Notes on the Book of Psalms, Psalm 102
The cii. PSALM.
The Authour of this Psalm in the name and person of the Church then in miserable captivity in Babylon, but near the end of it, prayes for speedy relief in their lamentable oppression, and from under Gods own indignation, and how desperate soever their condition seems, yet he comforts himself, and in himself the Church with Gods never failing-nature and truth, which shall give existence to his Church, and consequently restauration, according to the prefixed time then at hand, which will be joy to his people and honour to God, both in present and after-ages amongst Iews and Gentiles, for it shall be an occasion to convert some, and a figure of the great restitution that shall be made by the coming of the M…ssiah. He magnifies Gods eternall being, and assures the Church therefore an everlasting existence however frail in her self.Psalm cii. A Prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed, & pour…th out his complaints before the Lord.
A Prayer made for the use and direction of the godly, when he or they are so grievously afflicted, as they seem to be overwhelmed therewith, and his or their burden so unsupportable, that it forceth him to pour out his soul in sad complaints before the Lord, in the dolour and anguish of his heart.
1 O Lord,1HEar my prayer, O Lord and let my cry come unto thee. hear the prayer of thy servant and servants, even of thy whole Church whom I personate complaining to thee in great misery and bondage, to the enforcing of them to vehement importunities, which, Lord, shut not thine ears against, but give them audience and gracious admittance into both thine ears and heart.
2 Though our sins have caused thy frowns and disfavour,2Hide not thy …ace from me in the day that I am in trouble, encline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call, answer me speedily. yet let our miseries move thy mercies, and be intreated after so long an estrangement of so many years bondage, at last to resume thy grace, and to shine forth in favour upon us, and to take our condition into consideration, yea, Lord, now thou hast put it into our hearts to pray hopefully, be intreated to answer us speedily, by delivering and restoring us effectually, let it not be long to.
3 Our whole life in this condition we are in,3For my dayes are consumed like smoak: & my bones are burnt as an hearth. is spun out to an unprofitable length, our time is unusefully spent, wasted, and consumed, without honour to thee or good to our selves; This long lingring oppression the sorrow we sustain under it, because of the sense of thy heavy displeasure and thy Churches desolation, hath dried up our radicall moisture, and quite changed the constitution of our natures, that our bones if visible are dried and discoloured as an hearth that hath long lain under a hot scortching fire, as we have under the fire of affliction.
4My heart is smitt…, and withered like grass: so that I forget to eat my bread.4 Thou hast cut up all my earthly comforts as it were by the roots, I can think of nothing of that nature comfortably, my heart and they are parted by thy judgements, as the grass is from the earth by the hand of the mower, and as it withers for want of union and communication of sap and moisture, so is my heart shrunk and exhausted within me, by the utter absence of thy grace and favour, finding no content the whilst in any thing, though never so necessary, insomuch as nature forgets to sustain it self, feeds upon sorrow instead of bread, having almost lost all appetite and digestion through anguish of heart.
5By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin.5 By reason of the expence of spirits, through my continuall mourning day and night, uttering my grief in groans and sighs for want of words, my nature is totally impaired, and my flesh so wasted that my skin and bones are met, I am become a very skelliton.
6I am like a Pelican of the wilderness: I am like an Owl of the desert.6 I am in a most solitary mournfull condition, no representation in nature can sufficiently depaint it, an exile, a bondslave. Chaldea and Assyria yield us as much comfort, as if we were in a wilderness, our cohabitation with the Babylonians is worse than the greatest solitariness upon earth, the mournfull Pelican and hated Owl, that therefore converse alone in desert places without pitie or societie, so much as of one another, do best resemble us, for so are we a banished and a scattered people in a far countrey, in an uncomfortable unsociable state.
7 As my sorrow takes away my stomack,7I watch, and an… as a sparrow alone upon the house top. so also my sleep, and keeps me waking, so that I scarce take any rest, nor in this disconsolation have I any to comfort me, but each of us are seperated from other, as a sparrow from his mate, lost to our countrey, and lost to one another.
8 All the mischief our enemies can heap upon us by word or deed we are sure of,8Mine enemies reproch me all the day: and they that are mad against me, are sworn against me. they shamefully reproch us, and in us blaspheme thee, they are implacable and outragious against us, have sworn the destruction of us all, even of thy whole Church sooner or later.
9 And they use us accordingly more like dogs than men,9For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping. exposing us to all manner of hardship through the extremitie of our pressures, and grief for them, forcing us to take no content in any thing, no not in our ordinarie repasts, our provisions being so bad and unsavorie, and our sorrows making it worse than it is, feeding more upon sack-cloth and ashes, weeping and mourning, than either bread or drink.
10 And this,10Because of thine indignation and thy wrath, for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down. not so much for my sufferings though they be great, but for thy wrath and indignation appearing in them and threatned by them, which is the more apparent and the grievouser in this; that thou wast once so gracious and beneficial, the memorie whereof now aggravates our miserie exceedingly, that thou shouldest be so changed, and enraged against a people so nearly related and dearly beloved for whereas no nation flourished like us, we are now no more a people, but a scattered vassalaged company of men and women, as if thou hadst raised us of purpose to make our fall the greater, and made us therefore happie, that we might become the more miserable, like a man that to break a thing in pieces, lifts it on high with the greater violence to dash it against the ground.
11My dayes are like a shadow that declineth: and I am withered like grass.11 Thy poor Church, O Lord, whom I personate to thee, it is even at sun-setting, it is but a shadow of a Church and people, no substance or Being left, and that shadow too is extinguishing, it is expiring like the shadows that towards sun-setting, now are, and anon are not, so soon as the sun is gone down. Like the grass that is mown, withered with the sun and sapless, such are thy people miserably parched with grief and sorrow, and utterly comfortless.
12But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever, and thy remembrance unto all generations.12 Thus it is with thy Church she is at last gasp, she hath as it were received the sentence of death in her self; But thou that art her God, her support and strength canst never die, nor she, as considered in thee, interessed in thy faithfulness; though in outward appearance she be perishing, yet thy truth past in promise to her, which is thy self, cannot fail, thou wilt certainly remember to make it good to the uttermost period, even to the Worlds end shall it endure, and therefore so shall thy Church, as low as it is brought at present.
13Thou shalt arise and have merciemercy upon Sion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come.13 Therefore, Lord, though we seem to be dying, our faith begins to sprout, we are in hope that these our greatest extremities are thine immediate opportunities, and that as thou hast lifted us up and cast us down, so now thou casts us down to lift us up. Yea, we are very confident our sorrows are shorter-lived than we, that we shall out-live them for all this, yea, we shall see a speedy end of them, and that thou art even now about to shew thy self for us, and to restore thy Church, and in merciemercy pardon her sins which thou hast punished all this while, and suddenly ease her of her miseries which she hath so long undergone, and make Sion that was the glorie of the whole earth flourish again, for as thou art mindfull of thy promise, so are we, that is that livens our faith, and clears our heart, even the thought of the expiration of the seventy years which is now drawing on, the time appointed, prophesied, and promised by thee to end our captivitie and restore us to mercy; which time is now accomplished & revives our hopes.
14 For such is the love thy servants bear to thee,14For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. thy worship, and the place appointed for it where thou hast promised thy presence, that it is not the devastations which before hand they know they shall find there, that does any whit discourage them, no, they are joyed to think that ever they shall set footing there, and see that sacred rubbish that remains of that glorious fabrick, what travel or pains so ever they undergo, which they purpose to re-edifie.
15 When thou hast thus wonderfully brought about our restauration after so long captivitie,15So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord: and all the Kings of the earth thy glorie. and the re-edification of that thy ruinated Temple, what an amazement shall it put the heathen into, how shall they admire thine omnipotencie that thus raised the dead, and saved us as a brand out of the fire. Yea, the Princes and potentates of the whole earth, hearing shall be strucken with astonishment at so glorious and Almightie a work.
16When the Lord shall build Sion, he shall appear in his glorie.16 When the time comes which is now at hand, that both thy spiritual and local Sion, O Lord, shall be restored and repaired by thee, thy worship and worshippers in statu quo, O how glorious wilt thou then appear in the eyes of Jews and Gentiles?
17He shall regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.17 And this be confident of, that as God at this time hath extraordinarily stirred up his people to hope, and pray to be delivered out of his destitute condition, and made them more than ordinarily sensible of the loss of their countrey and happie priviledges they there enjoyed, and ardently desire to return thither again, so will he effect it, and not let them lose their labour and pray in vain.
18This shall be written for the generation to come; and the people which shall be created, shall praise the Lord.18 This deliverance like that out of Egypt, shall be upon everlasting record and renown for all posteritie, and after-ages to admire, and be strengthned thereby in the faith of Gods all-sufficiencie, truth, and grace. And those of us that shall be gathered together again into the land of Judah in a formed bodie, and an orderly way of worshipping the Lord, from out this confusion and Chaos, where we are neither a people nor a Church, but a scattered mixture of vagrant folk, O how shall we jointly praise the Lord, and his power that hath thus raised us from the grave, and as it were created us again out of the very dust, nay, the nothing, whereinto we are resolved, as Christ shall his Church.
19For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuarie: from heaven did the Lord behold the earth.19 For from heaven which his sanctuarie was wont to represent, hath the Lord heard and seen our moans and miseries, though he be there in unaccessable glorie and majesty, yet from that height hath he vouchsafed to pitie us here below that are no better then the earth we tread on.
20 And to hear the groans we sent up to him in that sorrowful condition,20To hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death. and save the lives and restore the liberties of his people, a poor remainder of them who were destined to death and destruction, aswel as the rest that they killed in hot bloud, having sworn to root us all out, every mothers son, and not leave us a name upon earth.
21 This shall the Lord do,21To declare the name of the Lord in Sion: and his praise in Jerusalem. to the end his people so heard and so saved, may magnifie the glorious power and rich grace of God in Sion as aforetime, and praise him in Jerusalem his royal Citie and place of special residence.
22 Which they shall do when they are embodied there again,22When the people are gathered together, and the Kingdoms to serve the Lord. and reduced from that dissipation and confusion they now lie under, which shall be a lively adumbration of the calling of the Gentiles, and the gathering of Church and Kingdom from out the Kingdoms of the earth, every where to believe in and and worship him, many whereof shall be won and induced to give in their names unto him by that great deliverance, like as when that great Jubile and goal-delivery by Christ himself shall be, which is not far behind.
23 Long have we looked for his coming,23He weakened my strength in the way; he shortned my dayes. and much hath his people suffered in the profession of his truth, and for it, in the interim, the whilest they have lived in expectation of that happiness, even to the loss of many, yea, almost of all his whole Church here in Babylon, (as must be the lot of the Church inhabitant in this world to suffer even death it self in way to the end, the salvation of their souls.)
24 But I put my self before the Lord in the name of his faithful people,24I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my daie: and poor Church still remaining,