For I have eaten ashes like bread Some think that the order is here inverted, and that the letter k, caph, the sign of similitude, which is put before lchm, lechem, the word for bread, ought to be placed before 'phr, epher, the word for ashes; as if it had been said, I find no more relish for my bread than I do for ashes; and the reason is, because sorrow of heart produces loathing of food. But the simpler meaning is, that lying prostrate on the ground, they licked, as it were, the earth, and so did eat ashes instead of bread. It was customary for those who mourned to stretch themselves at full length with their faces on the ground. The prophet, however, intended to express a different idea -- to intimate, that when he partook of his meals, there was no table set before him, but his bread was thrown upon the ground to him in a foul and disgusting manner. Speaking, therefore, in the person of the faithful, he asserts that he was so fixed to the ground that he did not even rise from it to take his food. The same sentiment is expressed in the last part of the verse, I have mingled my drink with weeping; for while mourners usually restrain their sorrow during the short time in which they refresh themselves with food, he declares that his mourning was without intermission. Some, instead of reading in the first clause, as bread, read, in bread; [1] and as the two letters, k, caph, and v, beth, nearly resemble each other, I prefer reading in bread, which agrees better with the second clause.

Footnotes

1 - Supposing the reading to be vlchm, balechem, instead of klchm, calechem; and from the similarity in form between the letters v and k, transcribers might readily have mistaken the latter for the former.

For I have eaten ashes like bread - I have seated myself in ashes in my grief (compare Job 2:8; Job 42:6; Isaiah 58:5; Isaiah 61:3; Jonah 3:6; Daniel 9:3; Matthew 11:21); and ashes have become, as it were, my food. The ashes in which he sat had been mingled with his food.
And mingled my drink with weeping - Tears have fallen into the cup from which I drank, and have become a part of my drink. The idea is, that he had shed copious tears; and that even when he took his food, there was no respite to his grief.

I have eaten ashes like bread - Fearful of what they might do, we all humbled ourselves before thee, and sought thy protection; well knowing that, unless we were supernaturally assisted, we must all have perished; our enemies having sworn our destruction.

For I have (g) eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
(g) I have not risen out of my mourning to take my refreshment.

For I have eaten ashes like bread,.... He sitting in ashes, as Job did, and rolling himself in them in the manner of mourners; and, having no other table than the ground to eat his food upon, he might eat ashes along with it; and by an hypallage of the words, the sense may be, that he ate bread like ashes, no more savoured and relished it, or was nourished by it, than if he had eaten ashes; the meaning is, that he was fed with the bread of adversity, and water of affliction:
and mingled my drink with weeping; that is, with tears; as he drank, the tears ran down his cheeks, and mixed with the liquor in his cup; he was fed with the bread of tears, and had them to drink in great measure; these were his meat and his drink, day and night, while enemies reproached him, swore at him, against him, and by him; see Psalm 80:5.

ashes--a figure of grief, my bread; weeping or tears, my drink (Psalm 80:5).

Ashes are his bread (cf. Lamentations 3:16), inasmuch as he, a mourner, sits in ashes, and has thrown ashes all over himself, Job 2:8; Ezekiel 27:30. The infected שׁקּוי has שׁקּוּ = שׁקּוּו for its principal form, instead of which it is שׁקּוּי in Hosea 2:7. "That Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down" is to be understood according to Job 30:22. First of all God has taken away the firm ground from under his feet, then from aloft He has cast him to the ground - an emblem of the lot of Israel, which is removed from its fatherland and cast into exile, i.e., into a strange land. In that passage the days of his life are כּצל נטוּי, like a lengthened shadow, which grows longer and longer until it is entirely lost in darkness, Psalm 109:23. Another figure follows: he there becomes like an (uprooted) plant which dries up.

Bread - The sense is, dust and ashes are as familiar to me as the eating of my bread; I cover my head with them; I sit, yea, lie down in them, as mourners often did.