Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1032

 has שׁקּוּ = שׁקּוּו for its principal form, instead of which it is שׁקּוּי in Hos 2:7. “That Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down” is to be understood according to Job 30:22. First of all God has taken away the firm ground from under his feet, then from aloft He has cast him to the ground - an emblem of the lot of Israel, which is removed from its fatherland and cast into exile, i.e., into a strange land. In that passage the days of his life are כּצל נטוּי, like a lengthened shadow, which grows longer and longer until it is entirely lost in darkness, Psa 109:23. Another figure follows: he there becomes like an (uprooted) plant which dries up.

Verses 12-14
When the church in its individual members dies off on a foreign soil, still its God, the unchangeable One, remains, and therein the promise has the guarantee of its fulfilment. Faith lays hold upon this guarantee as in Ps 90. It becomes clear from Psa 9:8 and Lam 5:19 how תּשׁב is to be understood. The Name which Jahve makes Himself by self-attestation never falls a prey to the dead past, it is His ever-living memorial (זכר, Exo 3:15). Thus, too, will He restore Jerusalem; the limit, or appointed time, to which the promise points is, as his longing tells the poet, now come. מועד, according to Psa 75:3; Hab 2:3, is the juncture, when the redemption by means of the judgment on the enemies of Israel shall dawn. לחננהּ, from the infinitive חנן, has ĕ, flattened from ă, in an entirely closed syllable. רצה ''seq. acc.'' signifies to have pleasure in anything, to cling to it with delight; and חנן, according to Pro 14:21, affirms a compassionate, tender love of the object. The servants of God do not feel at home in Babylon, but their loving yearning lingers over the ruins, the stones and the heaps of the rubbish (Neh 4:2), of Jerusalem.

Verses 15-17
With וייראוּ we are told what will take place when that which is expected in Psa 102:14 comes to pass, and at the same time the fulfilment of that which is longed for is thereby urged home upon God: Jahve's own honour depends upon it, since the restoration of Jerusalem will become the means of the conversion of the world - a fundamental thought of Isa 40:1 (cf. more particularly Isa 59:19; Isa 60:2), which is also called to mind in the expression of this strophe. This prophetic prospect (Isa 40:1-5) that the restoration of Jerusalem will take place simultaneously with the glorious