Psalms 102:24

24 Again-call thou not me in the middle of my days; thy years be in generation and into generation. (Please do not call me back in the middle of my days; thy years last for all generations.)

Psalms 102:24 Meaning and Commentary

Psalms 102:24

I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days;
&c.] Which was always reckoned as a judgment, as a token of God's sore displeasure, and as what only befell wicked men, ( Psalms 55:23 ) , in the Hebrew it is, "cause me not to ascend" F6; either as smoke, which ascends, and vanishes away; or rather it designs the separation of the soul from the body at death, when it ascends upwards to God that gave it; so Aben Ezra compares it with ( Ecclesiastes 12:7 ) , the Targum is,

``do not take me out of the world in the midst of my days, bring me to the world to come:''

some, who think that Daniel was the penman of this psalm, or some other, about the time of the Babylonish captivity, curiously observe, that that period was much about the middle between the building of Solomon's temple and the coming of Christ, the antitype of it; which was about a thousand years, of which four hundred and ninety were to come, according to Daniel's weeks; so, representing the church, prays they might not be destroyed, as such; but be continued till the Messiah came:

thy years are throughout all generations;
which are not as men's years, of the same measure or number; but are boundless and infinite: the phrase is expressive of the eternity of God, or Christ; which the psalmist opposes to his own frailty, and which he illustrates in the following verses, by setting it in contrast with the discontinuance and changeableness of the heavens and the earth; see ( Job 10:5 ) ( 36:26 ) .


FOOTNOTES:

F6 (ynlet la) "ne ascendere facias me", Montanus, Gejerus.

Psalms 102:24 In-Context

22 In gathering together peoples into one; and kings, that they serve the Lord. (Yea, when all peoples, and kingdoms, shall be gathered together into one, to serve the Lord.)
23 It answered to him in the way of his virtue; Tell thou to me the fewness of my days. (But he hath weakened my strength along the way; he hath shortened my days.)
24 Again-call thou not me in the middle of my days; thy years be in generation and into generation. (Please do not call me back in the middle of my days; thy years last for all generations.)
25 Lord, thou foundedest the earth in the beginning; and (the) heavens be the works of thine hands.
26 Those shall perish, but thou dwellest perfectly; and all shall wax eld as a cloth. And thou shalt change them as a covering, and those shall be changed; (They shall perish, but thou shalt live forever; all of them shall grow old like a cloak. And thou shalt change them like a covering, and they shall be changed;)
Copyright © 2001 by Terence P. Noble. For personal use only.