Psalm 102

²³ He weakened my strength in the way;
He shortened my days.

²⁴ I said, “O my God,
Do not take me away in the midst of my days;
Your years are throughout all generations.

²⁵ Of old You laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.

²⁶ They will perish, but You will endure;
Yes, they will all grow old like a garment;
Like a cloak You will change them,
And they will be changed.

²⁷ But You are the same,
And Your years will have no end.

²⁸ The children of Your servants will continue,
And their descendants will be established before You.”

[This is] a truly Messianic Psalm, identified for us as such in the quotation from verses 24-26 in Hebrews 1:10-12. … We learn that the words beginning with, “thy years are throughout all generations” of Psalm 102:24, and going on through verses 25-27, are words addressed by the Father to His Son. …

What we have in the Psalm is a dialogue carried on between the Father and the Son, and it is evident that the scene of this dialogue is laid for the most part, in the Garden of Gethsemane. …

The Psalm really opens with the note preceding the first verse, for that note is a part of the inspired record: “A Prayer of the afflicted, when He is overwhelmed, and poureth out His complaint before Jehovah.” Then as the Psalm proceeds we hear His prayer, reaching from the first verse to the eleventh inclusive.

It would be impossible to imagine a more graphic picture of the utter loneliness of the Son of God as He had moved among men, the object of their hatred and derision. “He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:3). It was not the Father’s indignation and wrath for His beloved Son as such, but rather His indignation and wrath against our sins, which had brought this suffering upon His holy Son. Here again, as in other Messianic Psalms, we find the Lord Jesus identifying Himself with us, and confessing our sins as His own. …

Down to this point [v.11] we have had only the minor chord in our Psalm as the suffering Son of God poured out His complaints before His Father. But now there comes a great change as the Father replies to His Son, beginning at verse 12. Let us observe here that just as the Son addressed His Father by the title Jehovah in verse 1, so not the Father addresses His Son by the same title in verse 12.

The sacrifice of Calvary was primarily for Israel, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). The Lord Jesus was first of all, “a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers” (Romans 15:8). That is to say, God had made certain promises to Israel through the Father, and in order to fulfill these promises it was necessary that the Lord Jesus should come and die on the cross of Calvary. … To Israel it was a matter of righteousness in the fulfillment of promises; to the Gentiles it was a matter of pure mercy, since no promises had been made to the Gentiles. …

Here again [verses 23-24] we come to a change in the Psalm. The Father has been addressing His Son in reply to that Son’s petition, and now the Son for a moment speaks again, saying “He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened my days. I said, “O my God, do not take me away in the midst of my days.”

Here we may find an answer to the much discussed question as to what our Lord meant when in the garden He cried out, saying, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39). To what cup did He refer? By man it is held that our Lord was praying to be delivered from dying on the cross. Others who reject this theory teach that our Lord was praying to be delivered from having His Father hide His face from Him while on the cross. Our own conviction is that our Lord was praying to be delivered from dying in the garden, and thus failing to reach the cross. to us it is evident that in Gethsemane Satan made an attack upon the Son of God and sought to kill Him there and thus prevent the fulfillment of the prophetic Word that the Lamb of God should die on the cross. The 22nd Psalm predicts and depicts His death by crucifixion, and He Himself prophesied concerning the manner of death He should die, in being lifted up form the earth (John 3:14-15; 8:28; 12:32-34). …

So if Satan could kill Him in the garden then the Word of God should be broken. In Hebrews 5:7-8 we read of our Lord, “Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.”

It is evident that this Scripture refers to Gethsemane, and it is equally clear that our Lord actually feared the death which Satan sought to thrust upon Him. In Hebrews 4:15 it is declared that our Lord “was in all points tempted like as we are, apart from sin.” The word “tempted” has the meaning of testing. He was tested in all points like as we ourselves are tested, with the single exception of indwelling sin. There was no sin in Him, and so He could not be tempted from within, but only from without. … Is fear itself a sinful thing? Certainly not. … If our Lord was tested in all points like as we are apart from sin, then it follows that He must have been tested by fear. …

His prayer was “heard” [Hebrews 5:7], that is to say, it was granted. Whatever He was asking for was given to Him. … He said, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” It was possible, and therefore the prayer was granted, and He was delivered from drinking of that particular cup. He drank instead of another cup, the cup which His Father gave Him (Matthew 20:22; John 18:11). But from His Father’s cup He did not pray to be delivered. He prayed to be delivered from death in the garden.

It is also clear that the cup from which He prayed to be delivered was not the hiding of His Father’s face at Calvary, for His Father’s face was hidden from Him at Calvary, and thus we see that this was not the cup from which He was delivered. …

He said to His Father in His agony, “O My God, take Me not away in the midst of my days” (Psalm 102:24). It was for these days that He had been born. Up to this time He had been saying, “Mine hour is not  yet come,” but now it had come, and His threatened death in the garden within so short a distance from the cross overwhelmed Him with fear. …

In Mark 14:33-34 we read that in Gethsemane our Lord was “sore amazed” and “very heavy,” and that He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” … Then in verse 35, “He went forward a little, and fell on the ground.” … Then in Luke 22:44 we read that “being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his seat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” the word for “drops” is really “clots”—great clots of blood pouring through His skin falling to the ground.

Coming back not to the Psalm we have the Father again replying to the Son in the latter part of the 24th verse [and continuing through the end of the psalm]. — Pettingill, pages 137-145.

I copied much of Pettingill’s comments because I’d never heard that interpretation before that Christ was praying not to die in the garden. I’ve always wondered about that prayer, and this interpretation makes sense to me. I’ll have to ponder and study more.

Some three thousand years have taken place since this prediction. It was a thousand years after the Psalm was written before the first 12 verses were fulfilled in Jerusalem when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. Two thousand years have elapses since then, and we are just beginning to anticipate the fulfillment of verses 13-17. — Phillips, page 244.

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These verses [25-28] were a comfort to the human side of the Messiah as He was paying the penalty of sin in His death. He was to live, and live on for ever. — Phillips, page 247.

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In response to His complaint (vs.1-11) the Holy Spirit addressing Him in verse 12, and with special reference to verse 11, says: “But Thou, O Jehovah, shalt sit enthroned as King forever.” He then passes on to foretell the restoration of Israel (vs. 13-14); the salvation of the Gentiles (v.15); the subjection of all the kings of the earth (vs. 15 and 22); His apparition in glory (v.16); and the beneficence of His reign over the new nation that is to be born (v.18, with Matthew 21:43) [Still Israel, but an Israel separate from unbelieving Israel—the “little flock” of Luke 12:32]. Thus His glories (1 Peter 1:2) as the Great King are set over against His sufferings as the Rejected Man. Here, as in son many other Scriptures, His sufferings and His glories are brought together, and always in that order. — Williams, page 377.

Wechsler takes an entirely different view of the psalm, one which makes little sense to me, but since I’ve quoted him so often I’ll include some of his comments here.

The prayer is intended as a model for any afflicted (i.e. chastised) believer when he is faint (not only physical, but also emotional “ebbing” (i.e., despair and depression) as in Psalms 61:2; 77:3) and pours out (signifying a full and sincere “confession”) his complaint to the Lord. … The psalmist, moreover, in no way even so much as hints that his affliction is unmerited, but rather affirms that that it is just—even more, that it is an expression of God’s chastisement (as indicated in v.10).

The psalmist’s hope of finding relief from his affliction lies in the fact that the Lord is not only just and righteous … but also compassionate and gracious, leading to His inevitable granting of relief and restoration to His covenant people. … The psalmist thus finds encouragement for his own situation by looking to God’s relationship with Israel. …

The psalmist continues to derive encouragement from the example of God’s relationship with Israel by reflecting not only on what He has promised to do for them, but also on what He has promised to do through them—i.e., that by His interaction with Israel nationally, whether in chastening them or blessing them, He is preparing an example for a people yet to be created (v.18)—i.e., the Church, drawn from both Jew and Gentiles. — Wechsler, pages 242-244.

OK, I have several problems with that interpretation. First, it discounts Hebrews 1:10-12, which quotes this psalm and attributes it to the Messiah. He does throw the Hebrews passage in at the end, saying that verses 25-27 are applied to Christ, but that’s it. Second, if a believer is in agony because of his own sin, how would God’s restoration of Israel be a comfort? And lastly, applying v.18 to the Church is simply wrong because the Church was a mystery that was totally hidden until it was revealed to Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles (Colossian 1:24-27). As I study the Psalms, I’m more and more coming to the conclusion that many if not most of them are Messianic.