For the Lord has built up Zion; He has appeared in His glory. Psalm 102:16 NASB Has appeared – Reputation! That’s the deciding factor. If God doesn’t fortify His chosen servant/warrior, then God’s reputation among the other kings will be sullied. “Don’t do it for me,” writes the poet. “Do it for Yourself. You will be glorified among the kings…
So the nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth, Your glory. Psalm 102:15 NASB So – When we use the English word “so” as a conjunction, we assume that the statement is the consequence of a previous thought. This is the way Paul uses the Greek gar in Romans. …
Surely Your servants take pleasure in her stones, and feel pity for her dust. Psalm 102:14 NASB Take pleasure/ feel pity – Taken out of the context of metonym, this verse doesn’t make much sense. Consider its surface meaning. When you walk through the City of David (Zion), would you find favor in the stones…
You will arise and have compassion on Zion; for it is time to be gracious to her, for the appointed time has come. Psalm 102:13 NASB Be gracious – “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth;’” (Exodus 34:6). What’s number 2 in God’s self-disclosure? The first…
You will arise and have compassion on Zion; for it is time to be gracious to her, for the appointed time has come. Psalm 102:13 NASB Have compassion – The first description of God’s character in Exodus 34:6 is raḥûm. It comes from the Hebrew verb rāḥam, a verb that means “to love deeply, have mercy, be compassionate.” The importance of this…
But You, Lord, remain forever, and Your name remains to all generations. Psalm 102:12 NASB Remain – God remains forever. In Hebrew, יְהֹוָה לְעוֹלָם. You’ll notice immediately that David uses the personal name of God, יְהֹוָה , not the word “Lord.” This matters, since he continues the thought with “Your name,” not “Your title.” There were plenty of other divine…
But You, Lord, remain forever, and Your name remains to all generations. Psalm 102:12 NASB But – The lowly conjunction. Not spectacular, as words go. Relegated to expressing relations between other words, we hardly think of them as crucial connectors until someone uses them incorrectly. There’s a big difference between “law came through Moses but grace through Jesus…
My days are like a lengthened shadow, and I wither away like grass. Psalm 102:11 NASB Lengthened – For those of you who aren’t familiar with exposure problems in photography, let me explain HDR. High Dynamic Range is the situation where the light in the picture varies significantly between highs (whites) and lows (blacks). While the…
Because of Your indignation and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up and thrown me away. Psalm 102:10 NASB Lifted me up – As we know, the Hebrew word nāśāʾ is “used almost six hundred times with basically three separate meanings: “to lift up”; “to bear, carry, support”; and “to take, take away.”[1] “To bear”…
Because of Your indignation and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up and thrown me away. Psalm 102:10 NASB Indignation – I’m guessing that if I asked you for a definition of indignation, you’d stumble a bit. It’s not a commonly used word. We have some inkling of its meaning, but not precisely. If we…
