1A prayer for the lowly when he grows faint and pours out his plea before the LORD.
2LORD, O hear my prayer,
and let my outcry come before You.
3Hide not Your face from me
on the day when I am in straits.
Incline Your ear to me.
On the day I call, quickly answer me.
4For my days are consumed in smoke,
and my bones are scorched like a hearth.
5My heart is stricken and withers like grass,
so I forget to eat my bread.
6From my loud sighing,
7I resemble the wilderness jackdaw,
I become like the owl of the ruins.
8I lie awake and become
9All day long my enemies revile me,
my taunters invoke me in curse.
10For ashes I have eaten as bread,
and my drink I have mingled with tears—
11because of Your wrath and Your fury,
for You raised me up and flung me down.
12My days inclined like a shadow,
and I—like grass I withered.
13And You LORD, forever enthroned,
and Your name—for all generations.
14You, may You rise, have mercy on Zion,
for it is the hour to pity her, for the fixed time has come.
15For Your servants cherish her stones
and on her dust they take pity.
16And the nations will fear the name of the LORD,
and all kings of the earth, Your glory.
17For the LORD has rebuilt Zion,
He is seen in His glory.
18He has turned to the prayer of the desolate
and has not despised their prayer.
19Let this be inscribed for a generation to come,
that a people yet unborn may praise Jah.
20For the LORD has gazed down from His holy heights,
from heaven to earth He has looked
21to hear the groans of the captive,
to set loose those doomed to die,
22that the name of the LORD be recounted in Zion
and His praise in Jerusalem
23when peoples gather together
and kingdoms, to serve the LORD.
24He humbled my strength on the highway,
he cut short my days.
25I say, “O my God.
Do not take me away in the midst of my days!
Your years are for all generations.
26Of old You founded the earth,
and the heavens—Your handiwork.
27They will perish and You will yet stand.
They will all wear away like a garment.
Like clothing You change them, and they pass away.
28But You—Your years never end.
29The sons of Your servants dwell safe,
their seed in Your presence, unshaken.”
PSALM 102 NOTES
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1. A prayer for the lowly. This is unusual as a superscription because it scans nicely as a line of poetry. Consequently, one could infer that it was composed by the poet as the first line of the poem rather than added by an editor.
4. For my days are consumed in smoke, / and my bones are scorched like a hearth. This haunting image focuses two ideas, ephemerality and suffering. The supplicant’s days burn away to mere smoke, like any rapidly combustible substance set on fire, and the result of the blaze of torment within him is bones charred like a hearth after the fire has burned out. This poem is distinctive among the psalms of supplication in its powerful emphasis on the transience and insubstantiality of human life, an emphasis at certain points reminiscent of Job.
6. my loud sighing. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the voice of my sighing.”
my bones cleave to my flesh. The image is one of emaciation, the person reduced to skin and bones.
7. the wilderness jackdaw. As with many biblical terms for fauna, the exact identity of this sad nocturnal bird is uncertain.
8. like a lonely bird on a roof. There is something uncanny about the specificity of this location, immediately after the mention of the two wilderness birds. Underneath, on his bed, the insomniac tosses and turns, feeling somehow similar to the lonely bird he imagines on the roof above.
12. My days inclined like a shadow, / and I—like grass. The similes again are selected with beautiful aptness. The life span races toward its inevitable end like lengthening shadows toward evening (one should remember that sundials were used in ancient Israel). Then the speaker himself, feeling his waning strength, withers like grass, in an appropriately organic image.
14. have mercy on Zion. The sudden introduction of the theme of Zion destroyed by its enemies is surprising because until this point the speaker’s complaint has concentrated entirely on his own devastated condition as an afflicted mortal. It is possible, as some interpreters have proposed, that this prayer for the restoration of Zion was grafted onto an earlier psalm of individual supplication—perhaps because the desperate voice of the supplicant was felt to be appropriate for the sense of national desperation after the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of national sovereignty. It is well to keep in mind that diachronic collage was an accepted technique of composition in biblical literature.
15. take pity. The pity of the Judahites for the ruined stones of Zion is meant to be a signpost for the pity God should show.
16. And the nations will fear the name of the LORD. This notion that in the return to Zion all nations will recognize the uncontested sovereignty of the God of Israel has numerous analogues in the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah.
18. desolate. The rare Hebrew term ʿarʿar might be related to ʿariri, “desolate,” or might designate a humble desert bush, used here metaphorically to indicate desolation.
19. yet unborn. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “being created.”
20. For the LORD has gazed down. These words launch a long complex sentence, unusual in biblical poetry, that runs all the way to the end of verse 23. The syntax follows the long vertical line of the divine gaze from heaven to earth, then takes in the panorama of God’s suffering servants and moves on to the prospect and the purpose of His act of liberation.
24. He humbled my strength. The antecedent of the masculine pronoun (in the Hebrew indicated merely by the conjugated form of the verb) is the enemy, not God.
25. Do not take me away in the midst of my days. With these words, the psalm appears to revert to the prayer of an individual supplicant who fears he is on the brink of death and feels all too keenly the brevity of his life.
27. You will yet stand. The “yet” is added to clarify the meaning. God’s eternal existence, which makes even the heavens seem ephemeral, provides the stark contrast to the fleeting moment of life vouchsafed the supplicant.
Like clothing You change them, and they pass away. The clothing image is worked two ways. First, it is a garment worn thin or to shreds through long use, then a garment removed to be replaced by another, as God is free to do with the seemingly eternal heaven and earth. At the same time, the verb ḥ-l-f, “to change,” is used in two different senses—first, to change a garment, then to pass away, to vanish.
29. The sons of Your servants . . . / their seed. The poem aptly concludes with the mention of offspring. An individual life lasts only a moment, but a kind of perpetuity may be granted to humanity through its continuing progeny. Thus, the last word of the psalm, the verb yikon (“unshaken”), is a word attached in general biblical usage to dynasties, to grand public buildings, and to heaven and earth.