Psalm 102
A Prayer of the man who is in trouble, when he is overcome, and puts his grief before the Lord.
¹ Give ear to my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come to you.
² Let not your face be veiled from me in the day of my trouble; give ear to me, and let my cry be answered quickly.
³ My days are wasted like smoke, and my bones are burned up as in a fire.
⁴ My heart is broken; it has become dry and dead like grass, so that I give no thought to food.
⁵ Because of the voice of my sorrow, my flesh is wasted to the bone.
⁶ I am like a bird living by itself in the waste places; like the night-bird in a waste of sand.
⁷ I keep watch like a bird by itself on the house-top.
⁸ My haters say evil of me all day; those who are violent against me make use of my name as a curse.
⁹ I have had dust for bread and my drink has been mixed with weeping:
¹⁰ Because of your passion and your wrath, for I have been lifted up and then made low by you.
¹¹ My days are like a shade which is stretched out; I am dry like the grass.
¹² But you, O Lord, are eternal; and your name will never come to an end.
¹³ You will again get up and have mercy on Zion: for the time has come for her to be comforted.
¹⁴ For your servants take pleasure in her stones, looking with love on her dust.
¹⁵ So the nations will give honour to the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will be in fear of his glory:
¹⁶ When the Lord has put up the walls of Zion, and has been been in his glory;
¹⁷ When he has given ear to the prayer of the poor, and has not put his request on one side.
¹⁸ This will be put in writing for the coming generation, and the people of the future will give praise to the Lord.
¹⁹ For from his holy place the Lord has seen, looking down on the earth from heaven;
²⁰ Hearing the cry of the prisoner, making free those for whom death is ordered;
²¹ So that they may give out the name of the Lord in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem;
²² When the peoples are come together, and the kingdoms, to give worship to the Lord.
²³ He has taken my strength from me in the way; he has made short my days.
²⁴ I will say, O my God, take me not away before my time; your years go on through all generations:
²⁵ In the past you put the earth on its base, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
²⁶ They will come to an end, but you will still go on; they all will become old like a coat, and like a robe they will be changed:
²⁷ But you are the unchanging One, and your years will have no end.
²⁸ The children of your servants will have a safe resting-place, and their seed will be ever before you.