A Fading Life Appeals to the God Who Remains

The heading names no author but a condition: “A Prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the LORD.” It is the only title of its kind. The church has long counted this among the seven penitential psalms, with 6, 32, 38, 51, 130 and 143. “Cry” is shav’ah, a shout for help.

The verse is assembled from phrases heard elsewhere in the Psalter. Psalm 69:17 has almost the same prayer: “hide not thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble: hear me speedily.” “Incline thine ear” is the gesture of someone bending down to catch a weak voice.

Smoke rises and is gone, leaving nothing to hold. “Hearth” is moqed, a mass of glowing embers, so the bones smoulder like a fire that has burned down. “Consumed” is kalu, used up, finished, the verb of Psalm 90:7.

“Smitten” is the verb Psalm 121:6 uses for the sun striking by day: the heart is sunstruck like grass in the heat. Grief kills appetite, as when Hannah “wept, and did not eat” (1 Samuel 1:7). “Forget to eat my bread” means there is no longer hunger to remind him.

Job uses the same picture of wasting: “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh” (Job 19:20). Lamentations 4:8 says it of the starved nobles of Jerusalem. The groaning is so constant that it has eaten the flesh away.

The “pelican” is qa’at and the “owl” is kos, both on the list of unclean birds in Leviticus 11:17–18, and both named in Isaiah 34:11 and Zephaniah 2:14 as creatures that move into ruined cities. The exact species are uncertain; the sense is a bird that haunts wreckage where people no longer live.

“I watch” is shaqadti, I lie awake, sleepless. Houses had flat roofs where people sat and in summer slept (1 Samuel 9:25–26). A single small bird on a roof at night, when everyone else has gone in, is the picture.

“Mad against me” means raving, mocking. “Sworn against me” means they swear by me, using his name as a curse: may you end up like him. Jeremiah 29:22 records such a curse built on two men “whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire”.

Mourners sat in ashes and threw them over their heads (2 Samuel 13:19), so ash found its way into the food. Psalm 80:5 speaks of “the bread of tears”. The meal and the mourning have become the same thing.

“Indignation” is za’am, anger that denounces, and “wrath” is qetsef, anger that boils over. The second half pictures being picked up by a gust or a wrestler and then flung down; the higher the lift, the harder the fall.

A shadow “that declineth” is one stretching out long in the late afternoon, a sign the day is ending. The sick king Hezekiah was given a sign of a shadow on a sundial going back (2 Kings 20:9–11). Here nothing reverses the shadow. “Withered like grass” repeats verse 4, closing the first section on the same word.

“Endure” is teshev, literally “sit”, sit enthroned. Lamentations 5:19 has almost the same line, written over the ruins of Jerusalem: “Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.” The sufferer’s days go up in smoke; God stays seated.

“Set time” is mo’ed, an appointed time, the word for a fixed festival or meeting. Jeremiah 29:10 set a term of seventy years for Babylon, and Daniel 9:2 shows a later reader counting those years in the books. The psalm seems to know the clock has run out, though which count it had in mind is an inference.

“Favour” is chonen, to pity, to feel tenderness toward. When the walls were being rebuilt, Sanballat sneered, “will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?” (Nehemiah 4:2). The servants of this verse love the very rubble he mocked.

Isaiah 59:19 has the same pair: “So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun.” Nations and their kings are drawn in as an audience to what God does with one broken city.

The Hebrew verbs are perfects, “hath built up Zion, hath appeared in his glory”, the prophetic way of speaking about the future as already finished. The King James turns them into futures. The glory is seen when the building is done.

“Destitute” is ar’ar, stripped bare. The same word is used in Jeremiah 17:6 for the scrubby “heath in the desert”, a bush on dry ground that sees no good come. “Regard” is literally to turn toward. The builder of Zion turns to hear someone with nothing.

“Created” is bara, the verb reserved for God, used in Genesis 1:1. A people not yet born is described as something God will make, the way he made the heavens. The psalm asks for itself to be written down so that it reaches them.

“Looked down” is hishqif, to lean out and look, the verb for looking out of a window, as Abimelech did when he saw Isaac with Rebekah (Genesis 26:8). God is pictured at a high window, looking down on the earth.

Psalm 79:11 carries nearly the same prayer: “Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee... preserve thou those that are appointed to die.” “Appointed to death” is literally “sons of death”, men already sentenced. “Loose” means unfasten, as fetters are unbound.

“Declare” is lesapper, to recount, to tell in order, from the root that also gives sefer, a book. What verse 18 said would be written, this verse says will be spoken aloud in Zion. The freed prisoners become the ones who tell it.

Peoples and kingdoms gather in the city whose dust verse 14 described. “Serve” is avad, the verb of worship and work. The nations of verse 15 who feared the name now arrive in person.

The written Hebrew has “his strength”, the scribes’ reading “my strength”; the King James takes the second. “In the way” means partway along the road of life. The Greek translation divided the words differently and turned the verse into a dialogue, a reading taken up when Hebrews 1:10–12 applies what follows to the Son.

Hezekiah, sick and expecting death, said in nearly these words, “I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave” (Isaiah 38:10). The contrast is exact: “my days” cut in half against “thy years” spread across every generation.

Hebrews 1:10–12 quotes verses 25 to 27 as spoken to the Son. “Of old” is lefanim, before, at the start. Earth has a foundation and heaven is handiwork, both terms from building and craft, both describing things made and therefore capable of wearing out.

Isaiah 51:6 uses the image: “the earth shall wax old like a garment”. “Change” is chalaf, to exchange, as a person changes clothes. A worn robe is folded up and replaced; the wearer is not. Heaven and earth are the garments here, God the wearer.

“Thou art the same” is atta hu, literally “thou art he”, close to the form God uses of himself in Isaiah 41:4 and 43:10, ani hu, “I am he”. Nothing in the verse is decaying: no smoke, no shadow, no grass.

“Continue” is yishkonu, shall dwell, from shakan, the root of mishkan, the tabernacle. The psalm began with a lonely bird on a roof and ends with children settled and established in God’s presence. The speaker’s own survival is never promised; his servants’ children are.