any way connected with “tears,” they must have formed part of funeral customs. The Septuagint, “Thou hast put my tears before thee,” and Symmachus and Jerome, “put my tears in thy sight,” suggest a corruption of the text; but, in any case, the poet’s feeling here is that of Constance in Shakespeare’s King John—

“His grandam’s wrongs, and not his mother’s shames,
Draw these heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,
Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;
Ay, with those crystal beads Heaven shall be brib’d
To do him justice and revenge on you.”

Book.—As in Psalm 139:16. Some prefer “calculation.”