23 He hath humbled in the way my power, He hath shortened my days.
For what `is' his delight in his house after him, And the number of his months cut off?
And Thou, Thou hast cast off, and dost reject, Thou hast shown Thyself wroth With Thine anointed, Hast rejected the covenant of Thy servant, Thou hast polluted to the earth his crown, Thou hast broken down all his hedges, Thou hast made his fenced places a ruin. Spoiled him have all passing by the way, He hath been a reproach to his neighbours, Thou hast exalted the right hand of his adversaries, Thou hast caused all his enemies to rejoice. Also -- Thou turnest back the sharpness of his sword, And hast not established him in battle, Hast caused `him' to cease from his brightness, And his throne to the earth hast cast down. Thou hast shortened the days of his youth, Hast covered him over `with' shame. Selah. Till when, O Jehovah, art Thou hidden? For ever doth Thy fury burn as fire? Remember, I pray Thee, what `is' life-time? Wherefore in vain hast Thou created All the sons of men?
let not any one deceive you in any manner, because -- if the falling away may not come first, and the man of sin be revealed -- the son of the destruction, who is opposing and is raising himself up above all called God or worshipped, so that he in the sanctuary of God as God hath sat down, shewing himself off that he is God -- `the day doth not come'. Do ye not remember that, being yet with you, these things I said to you? and now, what is keeping down ye have known, for his being revealed in his own time, for the secret of the lawlessness doth already work, only he who is keeping down now `will hinder' -- till he may be out of the way, and then shall be revealed the Lawless One, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the manifestation of his presence, `him,' whose presence is according to the working of the Adversary, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all deceitfulness of the unrighteousness in those perishing, because the love of the truth they did not receive for their being saved, and because of this shall God send to them a working of delusion, for their believing the lie, that they may be judged -- all who did not believe the truth, but were well pleased in the unrighteousness.
And the Spirit expressly speaketh, that in latter times shall certain fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons, in hypocrisy speaking lies, being seared in their own conscience, forbidding to marry -- to abstain from meats that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those believing and acknowledging the truth,
And this know thou, that in the last days there shall come perilous times, for men shall be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, evil-speakers, to parents disobedient, unthankful, unkind, without natural affection, implacable, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, not lovers of those who are good, traitors, heady, lofty, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of piety, and its power having denied; and from these be turning away, for of these there are those coming into the houses and leading captive the silly women, laden with sins, led away with desires manifold, always learning, and never to a knowledge of truth able to come, and, even as Jannes and Jambres stood against Moses, so also these do stand against the truth, men corrupted in mind, disapproved concerning the faith; but they shall not advance any further, for their folly shall be manifest to all, as theirs also did become. And thou -- thou hast followed after my teaching, manner of life, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, endurance, the persecutions, the afflictions, that befel me in Antioch, in Iconium, in Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of all the Lord did deliver me, and all also who will to live piously in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted, and evil men and impostors shall advance to the worse, leading astray and being led astray. And thou -- be remaining in the things which thou didst learn and wast entrusted with, having known from whom thou didst learn, and because from a babe the Holy Writings thou hast known, which are able to make thee wise -- to salvation, through faith that `is' in Christ Jesus; every Writing `is' God-breathed, and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for setting aright, for instruction that `is' in righteousness, that the man of God may be fitted -- for every good work having been completed.
and the court that is without the sanctuary leave out, and thou mayest not measure it, because it was given to the nations, and the holy city they shall tread down forty-two months; and I will give to My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy days, a thousand, two hundred, sixty, arrayed with sackcloth; these are the two olive `trees', and the two lamp-stands that before the God of the earth do stand; and if any one may will to injure them, fire doth proceed out of their mouth, and doth devour their enemies, and if any one may will to injure them, thus it behoveth him to be killed. These have authority to shut the heaven, that it may not rain rain in the days of their prophecy, and authority they have over the waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the land with every plague, as often as they may will. `And when they may finish their testimony, the beast that is coming up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them, and their dead bodies `are' upon the broad-place of the great city (that is called spiritually Sodom, and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified,) and they shall behold -- they of the peoples, and tribes, and tongues, and nations -- their dead bodies three days and a half, and their dead bodies they shall not suffer to be put into tombs, and those dwelling upon the land shall rejoice over them, and shall make merry, and gifts they shall send to one another, because these -- the two prophets -- did torment those dwelling upon the land.' And after the three days and a half, a spirit of life from God did enter into them, and they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon those beholding them, and they heard a great voice out of the heaven saying to them, `Come up hither;' and they went up to the heaven in the cloud, and their enemies beheld them; and in that hour came a great earthquake, and the tenth of the city did fall, and killed in the earthquake were names of men -- seven thousands, and the rest became affrighted, and they gave glory to the God of the heaven. The second wo did go forth, lo, the third wo doth come quickly. And the seventh messenger did sound, and there came great voices in the heaven, saying, `The kingdoms of the world did become `those' of our Lord and of His Christ, and he shall reign to the ages of the ages!' and the twenty and four elders, who before God are sitting upon their thrones, did fall upon their faces, and did bow before God, saying, `We give thanks to Thee, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art, and who wast, and who art coming, because Thou hast taken Thy great power and didst reign; and the nations were angry, and Thine anger did come, and the time of the dead, to be judged, and to give the reward to Thy servants, to the prophets, and to the saints, and to those fearing Thy name, to the small and to the great, and to destroy those who are destroying the land.' And opened was the sanctuary of God in the heaven, and there was seen the ark of His covenant in His sanctuary, and there did come lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and an earthquake, and great hail.
And when the dragon saw that he was cast forth to the earth, he pursued the woman who did bring forth the male, and there were given to the woman two wings of the great eagle, that she may fly to the wilderness, to her place, where she is nourished a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent; and the serpent did cast forth after the woman, out of his mouth, water as a river, that he may cause her to be carried away by the river, and the land did help the woman, and the land did open its mouth and did swallow up the river, that the dragon did cast forth out of his mouth; and the dragon was angry against the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, those keeping the commands of God, and having the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 102
Commentary on Psalms 102 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Prayer of a Patient Sufferer for Himself and for the Jerusalem That Lies in Ruins
Psalms 101:1-8 utters the sigh: When wilt Thou come to me? and Ps 102 with the inscription: Prayer for an afflicted one when he pineth away and poureth forth his complaint before Jahve , prays, Let my prayer come unto Thee . It is to be taken, too, just as personally as it sounds, and the person is not to be construed into a nation. The song of the עני is, however, certainly a national song; the poet is a servant of Jahve, who shares the calamity that has befallen Jerusalem and its homeless people, both in outward circumstances and in the very depth of his soul. עטף signifies to pine away, languish, as in Psalms 61:3, Isaiah 57:16; and שׁפך שׂיחו to pour out one's thoughts and complaints, one's anxious care, as in Psalms 142:3, cf. 1 Samuel 1:15.
As in the case already with many of the preceding Psalms, the deutero-Isaianic impression accompanies us in connection with this Psalm also, even to the end; and the further we get in it the more marked does the echo of its prophetical prototype become. The poet also allies himself with earlier Psalms, such as Ps 22, Ps 69, and Psalms 79:1-13, although himself capable of lofty poetic flight, in return for which he makes us feel the absence of any safely progressive unfolding of the thoughts.
The Psalm opens with familiar expressions of prayer, such as rise in the heart and mouth of the praying one without his feeling that they are of foreign origin; cf. more especially Psalms 39:13; Psalms 18:7; Psalms 88:3; and on Psalms 102:3 : Psalms 27:9 ( Hide not Thy face from me ); Psalms 59:17 ( ביום צר לי ); Psalms 31:3 and frequently ( Incline Thine ear unto me ); Psalms 56:10 ( ביום אקוא ); Psalms 69:8; Psalms 143:7 ( מהר ענני ).
From this point onward the Psalm becomes original. Concerning the Beth in בעשׁן , vid., on Psalms 37:20. The reading כּמו קד (in the Karaite Ben-Jerucham) enriches the lexicon in the same sense with a word which has scarcely had any existence. מוקד (Arabic mauḳid ) signifies here, as in other instances, a hearth. נחרוּ is, as in Psalms 69:4, Niphal : my bones are heated through with a fever-heat, as a hearth with the smouldering fire that is on it. הוּכּה (cf. יגודּוּ , Psalms 94:21) is used exactly as in Hosea 9:16, cf. Psalms 121:5. The heart is said to dry up when the life's blood, of which it is the reservoir, fails. The verb שׁכח is followed by מן of dislike. On the cleaving of the bones to the flesh from being baked, i.e., to the skin (Arabic bašar , in accordance with the radical signification, the surface of the body = the skin, from בשׂר , to brush along, rub, scrape, scratch on the surface), cf. Job 19:20; Lamentations 4:8. ל ( אל ) with דּבק is used just like בּ . It is unnecessary, with Böttcher, to draw מקּול אנחתי to Psalms 102:5. Continuous straining of the voice, especially in connection with persevering prayer arising from inward conflict, does really make the body waste away.
קאת (construct of קאת or קאת from קאה , vid., Isaiah , at Isaiah 34:11-12), according to the lxx, is the pelican, and כּוס is the night-raven or the little horned-owl.
(Note: The lxx renders it: I am like a pelican of the desert, I am become as a night-raven upon a ruined place ( οἰκοπέδῳ ). In harmony with the lxx, Saadia (as also the Arabic version edited by Erpenius, the Samaritan Arabic, and Abulwalîd) renders קאת by Arab. qûq (here and in Leviticus 11:18; Deuteronomy 14:17; Isaiah 34:17), and כוס by Arab. bûm ; the latter ( bum ) is an onomatopoetic name of the owl, and the former ( k[uk[ ) does not even signify the owl or horned-owl (although the small horned-owl is called um kuéik in Egypt, and in Africa abu kuéik ; vid., the dictionaries of Bocthor and Marcel s.v. chouette ), but the pelican, the “long-necked water-bird” (Damiri after the lexicon el - ‛Obâb of Hasan ben-Mohammed el-Saghani). The Graeco-Veneta also renders קאת with πελεκάν , - the Peshito, however, with Syr. qāqā' . What Ephrem on Deuteronomy 14:17 and the Physiologus Syrus (ed. Tychsen , p. 13, cf. pp. 110 f). say of Syr. qāqā' , viz., that it is a marsh-bird, is very fond of its young ones, dwells in desolate places, and is incessantly noisy, likewise points to the pelican, although the Syrian lexicographers vary. Cf. also Oedmann, Vermischte Sammlungen , Heft 3, Cap. 6. (Fleischer after a communication from Rodiger.))
דּמה obtains the signification to be like, equal ( aequalem esse ), from the radical signification to be flat, even, and to spread out flat (as the Dutch have already recognised). They are both unclean creatures, which are fond of the loneliness of the desert and ruined places. To such a wilderness, that of the exile, is the poet unwillingly transported. He passes the nights without sleep ( שׁקד , to watch during the time for sleep), and is therefore like a bird sitting lonesome ( בּודד , Syriac erroneously נודד ) upon the roof whilst all in the house beneath are sleeping. The Athnach in Psalms 102:8 separates that which is come to be from the ground of the “becoming” and the “becoming” itself. His grief is that his enemies reproach him as one forsaken of God. מהולל , part. Poal , is one made or become mad, Ecclesiastes 2:2 : my mad ones = those who are mad against me. These swear by him, inasmuch as they say when they want to curse: “God do unto thee as unto this man,” which is to be explained according to Isaiah 65:15; Jeremiah 29:22.
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, Psalms 109:23. Another figure follows: he there becomes like an (uprooted) plant which dries up.
When the church in its individual members dies off on a foreign soil, still its God, the unchangeable One, remains, and therein the promise has the guarantee of its fulfilment. Faith lays hold upon this guarantee as in Ps 90. It becomes clear from Psalms 9:8 and Lamentations 5:19 how תּשׁב is to be understood. The Name which Jahve makes Himself by self-attestation never falls a prey to the dead past, it is His ever-living memorial ( זכר , Exodus 3:15). Thus, too, will He restore Jerusalem; the limit, or appointed time, to which the promise points is, as his longing tells the poet, now come. מועד , according to Psalms 75:3; Habakkuk 2:3, is the juncture, when the redemption by means of the judgment on the enemies of Israel shall dawn. לחננהּ , from the infinitive חנן , has ĕ , flattened from ă , in an entirely closed syllable. רצה seq. acc. signifies to have pleasure in anything, to cling to it with delight; and חנן , according to Proverbs 14:21, affirms a compassionate, tender love of the object. The servants of God do not feel at home in Babylon, but their loving yearning lingers over the ruins, the stones and the heaps of the rubbish (Nehemiah 4:2), of Jerusalem.
With וייראוּ we are told what will take place when that which is expected in Psalms 102:14 comes to pass, and at the same time the fulfilment of that which is longed for is thereby urged home upon God: Jahve's own honour depends upon it, since the restoration of Jerusalem will become the means of the conversion of the world - a fundamental thought of Isaiah 40:1 (cf. more particularly Isaiah 59:19; Isaiah 60:2), which is also called to mind in the expression of this strophe. This prophetic prospect (Isaiah 40:1-5) that the restoration of Jerusalem will take place simultaneously with the glorious parusia of Jahve re-echoes here in a lyric form. כּי , Psalms 102:17, states the ground of the reverence, just as Psalms 102:20 the ground of the praise. The people of the Exile are called in Psalms 102:18 הערער , from ערר , to be naked: homeless, powerless, honourless, and in the eyes of men, prospectless. The lxx renders this word in Jeremiah 17:6 ἀγριομυρίκη , and its plural, formed by an internal change of vowel, ערוער , in Jeremiah 48:6 ὄνος ἄγριος , which are only particularizations of the primary notion of that which is stark naked, neglected, wild. Psalms 102:18 is an echo off Psalms 22:25. In the mirror of this and of other Psalms written in times of affliction the Israel of the Exile saw itself reflected.
The poet goes on advancing motives to Jahve for the fulfilment of his desire, by holding up to Him what will take place when He shall have restored Zion. The evangel of God's redemptive deed will be written down for succeeding generations, and a new, created people, i.e., a people coming into existence, the church of the future, shall praise God the Redeemer for it. דּור אחרון as in Psalms 48:14; Psalms 78:4. עם נברא like עם נולד Ps 22:32, perhaps with reference to deutero-Isaianic passages like Isaiah 43:17. On Psalms 102:20, cf. Isaiah 63:15; in Psalms 102:21 (cf. Isaiah 42:7; Isaiah 61:1) the deutero-Isaianic colouring is very evident. And Psalms 102:21 rests still more verbally upon Psalms 79:11. The people of the Exile are as it were in prison and chains ( אסיר ), and are advancing towards their destruction ( בּני תמוּתה ), if God does not interpose. Those who have returned home are the subject to לספּר . בּ in Psalms 102:23 introduces that which takes place simultaneously: with the release of Israel from servitude is united the conversion of the world. נקבּץ occurs in the same connection as in Isaiah 60:4. After having thus revelled in the glory of the time of redemption the poet comes back to himself and gives form to his prayer on his own behalf.
On the way ( ב as in Psalms 110:7) - not “by means of the way” ( ב as in Psalms 105:18), in connection with which one would expect of find some attributive minuter definition of the way - God hath bowed down his strength (cf. Deuteronomy 8:2); it was therefore a troublous, toilsome way which he has been led, together with his people. He has shortened his days, so that he only drags on wearily, and has only a short distance still before him before he is entirely overcome. The Chethîb כחו (lxx ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ ) may be understood of God's irresistible might, as in Job 23:6; Job 30:18, but in connection with it the designation of the object is felt to be wanting. The introductory אמר (cf. Job 10:2), which announces a definite moulding of the utterance, serves to give prominence to the petition that follows. In the expression אל־תּעלני life is conceived of as a line the length of which accords with nature; to die before one's time is a being taken up out of this course, so that the second half of the line is not lived through (Ps 55:24, Isaiah 38:10). The prayer not to sweep him away before his time, the poet supports not by the eternity of God in itself, but by the work of the rejuvenation of the world and of the restoration of Israel that is to be looked for, which He can and will bring to an accomplishment, because He is the ever-living One. The longing to see this new time is the final ground of the poet's prayer for the prolonging of his life. The confession of God the Creator in Psalms 102:26 reminds one in its form of Isaiah 48:13, cf. Psalms 44:24. המּה in Psalms 102:27 refers to the two great divisions of the universe. The fact that God will create heaven and earth anew is a revelation that is indicated even in Isaiah 34:4, but is first of all expressed more fully and in many ways in the second part of the Book of Isaiah, viz., Isaiah 51:6, Isaiah 51:16; Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22. It is clear from the agreement in the figure of the garment (Isaiah 51:6, cf. Psalms 50:9) and in the expression ( עמד , perstare , as in Isaiah 66:22) that the poet has gained this knowledge from the prophet. The expressive אתּה הוּא , Thou art He, i.e., unalterably the same One, is also taken from the mouth of the prophet, Isaiah 41:4; Isaiah 43:10; Isaiah 46:4; Isaiah 48:12; הוּא is a predicate, and denotes the identity (sameness) of Jahve (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis , i. 63). In v. 29 also, in which the prayer for a lengthening of life tapers off to a point, we hear Isaiah 65:2; Isaiah 66:22 re-echoed. And from the fact that in the mind of the poet as of the prophet the post-exilic Jerusalem and the final new Jerusalem upon the new earth under a new heaven blend together, it is evident that not merely in the time of Hezekiah or of Manasseh (assuming that Isaiah 40:1 are by the old Isaiah), but also even in the second half of the Exile, such a perspectively foreshortened view was possible. When, moreover, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews at once refers Psalms 102:26-28 to Christ, this is justified by the fact that the God whom the poet confesses as the unchangeable One is Jahve who is to come.