Psalms 102 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Most likely the Babylonian exile or the difficult years just after it, roughly 586 to 500 BC
Location
Written from a place of ruin looking toward Jerusalem, whose walls and temple lay in rubble after the Babylonian army destroyed the city in 586 BC
Audience
Jews living under exile or in the broken city afterward, who prayed this as their own
Situation
A person worn down by illness and mockery pours out a lament, then turns to God's promise to rebuild Zion and gather the scattered people. The prayer ends by contrasting the writer's short, fading life with God's permanence.
Key Background
The heading calls this the prayer of an afflicted person pouring out a complaint, one of the few psalms labeled by mood rather than by author or tune. Ashes, dust and sitting among rubble were the standard physical gestures of mourning in the ancient Near East, so the imagery of eating ashes is a mourner's posture, not just a figure of speech. The hope that God will have pity on Zion's very stones reflects a belief that a ruined city's rebuilding was proof its god had not abandoned it, a claim neighboring peoples made about their own capitals too.
Yahweh, hear my — let my reach you.
Don't from me when I'm Lean in close — when I call out, answer me quickly.
My days and my a furnace.
My is — I even forget to eat.
From the sound of my I'm nothing but and
I'm like a like a screech haunting the
I — like a on a
All day my enemies me. Those who mock me my as a
I eat like bread and mix my tears into everything I drink,
because of your and your rage — you picked me up and me
My days stretch out like and I wither like grass.
But you, — you sit forever. Your endures through every generation.
You will rise up and to — because the time has come, the is here.
Your love her very even her dust moves them to compassion.
Then the nations will in of Yahweh's name, and every king on earth will honor his
when Yahweh Zion and in his glory,
when he turns toward the prayer of the and does not their plea.
this down for a future generation, so that a people not yet born will Yahweh:
Yahweh looked down from the that to from heaven to the earth,
to hear the of the to set free those to —
so that Yahweh's name will be in Zion, his praise in Jerusalem,
when gather together, when kingdoms assemble to Yahweh.
He broke my the he cut my life short.
I said, "My God, don't take me in the of my — you whose every
Long ago you laid the of the earth, and the heavens are the of
They will but you remain. They will all out — you will them out a garment, and they will be discarded.
But you are the same, and your years will
The children of servants will and their descendants will be in