Commentary - Psalm 102:1-11

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 102 is presented to us under the title, "A Prayer of the afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before Yahweh." This is not a psalm for the triumphant, at least not yet. This is a prayer from the sickbed, from the place of desolation, from the pit. And the glorious thing about it is that it is in the Bible. God has included in His holy Word the anguished prayers of His saints when they are at the end of their rope. This is not a tidy, three-point prayer that we might learn in a small group. This is a raw complaint, poured out before the only One who can do anything about it. The psalmist is wasting away, isolated, mocked by his enemies, and, most significantly, he understands his condition to be the direct result of God's indignation and wrath. He has been lifted up by God only to be cast down. This psalm teaches us how to pray when everything has gone black, and it finds its ultimate fulfillment in the great Sufferer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was lifted up on the cross and cast away for us.

Outline

The Prayer of the Afflicted

The superscription is our key. This is a prayer offered by a man who is afflicted, meaning he is humbled, oppressed, and in misery. He is faint, his strength is gone. And what does he do? He pours out his complaint before Yahweh. He does not complain about God to his neighbors. He brings his complaint to God. This is a foundational lesson in true piety. God is not interested in stoic saints who pretend they are not hurting. He invites us to pour out our hearts to Him, complaint and all. The fact that this prayer is inspired Scripture means that this is a God-approved way to pray when you are in the depths.

Verse by Verse

Verses 1-2

The prayer begins with a desperate plea for a hearing. "O Yahweh, hear my prayer! And let my cry for help come to You." The psalmist's first concern is access. He knows that if God will not hear, then all is lost. His great fear, expressed in the next line, is that God might hide His face. "Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress." For the saint, the true terror is not the distress itself, but the thought of going through it without the favor and presence of God. The affliction is one thing; divine abandonment is another thing entirely. The urgency is acute: "Incline Your ear to me; In the day when I call answer me quickly." This is not a man who can afford to wait. He needs help, and he needs it now. This is the prayer of a man on fire.

Verses 3-4

Now he begins to describe his condition, and the imagery is bleak. "For my days have vanished in smoke." His life is insubstantial, disappearing before his eyes. The problem is not on the surface; it is deep within. "And my bones have been scorched like a hearth." There is a fire within him, a burning fever of sickness or grief that is consuming him from the inside out. His emotional and spiritual core is gone: "My heart has been stricken like grass and it has dried up." When the heart is withered, the body follows. "Indeed, I forget to eat my bread." This is the classic sign of deep depression or profound grief. The basic appetite for life is gone because the heart, the engine of life, has seized up.

Verse 5

"Because of the sound of my groaning My bones cling to my flesh." His suffering is audible. It is a constant groaning, a lament that is so profound it has physical consequences. He is wasting away. The picture is one of extreme emaciation. This is not the result of a fad diet; it is the result of a soul-sickness that is consuming his body. His groans are not silent; they have a "sound," a voice, and that voice is one of utter depletion.

Verses 6-7

From the internal feeling of decay, he moves to the external reality of isolation. "I resemble a pelican of the wilderness; I have become like an owl of the waste places." These are not images of cozy community. A pelican belongs by the water, not in the desert. An owl belongs in the forest, not in the ruins. He feels out of place, unclean, and surrounded by desolation. He is a spectacle of loneliness. The next image is perhaps even more poignant. "I lie awake, I have become like a lonely bird on a roof." Insomnia is a cruel companion to suffering. And while he lies awake, he feels like a single sparrow on a housetop, isolated and exposed. He is on the house, but not in it. He sees the place of fellowship and family, but he is utterly cut off from it.

Verse 8

His isolation is not one of peaceful solitude. It is accompanied by the constant harassment of his enemies. "My enemies have reproached me all day long; Those who ridicule me swear against me." The world loves to see a righteous man suffer. His pain is their entertainment and, they think, their vindication. The reproach is constant, "all day long." And their ridicule takes the form of an oath, a curse. They use his name as a byword for someone God has rejected. They are essentially saying, "May God make you like that poor wretch."

Verses 9-10

Here we come to the theological heart of the lament. Why is all this happening? The psalmist does not blame fate, or bad luck, or even his enemies in the ultimate sense. He traces it back to the hand of God. "For I have eaten ashes like bread And mixed my drinks with weeping Because of Your indignation and Your wrath." He is in mourning, and he knows who has brought this upon him. It is God's anger. This is a hard truth, but a necessary one. Our God is a sovereign God, and affliction does not arise from the dust. Then comes the most devastating line: "For You have lifted me up and cast me away." This is not just a matter of being brought low. It is a matter of being exalted for the very purpose of being thrown down. It is as though God made him a public spectacle, raising him up so that his fall would be all the more dramatic and shameful. This is precisely what happened to the Lord Jesus. He was lifted up on the cross, a spectacle to men and angels, and in that moment He was cast away, bearing the full measure of the Father's wrath against our sin.

Verse 11

The psalmist concludes this section by summarizing his condition. "My days are like an outstretched shadow, And as for me, I dry up like grass." The sun is setting on his life. The shadow is long, meaning the end is near. He returns to the image from verse 4, that of withering grass. His life force is draining away. From a human perspective, all hope is gone. He is smoke, scorched bones, withered grass, a lonely bird, a man thrown down by God, fading into the twilight. And it is from this very spot that he will, in the verses that follow, turn his eyes to the eternal God who does not fade.

Application

This psalm is a gift to the suffering church. It gives us permission to be honest with God. When you are in the furnace, you are allowed to say that it is hot. When your heart is breaking, you are allowed to bring the pieces to your Father. Notice the psalmist's honesty is always directed toward God, never away from Him. He pours out his complaint before Yahweh.

Furthermore, this psalm teaches us to have a robust theology of God's sovereignty. The psalmist knew that his suffering was not random. It was because of God's "indignation and Your wrath." While this is a terrifying thought, it is also the beginning of hope. If God is the one who cast him down, then God is the only one who can lift him up. A God who is not sovereign over your cancer or your bankruptcy is a God who is powerless to save you from it.

Finally, we must read this psalm through the lens of the cross. Jesus Christ is the ultimate afflicted man. His days vanished. His heart was stricken. He was isolated, reproached, and ridiculed. He ate the ashes of our sin and drank the cup of weeping. And on the cross, the Father lifted Him up and cast Him away, pouring out the full force of His indignation upon His beloved Son. He did this so that for us who are in Christ, there is now no condemnation. Our afflictions in this life are real, but they are fatherly disciplines, not penal wrath. Because Jesus was cast away, we will never be. And because He was raised up, we can be confident that our own stories do not end with verse 11.