And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men,.... Not the man clothed with linen, or Christ; but either the same angel, Gabriel, who appeared more manifestly to him in a human form; or another of the attendants of Christ, who also had the similitude of a man: touched my lips; with his hand, as the Prophet Isaiah's were, by a seraph, with a live coal from the altar, Isa 6:7, thereby restoring him to his speech, and giving him freedom and boldness to make use of it; and removing from him his impurity, and a sense of it, which occasioned his silence: then I opened my mouth, and spake freely, and yet with all becoming modesty: and said unto him that stood before me, O lord; the angel that appeared in the likeness of a man, and stood before the prophet, and touched his lips, whom he calls "lord"; not because of sovereignty and dominion over him, which belong to Christ, as the Creator of all things, and Head of the church; but for honour's sake, being a noble and exalted creature: by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me; on sight of the glorious object represented to him in the vision, pains seized his body in all parts of it, sharp and pungent, like those of a woman in travail. Gussetius (y) interprets it of the knuckle bones, which turned in the pan of them, like the hinges of a door, of which the word is used, Pro 26:14, and this through the tendons being loosed by the dissipation of the spirits; and this sense the Vulgate Latin version gives countenance to, my joints are dissolved; the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions, are, "my inward parts or bowels are turned in me: and I have retained no strength"; See Gill on Dan 10:8. (y) Comment. Ebr. p. 713.