Bibelkommentare

The Psalmist supplicates for a speedy hearing (Psalm 102:1-2), for his strength is wasted till he is on the very edge of the grave. He is a solitary mourner, exposed to the ribald mockery of his enemies. His sufferings are a divinely inflicted chastisement (Psalm 102:3-11). From Psalm 102:13 ff. the cause of his sorrow appears. His people are in exile; Zion is desolate.

But in contrast to his own transitoriness rises the thought of God’s eternity, and that eternity is the guarantee for the restoration of Zion. That restoration will be a manifestation of Jehovah’s glory which will attract all nations to His service, and evoke the grateful praise of all future generations, when Jerusalem has become the centre of the world’s worship (Psalm 102:12-22).

Though he cannot forget his own sufferings, and prays that he may be spared a premature death, he finds rest in the thought of the eternity and unchangeableness of Jehovah, Who will not fail His faithful people (Psalm 102:23-28).

Who is the speaker? Israel, or an individual Israelite? Many commentators regard the Psalm as the utterance of the nation, and in many respects it seems to go beyond the experience of an individual. But this theory does not do justice to its intensity of personal feeling, and is hard to reconcile with much of its language. It is more natural to regard it as the utterance of an individual, while at the same time it is more than this. The poet is one into whose heart the sorrows of the nation have entered so deeply that he feels them all his own. The strong sense of solidarity which was characteristic of ancient Israel finds expression here. If the nation suffered every member suffered with it. He almost loses his own personality in that of his people. And he speaks not for himself alone, but for the whole body of his fellow-countrymen in exile. Comp. Introd. pp. li ff.

We can hardly be wrong in assigning this Psalm to the closing years of the exile in Babylon. Zion is in ruins, but the appointed time for Jehovah to have compassion on her is come (Psalm 102:13-14). The Psalmist looks for the fulfilment of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Isaiah 40-66, and prays that he may be spared to witness the restoration of Israel with his own eyes (Psalm 102:23-24). Cheyne indeed places it in the time of Nehemiah, on the ground of the resemblance of Psalm 102:14 to the description of the ruins of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 2:11-20; Nehemiah 4:2. But the Psalm seems to premise that no restoration has yet taken place. The perfects in Psalm 102:16-17; Psalm 102:19 are certainly relative perfects, denoting what will have taken place before events still future have occurred.

The Psalm is full of echoes of Isaiah 40-66, and of other Psalms, in particular 22, 69, 79.

The title is unique. It refers to the devotional use of the Ps., not to the occasion of its composition. It is an appropriate prayer of (or for) the afflicted, when he fainteth (Psalm 61:2), and poureth out his complaint before Jehovah (Psalm 62:8; Psalm 55:2; Psalm 64:1; Psalm 142:2; 1 Samuel 1:15-16), finding relief for his overburdened soul in appeal to God.

It is one of the seven ‘Penitential Psalms’ (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143), and is a Proper Psalm for Ash-Wednesday.

1, 2. The Psalmist’s prayer is not the less real because it is expressed in familiar phrases from older Psalms. Hear my prayer, Jehovah, is from Psalm 39:12; and let my cry for help come unto thee is suggested by Psalm 18:6. Hide not thy face from me is taken from Psalm 27:9, in the day of my distress from Psalm 59:16; incline thine ear unto me from Psalm 31:2; in the day when I call from Psalm 56:9, answer me speedily from Psalm 69:17.

1–11. The Psalmist supplicates for a speedy hearing, pleading the extremity of his distress.

3. like smoke] Or, in smoke, a natural figure for speedy and complete disappearance. Cp. Psalm 37:20; James 4:14.

are burnt as a hearth] Rather (cp. P.B.V. and R.V.), burn as a firebrand. He compares himself to a sick man whose strength is being consumed by the burning heat of fever. Cp. Psalm 22:15; Jeremiah 20:9.

4. My heart is smitten like grass, and withered;

Yea, I forget to eat my bread.

His heart, the centre of vital force and vigour, is dried up like a plant struck by the fierce heat of the sun and withered (Psalm 121:6; Hosea 9:16). Sorrow and sickness have deprived him of all appetite for food. Cp. 1 Samuel 1:7-8; Job 33:20.

5. If the A.V. is retained, the verse will describe the state of emaciation to which he has been reduced by continued sorrow. Cp. Lamentations 4:8. But though the cognate Arabic word means skin, it is doubtful whether the Heb. word bâsâr can bear this sense. Usage requires the rendering of R.V., ‘my bones cleave to my flesh,’ which means apparently that his limbs are swollen and stiff. The phrase seems to be borrowed from Job 19:20, “my bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,” where Job describes his limbs as partly emaciated, partly abnormally swollen, and stiff with disease. The curious rendering of the P.B.V. “my bones [Coverdale, bone] will scarce cleave to my flesh,” comes from the Zürich Version:—“Vor geschrey mines seufftzens mag mein gebeyn kum an meinem fleysch hangen.”

6. He compares himself to solitude-loving birds which haunt desolate places and ruins, uttering weird and mournful cries. Cp. Isaiah 34:11; Zephaniah 2:14 (A.V. cormorant). Render the second line, I am become as an owl in desolate places. The owl is called by the Arabs “mother of ruins,” and “in the tombs or on the ruins, among the desolate heaps which mark the sites of ancient Judah, on the sandy mounds of Beersheba, or on the spray-beaten fragments of Tyre, his low wailing note is sure to be heard at sunset.” Tristram’s Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 194.

7. I keep vigil, and am become

Like a solitary bird upon the housetop.

His nights are sleepless: he spends them like “the moping owl” in mournful complaints. Some solitary, nocturnal bird is clearly meant, perhaps some kind of owl, or according to Tristram (Nat. Hist. of Bible, p. 202), the Blue Thrush. Cp. Verg. Aen. iv. 462,

“Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo

Visa queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.”

For am become we should perhaps read and moan (ואהגה for ואהיה).

Cp. Isaiah 59:11.

8. His enemies aggravate his sufferings by mocking him as one forsaken by God (Psalm 42:10; Psalm 44:13).

are sworn against me] Rather as R.V., do curse by me; using my name in formulas of execration, ‘God make thee like yonder miserable wretch.’ Cp. Isaiah 65:15; Jeremiah 29:22.