PSALM 102 – Ashes and Tears

TEXT (Hebrew text at end)

1. A prayer of the afflicted when he grows faint and pours forth his complaint before the LORD.

2. O LORD hear my prayer; let my wailing come before You.

3. Do not hide Your face from me. In my day of distress; turn Your ear to me; on the day I call, answer me speedily.

4. For my days pass away like smoke and my bones are burnt like a hearth.

5. Stricken like withering grass is my heart, so much so that I forget to eat my bread;

6. from the sound of my groaning, my bone clings to my flesh.

7. I am like a 1-desert-owl in the wilderness, I am become an owl among dry ruins.-1

8. I lie awake and moan like a bird alone on a roof.

9. All day long my enemies revile me; my deriders use my name as a curse.

10. For as bread I have eaten ashes, and my drink I have mixed with tears

11. because of Your wrath and Your fury; for You have raised me up and cast me aside.

12. My days are like a lengthened shadow, and I, I wither like grass.

13. But You, O LORD, sit enthroned forever; Your renown lasts throughout the generations.

14. You, You will arise, You will have mercy on Zion; for it is time to take pity on her, the appointed moment has come;

15. for Your servants take delight in her stones, and have pity on her dust.

16. And nations will fear the name of the LORD, all the kings of the earth, Your glory;

17. for the LORD has rebuilt Zion; He has appeared in His glory;

18. He has turned to the prayer of the destitute and has not disdained their prayer.

19. May this be recorded for a later generation, that a people to-be-created may praise the LORD.

20. He2 looks down from His holy height, the LORD, He beholds earth from heaven

21. to hear a prisoner’s groan, to release those doomed to die;

22. that the name of the LORD may be declared in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem,

23. when peoples gather together, kingdoms, to serve the LORD.

24. He humbled my strength in mid-course, He shortened my days.

25. I say, “O my God, do not lift me away in the midst of my days, You whose years span generations on end.”

26. Long ago You founded the earth, and heaven is the work of Your hands.

27. They shall perish, but You shall remain, while they shall all wear out like a garment. You replace them like clothing and they are replaced.3

28. But You are still the One,4 and Your years have no end.

29. 5-May Your servants’ children dwell safe, and their offspring be secure before You.-5

Notes

1. Different terms used for “owl.” The locations indicate either a place or a type of owl. “Ruins” is from a root meaning “dry,” and thus hints at the desert.

2. Hebrew reads “That He,” here implied by the colon at the end of verse 19.

3. Indicates “are gone.”

4. Literally, “You are He.”

5. Verse implies combination of both subjects and predicates, to be understood: “May Your servants’ children and their offspring dwell securely before You.”

COMMENTARY

Alternately sad and exhilarating, Psalm 102 records a coming-to-terms of a dying individual with justice that will probably be achieved only after his death. The speaker integrates contrasts: he is deathly ill, yet he is comforted by the far future; he focuses on himself and on God-and-community with equal intensity. Throughout, the psalmist laces his poem with metaphor, simile, and elegant turns of phrase.

The background of Psalm 102 is tragedy, personal and national. (Most interpreters date the psalm within the first exile, after the destruction of the First Temple.) Across two disparate areas of concentration, private and public, the psalmist presents a unified picture. There are two personal/communal cycles, once in verses 1–12 followed by 13–23 and then more briefly (vv. 24–25; 26–29). The poem, with its inclusio of “before God” (once “before You”), repeats “prayer” four times (vv. 1, 2, 18). Despite an opening that echoes many phrases from other prayers in Psalms (echoes may be found in Pss. 18:7, 27:9, 59:17, 31:3, 39:13, and 66:10), Psalm 102 goes on to paint a unique portrait.

I first reflect on the two integrations that the speaker enunciates: the present with the future and the individual with the community. Thereafter I comment on many of the psalmist’s poetic flourishes.

Day by Day, as Time Goes By

Time is of great fascination in Psalm 102. The speaker desperately wants to live on, as articulated and reflected in seven uses of “days,” all in the two sections of personal concentration. Nevertheless, he accepts God’s time perspective, in both transitions from personal to public concern, focusing on his own ephemerality and God’s eternality (vv. 12–13, 25–28, as Broyles notes). On one hand, the “appointed moment” and “time” to act is now (v. 13), and he says this as a man who fears that he is about to die. On the other hand, he understands that God’s time extends even beyond the world (vv. 26, 27). Still, he has not given up hoping for a longer life (v. 25).

Seemingly, the speaker finds comfort in God’s eternality, repeatedly expressing an understanding that God’s time is well beyond his own and that the promise of reconstruction and return will in fact happen someday. (Verses 17 and 18 are to be understood as the background of the future action in verse 16, not as completed actions.) Although he feels that the “appointed moment has come” (v. 14), that there has been enough suffering, and that the people are now truly devoted to destroyed Jerusalem, he nevertheless seems to find comfort in the hope of future change. Thus he notes the praise that a generation yet unborn will give God when He finally looks down from His high place in response to the cry of those who suffer (vv. 19–24).

On a logical level, there is self-contradiction here. On a human level, the description rings true, his hopes reading as heroic, sad, wistful, or noble, and perhaps all of these at one time. As so often, poetry can capture reality better than logic.

“I” and “We”

So exclusively individualized is the opening lament of Psalm 102 that the reader is shocked by the radical shift beginning in verses 13 and 14, which totally redefines the poem. Verses 14 through 20 deal exclusively with Zion, its destruction and its anticipated reconstruction, before proceeding to a restatement of the contrast between the speaker’s brief life and God’s eternality. The final verse, so often a surprise in Psalms, weaves the themes together, God’s eternality now implying assured salvation.

The speaker’s affinity with his community is overwhelmingly clear. “The poet is one into whose heart the sorrows of the nation have entered so deeply that he feels them all his own” (Kirkpatrick).

Many interpreters of Psalm 102 have been so puzzled by this combination of individual and community that they conclude either that the individual is merely a collective symbol for the people or that he has an official role, such as monarch. Neither is necessary, for the problem is in modernity, not in antiquity. It is the radical individualism of modernity that makes it difficult for today’s reader to accept this total identification. The corporate self-definition of the individual, however, is much clearer in the Bible; reality incorporates both identities.

In the case of Psalm 102, of course, the external conditions, owing to the violent conquest and the destruction, appropriately account for the suffering of both the individual and the community, but here the two are melded into something greater. (Lamentations also interweaves the community, the personification of the community as an individual, and purely individual suffering. Psalm 22 presents a model of integrated identification, as does the end of Psalm 69, which is very similar to the end of Psalm 102.)

Poetic Flourishes

Psalm 102 is replete with metaphors and similes, particularly beginning and end, and elegant turns of phrase. I review these by verse order and then comment briefly on poetic uses that span the psalm.

Verse 3 – This is an exceptional structure, ABABA, three requests of God placed around two temporal references. Desperation and urgency dominate.

Verse 4 – Note the powerful and suggestive descriptions. Smoke suggests something fleeting, heavy, and uncomfortable, while implying fire and destruction. The charred hearth, carrying forward the fire imagery, is similarly depressing, the flame now gone, leaving only soot and blackness.

Verse 5 – The beginning literally reads, “struck like grass, it dried up, my heart” and thus one first hears the assault (through the word “struck”). The dried grass possibly echoes the fire of the previous verse. The poet repeats the image in verse 12, and there he is describing himself. Forgetting to eat bread is also suggestive. It may imply that pain has overcome even hunger, that pain has eliminated even the physical possibility of eating (forget how to eat bread), or starvation (forgot what eating bread was like). Poetry allows us to hear all three.

Verse 7 – Often in Psalms birds are symbols of freedom and flight (see Ps. 55:6, 7). Here they strikingly reflect the dryness of the speaker’s body. One feels the heat and senses scavenging. Further, as Schaefer notes, these are “unclean” birds, unfit to eat (Lev. 11:17, 18). There seem to be loneliness and futility here. Radak senses that the speaker is so alone that he converses with these birds in the wilderness.

Verse 8 – The bird image is maintained and although it is moved to the city, it manages to retain the sense of loneliness. The term “moan” (ehyeh) also connects the verses, echoing in the Hebrew “I am become”  (hayiti) in verse 7. A further striking note is the masculine form of “alone,” for elsewhere in the Bible, “bird” is feminine. Whereas it is possible that “bird” might be either (there are several such words), it may be that the speaker is swept along to think of himself, the application of the metaphor.

Verse 9 – The opening phrase, “all day long,” applies to the previous verse as well. As here, several psalms augment physical suffering by noting taunting by others. However, in this case the use of “enemies” and “deriders” also subtly lays the groundwork for the sharp change of focus toward the community that occurs in verse 14.

Verse 10 – Ashes were a sign of mourning in antiquity. Again in retrospect, the verse hints at what is to come (when destruction literally only left ashes to eat).

Verse 11 – Note the poetic balance of two nouns with two verbs. There is great poetic potential in the combination of the two verbs, for being raised up and cast aside may be much worse than the latter act alone (so Kirkpatrick).

Verse 12 – The lengthening shadow might imply insubstantiality, constant change, and/or the end of the day.

Verse 13 – The Hebrew format of “and I” in verse 12 and “but You” in verse 13 is identical, highlighting the contrast. The two verses could hardly describe more contradictory conditions.

Verse 14 – Malbim finds three separate arguments in verses 14 and 15: because of God’s inherent mercy, because it is a special time of forgiveness, and because the set time of punishment has elapsed.

Verse 18 – “Destitute” in Hebrew is also a name of a tree (‘ar’ar, Jer. 17:6, possibly, "tamarisk") and the collective people may be equated here to a lone desert tree, continuing the imagery of the desert birds earlier in the poem.

Verse 25 – “Lift me away” is unusual, for death is usually portrayed as being “brought down,” implying to the netherworld (e.g., see Ps. 55:24). This may be governed by the verb used in verse 11.

Verse 27 – The striking echo of “replaced” emphasizes the action. The simile of discarded clothes is a most effective distinction between God and the world.

Verse 29 – The reference of “Your servants” is assuredly multivalent. That term is used for the forebears of the nation, but it is also used for later generations, such as the Israelites in the desert, and it could be used here for the poet’s peers (as in v. 15). The verbal mode of this verse is imperfect. I have translated it as a hope, but it would be equally valid to translate it as present tense or future tense. It is possible that all three are implied.

Hacham points out that in the four references to God that use the specific pronoun “You” (vv. 13, 14, 27, and 28), God successively sits, rises, stands, and is. In the end it is His presence that reassures the speaker.

The psalm begins in direct address to God, switches to speaking about Him in the third person and then in verse 25 returns to address God in the second person. The second person seems engendered by the concentration on the speaker’s fate, a more intimate discussion.

There are more than twenty repetitions of terms in Psalm 102, many of which I have noted above. They are all reflected in the foregoing translation.

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Additional Notes

“Hallelujah,” which means “praise the Lord” first appears in the Book of Psalms at the end of Psalm 104 and many times thereafter. It is anticipated here by the phrase “[they] may praise the Lord” in verse 19.

Verse 15 achieved great prominence in Jewish tradition owing to its use by Yehuda Halevi, leading medieval Jewish philosopher and poet. It appears at the end of his masterwork The Cuzari, where it is given prescriptive force: God will redeem the Jewish people when they “delight in her stones, and have pity on her dust,” that is, when they return to Israel.

The author of these essays is Rabbi Benjamin Segal, former president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and author of The Song of Songs: A Woman in Love (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2009). This material is copyright by the author, and may not be reproduced. If you are interested in using the texts for study groups, please be in direct contact with the author, at psalmblog@gmail.com.

HEBREW TEXT

א) תְּפִלָּה לְעָנִי כִי יַעֲטֹף וְלִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה יִשְׁפֹּךְ שִׂיחוֹ:

(ב) יְהֹוָה שִׁמְעָה תְפִלָּתִי וְשַׁוְעָתִי אֵלֶיךָ תָבוֹא:

(ג) אַל תַּסְתֵּר פָּנֶיךָ מִמֶּנִּי בְּיוֹם צַר לִי הַטֵּה אֵלַי אָזְנֶךָ בְּיוֹם אֶקְרָא מַהֵר עֲנֵנִי:

(ד) כִּי כָלוּ בְעָשָׁן יָמָי וְעַצְמוֹתַי כְּמוֹקֵד נִחָרוּ:

(ה) הוּכָּה כָעֵשֶׂב וַיִּבַשׁ לִבִּי כִּי שָׁכַחְתִּי מֵאֲכֹל לַחְמִי:

(ו) מִקּוֹל אַנְחָתִי דָּבְקָה עַצְמִי לִבְשָׂרִי:

(ז) דָּמִיתִי לִקְאַת מִדְבָּר הָיִיתִי כְּכוֹס חֳרָבוֹת:

(ח) שָׁקַדְתִּי וָאֶהְיֶה כְּצִפּוֹר בּוֹדֵד עַל גָּג:

(ט) כָּל הַיּוֹם חֵרְפוּנִי אוֹיְבָי מְהוֹלָלַי בִּי נִשְׁבָּעוּ:

(י) כִּי אֵפֶר כַּלֶּחֶם אָכָלְתִּי וְשִׁקֻּוַי בִּבְכִי מָסָכְתִּי:

(יא) מִפְּנֵי זַעַמְךָ וְקִצְפֶּךָ כִּי נְשָׂאתַנִי וַתַּשְׁלִיכֵנִי:

(יב) יָמַי כְּצֵל נָטוּי וַאֲנִי כָּעֵשֶׂב אִיבָשׁ:

(יג) וְאַתָּה יְהֹוָה לְעוֹלָם תֵּשֵׁב וְזִכְרְךָ לְדֹר וָדֹר:

(יד) אַתָּה תָקוּם תְּרַחֵם צִיּוֹן כִּי עֵת לְחֶנְנָהּ כִּי בָא מוֹעֵד:

(טו) כִּי רָצוּ עֲבָדֶיךָ אֶת אֲבָנֶיהָ וְאֶת עֲפָרָהּ יְחֹנֵנוּ:

(טז) וְיִירְאוּ גוֹיִם אֶת שֵׁם יְהֹוָה וְכָל מַלְכֵי הָאָרֶץ אֶת כְּבוֹדֶךָ:

(יז) כִּי בָנָה יְהֹוָה צִיּוֹן נִרְאָה בִּכְבוֹדוֹ:

(יח) פָּנָה אֶל תְּפִלַּת הָעַרְעָר וְלֹא בָזָה אֶת תְּפִלָּתָם:

(יט) תִּכָּתֶב זֹאת לְדוֹר אַחֲרוֹן וְעַם נִבְרָא יְהַלֶּל יָהּ:

(כ) כִּי הִשְׁקִיף מִמְּרוֹם קָדְשׁוֹ יְהֹוָה מִשָּׁמַיִם אֶל אֶרֶץ הִבִּיט:

(כא) לִשְׁמֹעַ אֶנְקַת אָסִיר לְפַתֵּחַ בְּנֵי תְמוּתָה:

(כב) לְסַפֵּר בְּצִיּוֹן שֵׁם יְהֹוָה וּתְהִלָּתוֹ בִּירוּשָׁלִָם:

(כג) בְּהִקָּבֵץ עַמִּים יַחְדָּו וּמַמְלָכוֹת לַעֲבֹד אֶת יְהֹוָה:

(כד) עִנָּה בַדֶּרֶךְ כחו {כֹּחִי} קִצַּר יָמָי:

(כה) אֹמַר אֵלִי אַל תַּעֲלֵנִי בַּחֲצִי יָמָי בְּדוֹר דּוֹרִים שְׁנוֹתֶיךָ:

(כו) לְפָנִים הָאָרֶץ יָסַדְתָּ וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֶיךָ שָׁמָיִם:

(כז) הֵמָּה יֹאבֵדוּ וְאַתָּה תַעֲמֹד וְכֻלָּם כַּבֶּגֶד יִבְלוּ כַּלְּבוּשׁ תַּחֲלִיפֵם וְיַחֲלֹפוּ:

(כח) וְאַתָּה הוּא וּשְׁנוֹתֶיךָ לֹא יִתָּמּוּ:

(כט) בְּנֵי עֲבָדֶיךָ יִשְׁכּוֹנוּ וְזַרְעָם לְפָנֶיךָ יִכּוֹן: