Psalms 102 Footnotes

102:10 The psalmist suffered under divine discipline, which he called God’s “indignation and wrath.” In the NT the wrath of God is the effect of his judgment on sin (Rm 1:18, 1Th 1:10). It is this also in the OT, but in this psalm the speaker did not ascribe his suffering to his personal sin. Though he wrote that God had unleashed His anger on him in words that suggest both physical affliction and persecution (vv. 3-9), the psalm may have come out of the experience of the exile in Babylon in which it seemed that God had judged Israel harshly. The writer shared in the punishment due all Israel for its corporate sin against the Lord (Is 6:5). And yet the writer also knew that God had not rejected his people but had promised a glorious future (Ps 30:5; Is 50–55). The full revelation of the NT reassures believers of their secure relationship with the Lord. But the NT also affirms that God’s wrath is poured out on sin, and that divine chastening even of the believer (Heb 12:7) comes from that same attribute of God.