Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageThey plowed my back like a field; they cut their furrows long and deep.
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GUpon my back the ploughmen ploughed; long they drew their furrows.
KJV
King James VersionThe plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleThe plowmen plowed over my back; they made their furrows long.
Footnotes
This is one of the most viscerally brutal images in the Psalter. *Al-gabi harashú harashím* (עַל-גַּבִּי חָרְשׁוּ חֹרְשִׁים) deploys striking paronomasia—"ploughed the ploughers"—the doubled root grinding on the ear like iron on soil. *Ma'anitám* (מַעֲנִיתָם), their furrows, is a rare agricultural term giving the metaphor its material specificity. The image evokes simultaneously the laceration of flogging (the furrowed back as broken ground) and the centuries of Israel's imperial servitude—people and land alike worked to exhaustion. FOG preserves the UK spelling and the alliterative force of the original wordplay; FOG Message makes the simile explicit with "like a field" and adds "long and deep" to give the image physical gravity.