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Psalms 102: What the Passage Says

60 claims across 28 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Psalms 102 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

A person in deep distress prays to the LORD, describing days that vanish like smoke, a body wasted by grief, enemies who taunt him, and God's anger as the cause of his fall. The prayer then turns to the LORD, who endures forever and will rise up to have compassion on Zion at the appointed time, so that nations and kings will fear his name and a generation not yet born will praise him. The speaker returns to his own shortened life and asks not to be taken away in the middle of it, contrasting his brief days with God, who laid the earth's foundations and whose years never end. It closes with the children of God's servants continuing and their descendants established before him.

Claim by Claim

  1. 102:1
    • The speaker asks the LORD to hear his prayer.
    • The speaker asks that his cry for help reach the LORD.
  2. 102:2
    • The speaker asks God not to hide his face from him in the day of his trouble.
    • The speaker asks God to turn his ear toward him.
    • The speaker asks God to answer him quickly on the day he calls.
  3. 102:3
    • The speaker's days are being consumed like smoke.
    • The speaker's bones burn like a hearth of glowing coals.
  4. 102:4
    • The speaker's heart is struck down and withered like grass.
    • The speaker forgets to eat his food.
  5. 102:5
    • Because of the sound of the speaker's groaning, his bones cling to his flesh.
  6. 102:6
    • The speaker is like a bird of the wilderness, whose species is uncertain (a pelican or a desert owl).
    • The speaker is like an owl of the desert wastes.
  7. 102:7
    • The speaker lies awake.
    • The speaker is like a solitary bird on a rooftop.
  8. 102:8
    • The speaker's enemies taunt him all day long.
    • Those who rage against the speaker use his name as a curse.
  9. 102:9
    • The speaker has eaten ashes like bread.
    • The speaker has mixed his drink with weeping.
  10. 102:10
    • The speaker's condition is because of God's indignation and wrath.
    • God has lifted the speaker up and thrown him down.
  11. 102:11
    • The speaker's days are like a lengthening shadow.
    • The speaker withers like grass.
  12. 102:12
    • The LORD endures forever.
    • The remembrance of the LORD lasts to all generations.
  13. 102:13
    • God will rise up and have compassion on Zion.
    • It is time to show favor to Zion.
    • The appointed time has come.
  14. 102:14
    • God's servants take pleasure in Zion's stones.
    • God's servants have pity on Zion's dust.
  15. 102:15
    • The nations will fear the name of the LORD.
    • All the kings of the earth will fear God's glory.
  16. 102:16
    • The LORD will build up Zion.
    • The LORD will appear in his glory.
  17. 102:17
    • God will turn toward the prayer of the destitute.
    • God will not despise their prayer.
  18. 102:18
    • This will be written down for a generation still to come.
    • A people yet to be created will praise the LORD.
  19. 102:19
    • The LORD looked down from the height of his sanctuary.
    • The LORD looked from heaven upon the earth.
  20. 102:20
    • God looked down in order to hear the groaning of the prisoner.
    • God looked down in order to release those condemned to death.
  21. 102:21
    • The purpose is that the name of the LORD be declared in Zion.
    • The purpose is that the praise of the LORD be declared in Jerusalem.
  22. 102:22
    • This happens when peoples are gathered together.
    • This happens when kingdoms are gathered to serve the LORD.
  23. 102:23
    • God has broken the speaker's strength along the way.
    • God has shortened the speaker's days.
  24. 102:24
    • The speaker said: my God, do not take me away in the middle of my days.
    • The speaker said that God's years continue through all generations.
  25. 102:25
    • Long ago God laid the foundation of the earth.
    • The heavens are the work of God's hands.
  26. 102:26
    • The heavens and the earth will perish.
    • God will remain.
    • All of them will wear out like a garment.
    • God will change them like clothing.
    • They will be changed.
  27. 102:27
    • God remains the same.
    • God's years will have no end.
  28. 102:28
    • The children of God's servants will dwell secure.
    • The offspring of God's servants will be established before him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

102:1
Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written Yahweh. Jewish readers avoided saying it aloud and substituted the ordinary word for "lord," and the capitals preserve that substitution.
102:2
"Hide not thy face" is a standard Hebrew idiom for withdrawing attention and favor, a king who turns his face away is refusing to hear a petitioner. It is not about literal invisibility.
102:3
A hearth is the stone floor of a fireplace. It soaks up heat and stays burning hot long after the fire dies down.
102:4
"Heart" in Hebrew usage means the whole inner person, thinking, willing and deciding as much as feeling. Saying it is withered like grass describes a man drained of everything that keeps him going, not a mood.
102:5
The picture is extreme emaciation from prolonged illness or fasting: nothing left between bone and skin. The Hebrew literally says his bone clings to his flesh.
102:6
The two birds are hard to identify with certainty; the King James guessed "pelican" and "owl." What matters is that both are creatures of empty, ruined places, and both were on the Israelite list of birds unfit to eat, the speaker is comparing himself to something solitary and unwanted.
102:7
Israelite houses had flat roofs used as living and sleeping space, so a bird perched alone up there was a common sight, visible to everyone, belonging to no flock.
102:8
The last phrase describes his name becoming a curse-word: people wishing harm on an enemy say "may you end up like him." To be "sworn against" in this sense is to have become the standard example of a ruined man.
102:9
Sitting in ashes, and putting ashes or dust on the head, was the ordinary public sign of grief or disaster in this world. The speaker says he has been at it so long that ashes have become his diet.
102:10
"Indignation" and "wrath" are old words for anger.
102:11
The shadow that "declineth" is the long shadow of late afternoon, which stretches out just before it vanishes into nightfall, the standard Hebrew image for a life almost over.
102:12
"Thy remembrance" translates a Hebrew word meaning the name by which someone is called to mind and invoked, closer to "renown" or "reputation" than to anyone's private memory.
102:13
Zion was originally the fortified hill David captured in Jerusalem, and came to stand for the temple hill and for the city as a whole. Speaking of mercy on Zion here means mercy on Jerusalem and its people.
102:14
Loving the stones and pitying the dust says the city is in ruins: what is left to feel affection for is rubble. This is the language of people who have seen Jerusalem destroyed, or who are living away from it.
102:15
"The heathen" in the King James simply means the nations, all the peoples who are not Israel. The word carried no sense of savagery or ignorance when this translation was made.
102:17
"The destitute" means people who have nothing at all. No money, no food, no one to help them.
102:18
"The people which shall be created" means a nation not yet born. The point of writing it down is that the record outlives the writer and reaches readers who do not yet exist.
102:19
Heaven is being described as God's temple, the "sanctuary" is not the building in Jerusalem but the high place from which he looks down on it.
102:20
"Those that are appointed to death" renders a Hebrew phrase literally meaning "sons of death", people already under sentence, whose execution is only a matter of time.
102:21
Zion and Jerusalem are the same place named two ways. Hebrew poems often say one thing twice, in different words, as a way of underlining it.
102:23
"In the way" means in mid-journey. Life is being pictured as a road the speaker was walking when his strength gave out, well short of the end.
102:24
To be taken "in the midst of my days" is to die halfway through a normal lifespan. Dying young was widely felt in this culture to be a sign of judgment, which is why the speaker protests against it.
102:25
"The heavens" means the sky and everything up in it.
102:26
Clothes were expensive and were handed on rather than thrown away, so wearing out a garment was the familiar image for slow decay. The final Hebrew verb can mean either "changed" or "passed on," and the ambiguity is in the original.
102:28
"Seed" in the King James means a person's children, grandchildren, and all who come after. It is the family line, not something planted.

Read Psalms 102