Psalms 102

Psalms 102:1-28

Christ in His humiliation; uniting God and man. A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before Jehovah. Here then is a King after Jehovah’s heart: such an one as the need of man craves but has not found. Yet has He long since come, and in the way marked out for Him from the beginning, all prophetic voices testifying to Him. They had testified also to His rejection at the hands of those long and carefully prepared for His reception; but who knew Him not. The crown they gave Him was a crown of thorns; they wrote His title in derision over a cross; little supposing that He would show His royalty by making that cross itself henceforth the very symbol of a power mightier than that of all the kings of the earth, and to outlast them all. But in fact to be King after the fashion that alone He sought, He had to wear another title, and take another office, as we have seen; and this involved the very place to which in ignorance and unbelief they destined Him, but to which He freely -constrained only by His own love -stooped. As Priest He must have somewhat to offer and, there being nothing that could avail beside, He offered up HIMSELF. And thus too He became the Prophet of a new dispensation; and, lifting all this into a new sphere of glory, in Him Messiah’s three-fold qualification was at last completed -Prophet, Priest, and King. But who could be sufficient for these things? Man He must be to take man’s penalty; man; to go in for man to God. We have seen One able to go in thereto whom the sanctuary was accessible; who knew “the secret place of the Most High,” and could “abide under the shadow of the Almighty;” a Second Man; not involved in the ruin of the first, and for whom all the resources of divine power are available. But who then is this Second Man? This is the question which is answered by God Himself in the psalm before us, and answered to Him the rejected King of Israel, but under a heavier burden than this by far, and stricken by the hand of Him who owns Him now. But let us take up the psalm.

1. The first seven verses state in general terms the cause of the Sufferer’s prayer. His plea is His distress. There is no confession of sin; as in the psalms of atonement generally, while on the other hand there is no profession of integrity: it is as the prayer of one with whom there is no need. Yet He pleads that God’s face should not be hidden from Him; and in the third verse seems already to intimate that which afterwards finds Plainer expression -the wrath of God like a fire in His bones and His days consumed like smoke. In the sixth similarly the figures, as well as the number, would seem to speak of God’s hand upon His circumstances, making Him like a bird of the deserts or of ruined places; while the desolation is yet heightened by the picture of the sparrow with its social instincts, in the place where these would naturally find gratification; yet watching alone.
2. The evil comes into clearer detail, however, in the second section; where we find pictured a woe so extreme that His enemies use it as a typical imprecation; as if God and they were in agreement -they could wish no one worse than God had done to Him! He had eaten ashes for food, and mixed His drink with tears. And now He speaks openly of God’s indignation and wrath: if He had lifted Him up, it was but to cast Him away. Yet still there is no account given of this, no question of sin raised in any way. Reason there must be of course, but none is presented.

Atonement is not intimated, and yet it is only in atonement that wrath could be upon the sinless One as here. But the fact alone is brought before us -Christ (as it surely is) in the depth of His humiliation, in the sorrow that had no equal, brought down now till the lengthening shadow of evening is the symbol of His days, and the withered grass His emblem. 3. But now the vision of the future passes before the eyes of the dying Man. He sees Jehovah, the unchanged, unchanging God, incapable of forgetfulness, and thinks of the promises which must surely be fulfilled, according to which not only Zion must be raised out of her ruin; but Jehovah Himself be manifested in His glory and the nations brought to fear His Name. He anticipates that mercy pledged to her, the set time come, as shown by the hearts of those in sympathy with His heart turned towards her stones and to the very dust of her degradation. Already thus the streaks of dawn are visible for the earth; and soon “the nations shall fear Jehovah’s Name, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.” For when He builds up Zion; then His glory shall appear. 4. This leads on to the consideration of those ways of His with the weak and failing, the self-ruined sons of men; exemplified so signally in His mercy to Israel. Man has fallen through pride and independence of heart. Therefore the need of his being humbled and brought into that state of destitution in which alone he will seek God. But then “He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.” And this is not merely true in an isolated and exceptional instance: it is His way of grace, broad-written now in Israel’s restoration; for a memorial to after-generations, that a people “created” for Himself may praise the Eternal. The strong word “created” is no doubt used here with a moral force which anticipates the doctrine of the New Testament. Nor are there any that really fill their place as the creation of God except as they are recipients, and so heralds of His grace. God then has looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from the heavens Jehovah has beheld the earth: never with indifference, never with hostility, while abiding in the holiness of His nature, which separates Him; not from His creatures, but only from their sin: “to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to set loose the children of death” -those under its sentence. And in this misery was Zion; in which therefore His Name is now declared, and His praise in Jerusalem. And so the rebellion of the earth is ended: “the peoples are gathered together, and the kingdoms to serve Jehovah.” 5. Is HE, then, an example of these ways of Jehovah -of His showing mercy to the poor? Nay, “He weakened my strength in the way: He shortened my days.” Himself the King of Zion, “Messiah the Prince,” He is “cut off, and has nothing” (Daniel 9:26 margin). The sinless One, He is left to die, He upon whom depend all the promises is left to cry out to the Eternal Might, as one in the midst of his days taken away -smitten, and not supported! From Him who delighteth in mercy, for Him no mercy? And are these the equal ways of the Unchangeable? Why then no mercy? And if this is no exception to Jehovah’s ways, can it be that HE is the exception? does He in fact not belong to the class of those to whom mercy could be shown? does He not violate the rule, because He does not come under it? That is what the answer of God declares: “Of old hast Thou founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt continue; and they all shall grow old as doth a garment: as a vesture shalt Thou change them and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end.” The statement of the apostle (Hebrews 1:10-12) is the direct authority for applying these words to Christ. Apart from this we might indeed imagine that they were but the pursuing of that affecting contrast between the transience of man and the immutability of God which we find in the earlier part of the psalm, and which seems to begin again in the preceding verse. But we have not for the first time here to realize the mystery-form in which some of the most glorious intimations in the Psalms are clothed. This is characteristic, moreover, of the whole of the Old Testament. And then the cry of the Speaker finds no response, and the perplexity in the psalm finds no unravelment. Yet one can see, if we merely take this for what it is not, a detached and isolated composition; that the Sufferer is One who, meeting the wrath of God with the profoundest faith in God, contrasts the fulfillment of the promises to Zion with His own brief days.

Yet God “regards the prayer of the destitute, and does not despise their prayer.” He could not mean to give the case of the Sufferer as an exception to this, or a problem without solution. His own condition has to do evidently with these promises to Zion with which it is interwoven; and the psalm ends in no hopeless spirit but with confidence and happiness. The inspired application of these verses is at once an illumination of the whole psalm. They become at once the key to the whole, and throw their light beyond the psalm itself upon all that surrounds it in the book. We see the connection with the voice of the King which we have heard in the psalm preceding: we understand the connection with the fulfillment of the promises to Zion: for here too is the King! We look back, and without difficulty connect this again with the subject of the ninety-first, with Him whom in contrast with the failed and death-stricken sons of men in the psalm of Moses (Psalms 90:1-17) we may well call the Second Man. We find here One who has never lost His title to the earth as Adam did. Nature greets and smiles on Him; angels wait on Him; and in the next two psalms we have a “sabbath” and the world immovably established.

Then Jehovah comes to take possession of the earth, and it is blessed indeed; but we miss the Head of blessing: where is the Second Man? The third section of the book opens with His voice. He is now the King of Israel, but His kingdom scarcely seems thus as world-wide as before. We pass on; and we find -what? The glorious King Himself and the Man whom earth and heaven join to honor, -the Deathless death-stricken; “numbering His days”! but where is the “wisdom” here? Then the answer bursts on us.

It is a problem of which God Himself may well give us the solution. The death-stricken is yet the Deathless One; the King of Israel is a divine King; the Second Man; the Sabbath-maker for the world, is Jehovah who comes back to it: and creature and Creator are in Him for ever united; everlasting, Human arms hold us fast to God! Of atonement itself we do indeed hear, directly, nothing; but we may well be trusted to discern (after all that has been before us) in this Death what has effected it. It is the necessary and only explanation of “indignation and wrath” met by this self-humbled, glorious One. And suited it is, after all, to what we know Him now to be. God, who is love, would be Himself our Redeemer. He has redeemed us to Himself. Blessed be His Name, it is Immanuel, for He has saved His people from their sins. Thus we can understand the note of triumph with which the psalm ends: “the children of Thy servants shall abide, and their seed shall be established before Thee.”