When I wept,.... Because of the sins of his people imputed to him; the hardness and unbelief of the Jews that rejected him; their impiety and profaneness in polluting the temple with their merchandise: he wept at the grave of Lazarus, and over the city of Jerusalem, on account of the blindness of its inhabitants, and the ruin coming upon them; and in his prayers at different times, especially in the garden and on the cross, which were offered up with strong crying and tears; see Joh 11:35; and chastened my soul with fasting; or "my soul being in fasting" (y). The Targum renders it, "in the fasting of my soul"; the word "chastened" is supplied from Psa 35:13; and "soul" is put for the body, or for the whole person. Christ fasted forty days and nights in the wilderness; and often, through neglect of himself, and multiplicity of business, in preaching, and in healing diseases, was without food for some time: he seems to have been fasting the day that he suffered, when he made atonement for sin; and so answered the type on the day of atonement, when every man was to afflict his soul with fasting, Lev 16:29; hence the Jews taunting at him gave him gall for his meat, and vinegar for his drink, Psa 69:21; and it follows, that was to my reproach; if he ate and drank, he was charged with being a glutton and a winebibber; and if he wept and fasted, as John his forerunner did, they reproached him with madness, and having a devil, Mat 11:18; and, as may be reasonably supposed, after this manner; "can this poor creature, that weeps, and mourns, and fasts, be thought to be the Son of God, a divine Person, as he makes himself to be, and his followers believe he is?'' and so the blind Jews reason to this day. (y) "cum esset in jejunio anima mea", Musculus, Cocceius, Gejerus, De Dieu.