The prayer of an oppressed man, as he grows faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.
102:1 O Lord, hear my prayer!
Pay attention to my cry for help! 2
102:2 Do not ignore me in my time of trouble! 3
Listen to me! 4
When I call out to you, quickly answer me!
102:3 For my days go up in smoke, 5
and my bones are charred like a fireplace. 6
102:4 My heart is parched 7 and withered like grass,
for I am unable 8 to eat food. 9
102:5 Because of the anxiety that makes me groan,
my bones protrude from my skin. 10
102:6 I am like an owl 11 in the wilderness;
I am like a screech owl 12 among the ruins. 13
102:7 I stay awake; 14
I am like a solitary bird on a roof.
1 sn Psalm 102. The psalmist laments his oppressed state, but longs for a day when the Lord will restore Jerusalem and vindicate his suffering people.
2 tn Heb “and may my cry for help come to you.”
3 tn Heb “do not hide your face from me in the day of my trouble.” The idiom “to hide the face” can mean “to ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or carry the stronger idea of “to reject” (see Pss 29:7; 30:7; 88:14).
4 tn Heb “turn toward me your ear.”
5 tn Heb “for my days come to an end in smoke.”
6 tn The Hebrew noun מוֹ־קֵד (mo-qed, “fireplace”) occurs only here, in Isa 33:14 (where it refers to the fire itself), and perhaps in Lev 6:2.
7 tn Heb “struck, attacked.”
8 tn Heb “I forget.”
9 sn I am unable to eat food. During his time of mourning, the psalmist refrained from eating. In the following verse he describes metaphorically the physical effects of fasting.
10 tn Heb “from the sound of my groaning my bone[s] stick to my flesh.” The preposition at the beginning of the verse is causal; the phrase “sound of my groaning” is metonymic for the anxiety that causes the groaning. The point seems to be this: Anxiety (which causes the psalmist to groan) keeps him from eating (v. 4). This physical deprivation in turn makes him emaciated – he is turned to “skin and bones,” so to speak.
11 tn The Hebrew term קָאַת (qa’at) refers to some type of bird (see Lev 11:18; Deut 14:17) that was typically found near ruins (see Zeph 2:14). Modern translations have frequently rendered this as some type of owl (NIV, REB “desert owl”; NRSV “owl”).
12 tn The Hebrew term כוֹס (khos) refers to a bird (see Lev 11:17; Deut 14:16), probably a type of owl (cf. NIV, REB “owl”; NRSV “little owl”).
13 sn By comparing himself to a screech owl among the ruins, the psalmist may be highlighting his loneliness (see v. 7), though he may also be comparing his cries for help to the owl’s screech.
14 tn This probably refers to the psalmist’s inability to sleep. Another option is to translate, “I keep watch,” in which case it might refer to watching for a response from the