Psalms 102:1-11

PSALM 102 OVERVIEW.

SUBJECT. This is a patriot's lament over his country's distress. He arrays himself in the griefs of his nation as in a garment of sackcloth, and casts her dust and ashes upon his head as the ensigns and causes of his sorrow. He has his own private woes and personal enemies, he is moreover sore afflicted in body by sickness, but the miseries of his people cause him a far more bitter anguish, and this he pours out in an earnest, pathetic lamentation. Not, however, without hope does the patriot mourn; he has faith in God, and looks for the resurrection of the nation through the omnipotent favour of the Lord; this causes him to walk among the ruins of Jerusalem, and to say with hopeful spirit, "No, Zion, thou shalt never perish. Thy sun is not set for ever; brighter days are in store for thee." It is in vain to enquire into the precise point of Israel's history which thus stirred a patriot's soul, for many a time was the land oppressed, and at any of her sad seasons this song and prayer would have been a most natural and appropriate utterance.

TITLE. A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord. This Psalm is a prayer far more in spirit than in words. The formal petitions are few, but a strong stream of supplication runs from beginning to end, and like an under-current, finds its way heavenward through the moanings of grief and confessions of faith which make up the major part of the Psalm. It is a prayer of the afflicted, or of "a sufferer," and it bears the marks of its parent age; as it is recorded of Jabez that "his mother bore him with sorrow," so may we say of this Psalm; yet as Rachel's Benoni, or child of sorrow, was also her Benjamin, or son of her right hand, so is this Psalm as eminently expressive of consolation as of desolation. It is scarcely correct to call it a penitential Psalm, for the sorrow of it is rather of one suffering than sinning. It has its own bitterness, and it is not the same as that of the Fifty-first. The sufferer is afflicted more for others than for himself, more for Zion and the house of the Lord, than for his own house. When he is overwhelmed, or sorely troubled, and depressed. The best of men are not always able to stem the torrent of sorrow. Even when Jesus is on board, the vessel may fill with water and begin to sink. And poureth out his complaint before the LORD. When a cup is overwhelmed or turned bottom over, all that is in it is naturally poured out; great trouble removes the heart from all reserve and causes the soul to flow out without restraint; it is well when that which is in the soul is such as may be poured out in the presence of God, and this is only the case where the heart has been renewed by divine grace. The word rendered "complaint" has in it none of the idea of fault-finding or repining, but should rather be rendered "moaning," -- the expression of pain, not of rebellion. To help the memory we will call this Psalm THE PATRIOT'S PLAINT.

DIVISION. In the first part of the Psalm, Psalms 102:1-11, the moaning monopolizes every verse, the lamentation is unceasing, sorrow rules the hour. The second portion, from Ps 102:12-28, has a vision of better things, a view of the gracious Lord, and his eternal existence, and care for his people, and therefore it is interspersed with sunlight as well as shaded by the cloud, and it ends up right gloriously with calm confidence for the future, and sweet restfulness in the Lord. The whole composition may be compared to a day which, opening with wind and rain, clears up at noon and is warm with the sun, continues fine, with intervening showers, and finally closes with a brilliant sunset.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 1. Hear my prayer, O LORD. Or O JEHOVAH. Sincere supplicants are not content with praying for praying's sake, they desire really to reach the ear and heart of the great God. It is a great relief in time of distress to acquaint others with our trouble, we are eased by their hearing our lamentation, but it is the sweetest solace of all to have God himself as a sympathizing listener to our plaint. That he is such is no dream or fiction, but an assured fact. It would be the direst of all our woes if we could be indisputably convinced that with God there is neither hearing nor answering; he who could argue us into so dreary a belief would do us no better service than if he had read us our death-warrants. Better die than be denied the mercy-seat. As well be atheists at once as believe in an unhearing, unfeeling God.

And let my cry come unto thee. When sorrow rises to such a height that words become too weak a medium of expression, and prayer is intensified into a cry, then the heart is even more urgent to have audience with the Lord. If our cries do not enter within the veil, and reach to the living God, we may as well cease from prayer at once, for it is idle to cry to the winds; but, blessed be God, the philosophy which suggests such a hideous idea is disproved by the facts of every day experience, since thousands of the saints can declare, "Verily, God hath heard us."

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Title. A prayer, etc. The prayer following is longer than others. When Satan, the Law-Adversary, doth extend his pleas against us, it is meet that we should enlarge our counter pleas for our own souls; as the powers of darkness do lengthen aud multiply their wrestlings, so must we our counter wrestlings of prayer. Ephesians 6:12,18. Thomas Cobbet, 1667.

Title. When he... poureth out, etc. Here we have the manner of the church's prayer suitable to her extremity illustrated by a simile taken from a vessel overcharged with new wine or strong liquor, that bursts for vent. Oh the heart-bursting cries she sends out all the day! Here is no lazy, slothful, lip labour, stinted forms of prayer, no empty sounds of verbal expressions, which can never procure her a comfortable answer from her God, or the least ease to her burdened soul; but poured-out prayers as Hannah, 1 Samuel 1:15, and Jeremy, Lamentations 2:12, pressed forth with vehemence of spirit and heart pangs of inward grief: thus the Lord deals with his church and people; ere he pour out cups of consolation they must pour out tears in great measure. Finiens Canus Vove.

Title. -- This is the mourner's prayer when he is faint,

And to the Eternal Father breathes his plaint. John Keble.

Whole Psalm. The psalm has been attributed to Daniel, to Jeremiah, to Nehemiah, or to some of the other prophets who flourished during the time of the captivity. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has applied Psalms 102:25-27 to our Lord, and the perpetuity of his kingdom. Adam Clarke.

Whole Psalm. I doubt whether, without apostolic teaching, any of us would have had the boldness to understand it; for in many respects it is the most remarkable of all the Psalms -- the Psalm of "THE AFFLICTED ONE" -- while his soul is overwhelmed within him in great affliction, and sorrow, and anxious fear. Adolph Saphir, in "Expository Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews."

Verse 1. Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee. When, at any time we see the beggars, or poor folks, that are pained and grieved with hunger and cold, lying in the streets of cities and towns, full of sores, we are somewhat moved inwardly with pity and mercy; but if we our own selves attend and give ear to their wailings, cryings, and lamentable noises that they make, we should be much more stirred to show our pity and mercy on them; for no man else can show the grief of the sick and sore persons, so well and in so pathetic a manner as he himself. Therefore, since the miserable crying and wailing of those that suffer bodily pain and misery can prevail so much upon the hearts of mortal creatures; I doubt not, Good Lord, but thou, who art all merciful, must needs be inclined to exercise thy mercy, if my sorrowful cry and petition may come unto thine ears, or into thy presence. John Fisher (1459- 1535) in "A Treatise concerning the fruitful Sayings of David," 1714.

Verse 1. My prayer. His own, and not another's; not what was composed for him, but composed by him; which came out of his own heart, and out of unfeigned lips, and expressed under a feeling sense of his own wants and troubles; and though dictated and inwrought in his heart by the Spirit of God, yet, being put up by him in faith and fervency, it is called his own, and which he desires might be heard. John Gill.

Verse 1. My cry. Lest my praying should not prevail, behold, O God, I raise it to a cry; and crying, I may say, is the greatest bell in all the ring of praying: for louder than crying I cannot pray. O, then, if not my prayer, at least let my cry come unto thee. If I be not heard when I cry, I shall cry for not being heard; and if heard when I cry, I shall cry to be heard yet more; and so whether heard or not heard, I shall cry still, and God grant I may cry still; so thou be pleased, O God, to "hear my prayer," and to "let my cry come unto thee." Sir R. Baker.

Verse 1-2. This language is the language of godly sorrow, of faith, of tribulation, and of anxious hope: of faith, for the devout suppliant lifts up his heart and voice to heaven, "as seeing him who is invisible," (Hebrews 11:27) and entreats him to hear his prayer and listen to his crying: of tribulation, for he describes himself as enduring affliction, and unwilling to lose the countenance of the Lord in his time of his trouble: of anxious hope, for he seems to expect, in the midst of his groaning, that his prayers, like those of Cornelius, will "go up for a memorial before God" who will hear him, "and that right soon." Charles Oxenden, in "Sermons on the Seven Penitential Psalms," 1838.

Verse 1-2. The Lord suffereth his babbling children to speak to him in their own form of speech, (albeit the terms which they use be not fitted for his spiritual, invisible, and incomprehensible majesty); such as are, "Hear me," "hide not thy face," "incline thine ear to me," and such like other speeches. David Dickson.

Verse 1-2. Note, David sent his prayer as a sacred ambassador to God. Now there are four things requisite to make an embassy prosperous. The ambassador must be regarded with favourable eye: he must be heard with a ready ear: he must speedily return when his demands are conceded. These four things David as a suppliant asks from God his King. Le Blanc.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Title.

Verse 1-2. Five steps to the mercy-seat. The Psalmist prays for,

Verse 1,. 17, 19-20. An interesting discourse may be founded upon these passages.

  • Psalms 102:1

that he will hear -- Psalms 102:17.

  • Psalms 102:19-20

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 2. Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble. Do not seem as if thou didst not see me, or wouldst not own me. Smile now at any rate. Reserve thy frowns for other times when I can bear them better, if, indeed, I can ever bear them; but now in my heavy distress, favour me with looks of compassion.

Incline thine ear unto me. Bow thy greatness to my weakness. If because of sin thy face is turned away, at least let me have a side view of thee, lend me thine ear if I may not see thine eye. Turn thyself to me again if, my sin has turned thee away, give to thine ear an inclination to my prayers.

In the day when I call answer me speedily. Because the case is urgent, and my soul little able to wait. We may ask to have answers to prayer as soon as possible, but we may not complain of the Lord if he should think it more wise to delay. We have permission to request and to use importunity, but no right to dictate or to be petulant. If it be important that the deliverance should arrive at once, we are quite right in making an early time a point of our entreaty, for God is as willing to grant us a favour now as to-morrow, and he is not slack concerning his promise. It is a proverb concerning favours from human hands, that "he gives twice who gives quickly," because a gift is enhanced in value by arriving in a time of urgent necessity; and we may be sure that our heavenly Patron will grant us the best gifts in the best manner, granting us grace to help in time of need. When answers come upon the heels of our prayers they are all the more striking, more consoling, and more encouraging.

In these two verses the psalmist has gathered up a variety of expressions all to the same effect; in them all he entreats an audience and answer of the Lord, and the whole may be regarded as a sort of preface to the prayer which follows.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 2. Incline thine ear unto me. The great exhaustion of the affiicted one is hinted at: so worn out is he, that he is hardly able to cry any more, but with a faint voice only feebly mutters, like a weak sick man, whose voice if we would catch, we must incline the ear. Martin Geier.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 2.

Or,

Verse 2. (first elause). He deprecates the loss of the divine countenance when under trouble.

Verse 2. (last clause).

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 3. For my days are consumed like smoke. My grief has made life unsubstantial to me, I seem to be but a puff of vapour which has nothing in it, and is soon dissipated. The metaphor is very admirably chosen, for, to the unhappy, life seems not merely to be frail, but to be surrounded by so much that is darkening, defiling, blinding, and depressing, that, sitting down in despair, they compare themselves to men wandering in a dense fog, and themselves so dried up thereby that they are little better than pillars of smoke. When our days have neither light of joy nor fire of energy in them, but become as a smoking flax which dies out ignobly in darkness, then have we cause enough to appeal to the Lord that he would not utterly quench us.

And my bones are burned as an hearth. He became as dry as the hearth on which a wood fire has burned out, or as spent ashes in which scarcely a trace of fire can be found. His soul was ready to be blown away as smoke, and his body seemed likely to remain as the bare hearth when the last comforting ember is quenched. How often has our piety appeared to us to be in this condition! We have had to question its reality, and fear that it never was anything more than a smoke; we have had the most convincing evidence of its weakness, for we could not derive even the smallest comfort from it, any more than a chilled traveller can derive from the cold hearth on which a fire had burned long ago. Soul-trouble experienced in our own heart will help us to interpret the language here employed; and church-troubles may help us also, if unhappily we have been called to endure them. The psalmist was moved to grief by a view of national calamities, and these so wrought upon his patriotic soul that he was wasted with anxiety, his spirits were dried up, and his very life was ready to expire. There is hope for any country which owns such a son; no nation can die while true hearts are ready to die for it.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 3. Consumed like smoke, would be better read, "pass away as in smoke," as if they disappeared into smoke and ashes. Burned as an hearth, is not a felicitous translation, for a "hearth" should be incombustible. Better "burned as a faggot," as any fuel. The sentiment, My days waste away to nothing, turn to no good account, are lost. Henry Cowles.

Verse 3. My days are consumed like smoke; or, as Hebrew, literally, "in (into) smoke." The very same expression which David in Psalms 37:20 had used of "the enemies of the Lord:" "They shall consume into smoke" (compare Psalms 68:2). Hereby the ideal sufferer virtually complains that the lot of the wicked befalls him, though being righteous (Psalms 101:1-8). A. R. Fausset.

Verse 3. My days are consumed like smoke. As the smoke is a vapour proceeding from the fire, yet hath no heat in it: so my days are come from the torrid zone of youth into the region of cold and age; and as the smoke seems a thick substance for the present, but presently vanisheth into air; so my days made as great shew at first as if they would never have been spent; but now, alas, are wasted and leave me scarce a being. As the smoke is fuliginous and dark, and affords no pleasure to look upon it; so my days are all black and in mourning; no joy nor pleasure to be taken in them. And as the smoke ascends indeed, but by ascending wastes itself and comes to nothing: so my days are wasted in growing, are diminished in increasing; their plenty hath made a scarcity, and the more they have been the fewer they are. And how, indeed, can my days choose but be consumed as smoke, when

my bones are burned as an hearth? for as when the hearth is burned there can be made no more fire upon it; so, when my bones, which are as the hearth upon which my fire of life is made, come once to be burned; how can any more fire of life be made upon them? and when no fire can be made, what will remain but only smoke? Sir R. Baker.

Verse 3. As an hearth. Or, as a trivet, or, gridiron; so the Targum: or, as a frying-pan: so the Arabic version. John Gill.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 3-11.

    • Psalms 102:3
    • Psalms 102:4
    • Psalms 102:6-7
    • Psalms 102:8
    • Psalms 102:9
    • Psalms 102:10
    • Psalms 102:11

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 4. My heart is smitten, like a plant parched by the fierce heat of a tropical sun, and withered like grass, which dries up when once the scythe has laid it low. The psalmist's heart was as a wilted, withered flower, a burned up mass of what once was verdure. His energy, beauty, freshness, and joy, were utterly gone, through the wasting influence of his anguish.

So that I forget to eat my bread, or "because I forget to eat my bread." Grief often destroys the appetite, and the neglect of food tends further to injure the constitution and create a yet deeper sinking of spirit. As the smitten flower no longer drinks in the dew, or draws up nutriment from the soil, so a heart parched with intense grief often refuses consolation for itself and nourishment for the bodily frame, and descends at a doubly rapid rate into weakness, despondency, and dismay. The case here described is by no means rare, we have frequently met with individuals so disordered by sorrow that their memory has failed them even upon such pressing matters as their meals, and we must confess that we have passed through the same condition ourselves. One sharp pang has filled the soul, monopolized the mind, and driven everything else into the background, so that such common matters as eating and drinking have been utterly despised, and the appointed hours of refreshment have gone by unheeded, leaving no manifest faintness of body, but an increased weariness of heart.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 4. My heart is smitten and withered like grass. The metaphor here is taken from grass, cut down in the meadow. It is first "smitten" with the scythe, and then "withered" by the sun. Thus the Jews were smitten with the judgments of God; and they are now withered under the fire of the Chaldeans. Adam Clarke.

Verse 4. I forget to eat my bread. I have heard of some that have forgotten their own names, but I never heard of any that forget to eat his meat; for there is a certain prompter called hunger that will make a man to remember his meat in spite of his teeth. And yet it is true, when the heart is blasted and withered like grass, such a forgetfulness of necessity will follow. Is it that the withering of the heart is the prime cause of sorrow; at least cause of the prime sorrow; and immoderate sorrow is the mother of stupidity, stupifying and benumbing the animal faculties, that neither the understanding nor the memory can execute their functions? Or is it, that sorrow is so intentire to that it sorrows for, that it cannot intent to think anything else? Or is it, that nature makes account, that to feed in sorrow were to feed sorrow, and therefore thinks best to forbear all eating? Or is it, that as sorrow draws moisture from the brain and fills the eyes with water; so it draws a like juice from other parts, which fills the stomach instead of meat? However it be, it shews a wonderful operation that is in sorrow; to make not only the stomach to refuse its meat, but to make the brain forget the stomach, between whom there is so natural a sympathy and so near a correspondence. But as the vigour of the heart breeds plenty of spirits, which convey to all the parts, gives everyone a natural appetite; so when the heart is blasted and withered like grass, and that there is no more any rigour in it, the spirits are presently at a stand, and then no marvel if the stomach lose its appetite, and forget to eat bread. Sir R. Baker.

Verse 4. I forget to eat my bread. When grief hath thus dejected the spirits, the man has no appetite for that food which is to recruit and elevate them. Ahab, smitten with one kind of grief, David with another, and Daniel with a third, all forgot, or refused, to eat their bread. 1 Kings 21:4; 2 Samuel 12:16; Daniel 10:3. Such natural companions are mourning and fasting. Samuel Burder.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 4. Unbelieving sorrow makes us forget to use proper means for our support.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 5. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. He became emaciated with sorrow. He had groaned himself down to a living skeleton, and so in his bodily appearance was the more like the smoke-dried, withered, burnt-up things to which he had previously compared himself. It will be a very long time before the distresses of the church of God make some Christians shrivel into anatomies, but this good man was so moved with sympathy for Zion's ills that he was wasted down to skin and bone.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 5. My bones cleave to my skin. When the bones cleave to the skin, both are near cleaving to the dust. Joseph Caryl.

Verse 5. That grief readily causes the body to pine away is very well known. It is related of Cardinal Wolsey, by an eye-witness, that when he heard that his master's favour was turned from him, he was wrung with such an agony of grief, which continued a whole night, that in the morning his face was dwindled away into half its usual dimensions.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness, a mournful and even hideous object, the very image of desolation.

I am like an owl of the desert; loving solitude, moping among ruins, hooting discordantly. The Psalmist likens himself to two birds which were commonly used as emblems of gloom and wretchedness; on other occasions he had been as the eagle, but the griefs of his people had pulled him down, the brightness was gone from his eye, and the beauty from his person; he seemed to himself to be as a melancholy bird sitting among the fallen palaces and prostrate temples of his native land. Should not we also lament when the ways of Zion mourn and her strength languishes? Were there more of this holy sorrow we should soon see the Lord returning to build up his church. It is ill for men to be playing the peacock with worldly pride when the ills of the times should make them as mournful as the pelican; and it is a terrible thing to see men flocking like vultures to devour the prey of a decaying church, when they ought rather to be lamenting among her ruins like the owl.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness. The Kaath was a bird of solitude that was to be found in the "wilderness," i.e., far from the habitations of man. This is one of the characteristics of the pelican, which loves not the neighbourhood of human beings, and is fond of resulting to broad, uncultivated lands, where it will not be disturbed. In them it makes its nest and hatches its young, and to them it retires after feeding, in order to digest in quiet the ample meal which it has made. Mr. Tristram well suggests that the metaphor of the Psalmist may allude to the habit common to the pelican and its kin, of sitting motionless for hours after it has gorged itself with food, its head sunk on its shoulders, and its bill resting on its breast. J.G. Wood.

Verse 6. A pelican of the wilderness. Here only at Hulet have I seen the pelican of the wilderness, as David calls it. I once had one of them shot just below this place, and, as it was merely wounded in the wing, I had a good opportunity to study its character. It was certainly the most sombre, austere bird I ever saw. It gave one the blues merely to look at it. David could find no more expressive type of solitude and melancholy by which to illustrate his own sad state. It seemed as large as a half-grown donkey, and when fairly settled on its stout legs, it looked like one. The pelican is never seen but in these unfrequented solitudes. W.M. Thomson.

Verse 6. Consider that thou needest not complain, like Elijah, that thou art left alone, seeing the best of God's saints in all ages have smarted in the same kind -- instance in David: indeed sometimes he boasts how he "lay in green pastures, and was led by still waters;" but after he bemoans that he "sinks in deep mire, where there was no standing." What is become of those green pastures? parched up with the drought. Where are those still waters troubled with the tempest of affliction. The same David compares himself to an "owl," and in the next Psalm resembles himself to an "eagle." Do two fowls fly of more different kind? The one the scorn, the other the sovereign; the one the slowest, the other the swiftest; the one the most sharp-sighted, the other the most dim-eyed of all birds. Wonder not, then, to find in thyself sudden and strange alterations. It fared thus with all God's servants in their agonies of temptation; and be confident thereof, though now run aground with grief, in due time thou shalt be all afloat with comfort. Thomas Fuller.

Verse 6. Owl. Some kind of owl, it is thought, is intended by the Hebrew word cos, translated "little owl" in Leviticus 11:17; Deuteronomy 14:16, where it is mentioned amongst the unclean birds. It occurs also in Psalms 102:6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of ruined places (A. V., "desert"). The Hebrew word cos means a "cup" in some passages of Scripture, from a root meaning to "receive," to "hide," or "bring together"; hence the pelican, "the cup," or "pouch-bird," has been suggested as the bird intended. In this case the verse in the Psalm would be rendered thus: "I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, even as the pouch-bird in the desert places." But the fact that both the pelican and the cos are enumerated in the list of birds to be avoided as food is against this theory, unless the word changed its meaning in the Psalmist's time, which is improbable. The expression cos "of ruined places" looks very much as if some owl were denoted. The Arabic definitely applies a kindred expression as one of the names of an owl, viz., um elcharab, i.e. "mother of ruins." The Septuagint gives nukkktikorax as the meaning of cos; and we know from Aristotle that the Greek word was a synonym of wtoj, evidently, from his description of the bird, one of the cared owls. Dr. Tristram is disposed to refer the cos to the little Athene Persica, the most common of all the owls in Psalestine, the representative of the A noetua of Southern Europe. The Arabs call this bird "boomah," from his note; he is described "as a grotesque and comical-looking little bird, familiar and yet cautious; never moving unnecessarily, but remaining glued to his perch, unless he has good reason for believing that he has been aetected, and twisting and turning his head instead of his eyes to watch what is going on." He is to be found amongst rocks in the wadys or trees by the water-side, in olive yards, in the tombs and on the ruins, on the sandy mounds of Beersheba, and on "the spray-beaten fragments of Tyre, where his low wailing noto is sure to be heard at sunset, and himself seen bowing and keeping time to his own music." W. Houghton, in "Cassell's Biblical Educator," 1874,

Verse 6. Owl of the desert.

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Thomas Gray (1716-1771).

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 6. This as a text, together with Psalms 103:5, makes an interesting contrast, and gives scope for much experimental teaching.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 7. I watch, and am like a sparrow alone upon the house top: I keep a solitary vigil as the lone sentry of my nation; my fellows are too selfish, too careless to care for the beloved land, and so like a bird which sits alone on the housetop, I keep up a sad watch over my country. The Psalmist compared himself to a bird, -- a bird when it has lost its mate or its young, or is for some other reason made to mope alone in a solitary place. Probably he did not refer to the cheerful sparrow of our own land, but if he did, the illustration would not be out of place, for the sparrow is happy in company, and if it were alone, the sole one of its species in the neighbourhood, there can be little doubt that it would become very miserable, and sit and pine away. He who has felt himself to be so weak and inconsiderable as to have no more power over his times than a sparrow over a city, has also, when bowed down with despondency concerning the evils of the age, sat himself down in utter wretchedness to lament the ills which he could not heal. Christians of an earnest, watchful kind often find themselves among those who have no sympathy with them; even in the church they look in vain for kindred spirits; then do they persevere in their prayers and labours, but feel themselves to be as lonely as the poor bird which looks from the ridge of the roof, and meets with no friendly greeting from any of its kind.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 7. I watch. During the hours allotted to sleep "I wake," like a little bird which sits solitary on the house-top, while all beneath enjoy the sleep which he giveth to his beloved. Alfred Edersheim.

Verse 7. A sparrow alone upon the house-top. When one of them has lost its mate -- a matter of every-day occurrence -- he will sit on the house-top alone, and lament by the hour his sad bereavement. W. M. Thomson.

Verse 7. I am as a sparrow alone, etc. It is evident that the "sparrow alone and melancholy upon the house-tops" cannot be the lively, gregarious sparrow which assembles in such numbers on these favourite feeding-places the house-tops of the East. We must therefore look for some other bird, and naturalists are now agreed that we may accept the Blue Thrush (Petrocossyphus cyaneus) as the particular tzippor, or small bird, which sits alone on the house-tops. The colour of this bird is a dark blue, whence it derives its popular name. Its habits exactly correspond with the idea of solitude and melancholy. The Blue Thrushes never assemble in flocks, and it is very rare to see more than a pair together. It is fond of sitting on the tops of houses, uttering its note, which, however agreeable to itself, is monotonous and melancholy to human ear. J.G. Wood, in "Bible Animals."

Verse 7. A sparrow. Most readers are struck with the incongruity of the image, as it appears in our version, intended by the Psalmist to express a condition of distress and desolation. The sparrow is found, indeed, all over the East, in connection with houses, as it is with ourselves; but it is everywhere one of the most social of birds, cheerful to impertinence; and mischievously disposed, instead of being retiring in its habits, and melancholy in its demeanour. The word, in the original, is a general term for all the small birds, insectivorous and frugivirous, denominated clean, and that might be eaten according to the law, the thrushes, larks, wagtails, finches, as well as sparrows. It seems to be, indeed, a mere imitation of their common note, like the one which we have in the word "chirrup." Most critics are, therefore, content with the rendering, "solitary bird," or "solitary little bird." But this is very unsatisfactory. It does not identify the species: and there is every probability that there must have been a particular bird which the Psalmist, writing at the close of the Babylonish captivity, had in his eye, corresponding to his representation of it, and illustrative of his isolated condition.

Such there is at the present day, of common occurrence in Southern Europe and Western Asia. Its history is very little known to the world, and its existence has hitherto escaped the notice of all biblical commentators. Remarkably enough, the bird is commonly, but erroneously, called a sparrow, for it is a real thrush in size, in shape, in habits, and in song. It differs singularly from the rest of the tribe, throughout all the East, by a marked preference for sitting solitary upon the habitation of man. It never associates with any other, and only at one season with its own mate; and even then it is often seen quite alone upon the house-top, where it warbles its sweet and plaintive strains, and continues its song, moving from roof to roof. America has its solitary thrush, of another species, and of somewhat different habits. The dark solitary cane and myrtle swamps of the southern states are there the favourite haunts of the recluse bird; and the more dense and gloomy these are the more certainly is it to be found flitting in them. --"The Biblical Treasury".

Verse 7. Alone. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth it a little: "magna civitas, magno solitudo;" because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods; but we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. Francis Bacon.

Verse 7. Alone. See the reason why people in trouble love solitariness. They are full of sorrow; and sorrow, if it have taken deep root, is naturally reserved, and flies all conversation. Grief is a thing that is very silent and private. Those people that are very talkative and clamorous in their sorrows, are never very sorrowful. Some are apt to wonder, why melancholy people delight to be so much alone, and I will tell you the reason of it.
  • Job 6:21Psalms 71:7Psalms 88:18Job 2:12-13Lamentations 3:28

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 7. The evils and benefits of solitude; when it may be sought, and when it becomes a folly. Or, the mournful watcher -- alone, outside the pale of communion, insignificant, wishful for fellowship, set apart to watch.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 8. Mine enemies reproach me all the day. Their rage was unrelenting and unceasing, and vented itself in taunts and insults, the Psalmist's patriotism and his griefs were both made the subjects of their sport. Pointing to the sad estate of his people they would ask him, "Where is your God?" and exult over him because their false gods were in the ascendant. Reproach cuts like a razor, and when it is continued from hour to hour, and repeated all the day and every day, it makes life itself undesirable.

And they that are mad against me are sworn against me. They were so furious that they bound themselves by oath to destroy him, and used his name as their usual execration, a word to curse by, the synonym of abhorrence and contempt. What with inward sorrows and outward persecutions he was in as ill a plight as may well be conceived.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 8. Mine enemies reproach me. It is true what Plutarch writes, that men are more touched with reproaches than with other injuries; affliction, too, gives a keener edge to calumny, for the afflicted are more fitting objects of pity than of mockery. Mollerus.

Verse 8. Mine enemies reproach me, etc. If I be where they are they rail at me to my face; and if I be not amongst them they revile me behind my back; and they do it not by starts and fits, that might give me some breathing time; but they are spitting their poison all the day long; and not single and one by one, that might leave hope of resisting; but they make combinations, and enter leagues against me; and to make their leagues the stronger, and less subject to dissolving, they bind themselves by oath, and take the sacrament upon it. And now sum up all these miseries and afflictions; begin with my fasting; then take my groaning; then add my watching; then the shame of being wondered at in company; then the discomfort of sitting disconsolate alone; and, lastly, add to these the spite and malice of my enemies; and what marvel, then, if these miseries joined all together make me altogether miserable; what marvel if I be nothing but skin and bone, when no flesh that were wise would ever stay upon a body to endure such misery. Sir R. Baker.

Verse 8 (last clause). Swearing by one, means, to make his name a by- word of execration, or an example of cursing. (Isaiah 65:15; 29:22 42:18). Carl Bernard Moll, in Lange's Commentary.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 9. For I have eaten ashes like bread. He had so frequently cast ashes upon his head in token of mourning, that they had mixed with his ordinary food, and grated between his teeth when he ate his daily bread. One while he forgot to eat, and then the fit changed, and he ate with such a hunger that even ashes were devoured. Grief has strange moods and tenses.

And mingled my drink with weeping. His drink became as nauseous as his meat, for copious showers of tears had made it brackish. This is a telling description of all-saturating, all-embittering sadness, -- and this was the portion of one of the best of men, and that for no fault of his own, but because of his love to the Lord's people. If we, too, are called to mourn, let us not be amazed by the fiery trial as though some strange thing had happened unto us. Both in meat and drink we have sinned; it is not therefore wonderful if in both we are made to mourn.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 9. I have eaten ashes like bread. Though the bread indeed be strange, yet not so strange as this, -- that having complained before of forgetting to eat his bread, he should now on a sudden fall to eating of ashes like bread. For had he not been better to have forgotten it still, unless it had been more worth remembering? For there is not in nature so unfit a thing to eat as ashes; it is worse than Nebuchadnezzar's grass. Sir R. Baker.

Verse 9. I have mingled my drink with weeping. If you think his bread to be bad, you will find his drink to be worse; for he mingles his drink with tears: and what are tears, but brinish and salt humours? and is brine a fit liquor to quench one's thirst? May we not say here, the remedy is worse than the disease? for were it not better to endure any thirst, than to seek to quench it with such drink? Is it not a pitiful thing to have no drink to put in the stomach, but that which is drawn out of the eyes? and yet whose case is any better? No man certainly commits sin, but with a design of pleasure; but sin will not be so committed; for whosoever commit sin, let them be sure at some time or other to find a thousand times more trouble about it than ever they found pleasure in it. For all sin is a kind of surfeit, and there is no way to keep it from being mortal but by this strict diet of eating ashes like bread and mingling his drink with tears. O my soul, if these be works of repentance in David, where shall we find a penitent in the world besides himself? To talk of repentance is obvious in everyone's mouth; but where is any that eats ashes like bread, and mingles his drink with tears? Sir R. Baker.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 9. The sorrows of the saints -- their number, bitterness, sources, correctives, influences, and consolations.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 10. Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down. A sense of the divine wrath which had been manifested in the overthrow of the chosen nation and their sad captivity led the Psalmist into the greatest distress. He felt like a sere leaf caught up by a hurricane and carried right away, or the spray of the sea which is dashed upwards that it may be scattered and dissolved. Our translation gives the idea of a vessel uplifted in order that it may be dashed to the earth with all the greater violence and the more completely broken in pieces; or to change the figure, it reminds us of a wrestler whom his opponent catches up that he may give him a more desperate fall. The first interpretation which we have given is, however, more fully in accordance with the original, and sets forth the utter helplessness which the writer felt, and the sense of overpowering terror which bore him along in a rush of tumultuous grief which he could not withstand.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 10. For thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down. Thou hast lifted me up of a great height, in that thou madest me like unto thine image, touching my reasonable soul, and hast given me power, by thy grace, to inherit the everlasting joys of heaven, both body and soul, if I did live here after thy commandments. What greater gift canst thou give me, Lord, than to have the fruition of thee that art all in all things? How canst thou lift me higher than to eternal beatitude? But then, alas, thou hast letten me fall down again, for thou hast joined my noble soul with an earthly, heavy, and a frail body; the weight and burden thereof draweth down my mind and heart from the consideration of thy goodness, and from well doing, unto all kinds of vices, and to the regarding of temporal things according to his nature. The earthly mansion keepeth down the understanding. Thus setting me up, as it were, above the wind, thou hast given me a very great fall (Job 30:22). I am in creation above all other kind of earthly creatures, and almost equal with angels; but being in this estate thou hast knit a knot thereto, that for breaking the least of thy commandments I shall suffer damnation. So that without thy continual mercy and help I am in worse case herein than any brute beast, whose life or soul dieth with the body. Sir Anthony Cope (1551).

Verse 10. For thou hast lifted me up and cast me down. That is that I might fall with greater poise. Significatur gravissima collisio. Here the prophet accuseth not God of cruelty, but bewaileth his own misery. Miserum est fusisse felicem, it is no small unhappiness to have been happy. John Trapp.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 10.

  • Psalms 102:9,12-13

Verse l0 (last cause). The prosperity of a church or an individual often followed by declension; worldly aggrandisement frequently succeeded by affliction; great joy in the Lord very generally succeeded by trial.

 

EXPOSITION

Verse 11. My days are like a shadow that declineth. His days were but a shadow at best, but now they seem to be like a shadow which was passing away. A shadow is unsubstantial enough, how feeble a thing must a declining shadow be? No expression could more forcibly set forth his extreme feebleness.

And I am withered like grass. He was like grass, blasted by a parching wind, or cut down with a scythe, and then left to be dried up by the burning heat of the sun. There are times when through depression of spirit a man feels as if all life were gone from him, and existence had become merely a breathing death. Heart-break has a marvellously withering influence over our entire system; our flesh at its best is but as grass, and when it is wounded with sharp sorrows, its beauty fades, and it becomes a shrivelled, dried, uncomely thing.

 

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 11 (first clause). My days (my term of life) are as the lengthened shade, the lengthening shade of evening, that shows the near approach of night. The comparison, though not strictly expressed, is beautifully suggestive of the thought intended. Thomas J. Conant.

Verse 11 (last clause). The and I, in the Hebrew, stands in designed contrast to "But thou," Psalms 102:12. A. R. Fausset.

 

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 11-12. I and Thou, or the notable contrast.

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