Psalm 102 -- Divine Conversation between Father and Son continued, Part 2 of 4

--continuing where we left off--

12 But You, O LORD, abide forever, And Your name to all generations.
13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion; For it is time to be gracious to her, For the appointed time has come.
14 Surely Your servants find pleasure in her stones And feel pity for her dust.
15 So the nations will fear the name of the LORD And all the kings of the earth Your glory.

Verse 12 introduces the next section, from verse 12 to verse 15, with a sudden conjunction of contrast--"but"--and a sharp change of voice from "I" to "You".

Reading this section as it is normally read causes us to think that the psalmist has turned his attention to the Lord, which indeed, the words do in fact say. "But You, O LORD". The word for LORD here is the same as it was in verse 1, that is, Jehovah. Normally, we understand that the psalmist at this point is contrasting his own dire predicament with the eternality of his God.

The focus here, however, is now on Zion, rather than on the psalmist. What has changed the psalmist's heart so, that even while in the midst of his pain and agony--his bones visible through his flesh, his belly hungry, having had only the food of ashes mingled with tears, he being an outcast separated from his friends, his loneliness in the presence of his enemies, his life withering away in sorrow, and about to die--he now shifts his focus to Zion? Does he see his personal suffering as representative of the suffering of Zion as a whole? Yes. One can most assuredly read the psalm this way, especially at this point. I will have more to say on this later, that is, another direction from which to understand these same words.

16 For the LORD has built up Zion; He has appeared in His glory.
17 He has regarded the prayer of the destitute And has not despised their prayer.
18 This will be written for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD.
19 For He looked down from His holy height; From heaven the LORD gazed upon the earth,
20 To hear the groaning of the prisoner, To set free those who were doomed to death,
21 That men may tell of the name of the LORD in Zion And His praise in Jerusalem,
22 When the peoples are gathered together, And the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.

The psalm continues speaking of Zion in the section which encompasses verses 16 through 22, but in the third person. The vista has changed tremendously. It is almost as though the dying psalmist had been granted a vision of a vast panoramic nature. He is seeing God in His glory from a very great height, as it were from heaven itself, and the extent of the vision is unto the far distant future. It's nothing less than prophecy. Both prophetic past tense and future tense are being used.

There is messianic imagery within these verses, as well. When Jesus went into the temple after having been tempted in the wilderness, he stood and read these well-known words from Isaiah--

Luke 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord."

The words just above are the ones Jesus used to announce the beginning of his ministry. Compare Psalm 102:13-- 

13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion; For it is time to be gracious to her, For the appointed time has come.

Also, compare verse 20 of our psalm with the passage from Luke--

20 To hear the groaning of the prisoner, To set free those who were doomed to death,

But the Psalm continues, moving on to the next section, and back to the voice of first person.

23 He has weakened my strength in the way; He has shortened my days.
24a I say, "O my God, do not take me away in the midst of my days,

The psalm makes a sudden, dramatic shift here, back to the original plight of the first person speaker, about to die, which we saw in verses 1 to 11. The "he" referred to might seem to be the same "he" of the previous section, which would be God. Then, the psalmist does indeed address God directly in verse 24a.

This is where the Septuagint throws an entirely different light on the whole passage. Brenton's translation of this passage says--

23 He answered him in the way of his strength: tell me the fewness of my days.
24a Take me not away in the midst of my days:

But before I explain this in detail, let's move on to hear what comes next--

NAU 24b "Your years are throughout all generations.
25 "Of old You founded the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
26 "Even they will perish, but You endure; And all of them will wear out like a garment; Like clothing You will change them and they will be changed.
27 "But You are the same, And Your years will not come to an end.
28 "The children of Your servants will continue, And their descendants will be established before You."

 LXX Brenton 24b thy years are through all generations.
25 In the beginning thou, O Lord, didst lay the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.
26 They shall perish, but thou remainest: and they all shall wax old as a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them, and they shall be changed.
27 But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.
28 The children of thy servants shall dwell securely, and their seed shall prosper for ever.

If we continue, as we have been doing, on the assumption that there is but one speaker throughout the entire psalm, a single speaker who is speaking all the parts, then, we have in this section another great jump in his frame of mind. Verse 23 NAU describes his immediate condition--he is about to die. In verse 24a he pleads with God not to let this happen, because he is in the "midst of" his "days". In other words, chronologically and ordinarily he would still have many years yet to live. He's only lived out half of his life. If, as scripture says, a man has about 70 years in his lifespan, Psalm 90:10, then, that would put the psalmist at about 35 years of age when he was about to die here. Verse 24a tells us that he doesn't want to die.

But then verse 24b has this enormous jump again, the speaker switches his point of view away from himself and onto the eternality of God, just as happened previously in the shift from verse 11 to verse 12. This is the way the psalm is generally read, and this is the way the commentaries are written, including that of Spurgeon.

With regard to verse 24a, the NAU says, "Take me not away". There is a note in Treasury of David by Henry Cowles in the Explanatory Notes and Quaint Sayings section. He says, "'Take me not away' is more exactly, 'Take me not up'". This agrees with Green's Interlinear Hebrew Bible, which also says, "O my God, do not take me up in the half of my days;"

The commentators say that the psalm ends on a high note of faith, the psalmist by faith expressing the greatness of God in contrast to his own frailty.

to be continued