He weakened my strength in the way, he shortened my days.
In Psalm 102 an overwhelmed sufferer pours out His complaint before the LORD. Verse 23 names the cause of His trouble: God Himself has drained His strength and cut His days short — so who is this sufferer, and why?
Commentators read this cry as the words of the rejected Messiah. The psalm has just been describing God's mercy to the poor — and then comes this:
Is He, then, an example of these ways of Jehovah — of His showing mercy to the poor? No: "He weakened my strength in the way: He shortened my days." Himself the King of Zion, "Messiah the Prince," He is "cut off, and has nothing" (Dan. 9:26 margin). The sinless One, He is left to die. He on whom all the promises depend is left to cry out to the Eternal Might, as one taken away in the middle of his days — struck down, and not supported!
(The older translation used by these writers reads "He weakened my strength in the way"; the ESV has "He has broken my strength in midcourse.")
One writer hears a change of voice here, and measures the shortened days against a full lifetime:
But we hear a different voice now speaking of weakness, in a different way from the previous section, which shows mankind to be utterly weak. It is the Lord Jesus speaking in verse 23, saying that God weakened His strength. Of course He was willing for this, taking the place of a Man, dependent and weak. In fact, He also says, "He shortened my days," for Christ lived on earth less than half the normal time of which Psalm 90:10 speaks (70 years).
Why does that weakness matter to us?
How it endears our precious Saviour to our hearts to think of Him in circumstances so much like our own! By becoming man He carried the feeling and experience of weakness, and of how short human life is. Yes, as we read elsewhere, He was tempted in every way as we are, sin apart. For this very reason He is qualified to sympathise with us in our weaknesses, and to give us the help we need.
If the King's own days are cut short, what becomes of His kingdom?
How can Jehovah step in to bless His people if the Messiah is cut off? For the Messiah can say, "He weakened my strength in the way: he shortened my days." How can the kingdom be established if the anointed King is cut off? There cannot be a restored kingdom without the King. The answer is disclosed in the great mystery of His Person. The Messiah who identified Himself with His suffering people and was cut off is none less than Jehovah Himself.
Who speaks at the end of the psalm? The New Testament settles it:
It is certain from Heb. 1:10 that there is a change of speakers at verse 25... Christ pleads in sorrow, "O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days." Jehovah replies — "Of old you have laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of your hands. They shall perish, but you shall endure," and so on. The crucified one was Himself also the Eternal — blessed mystery, the foundation of all God's counsels of grace and glory!
He bore this for others, and the reply He receives is not the one He asks for:
He took up the sorrows of His earthly people, and for their sake bore indignation and wrath at Jehovah's hands. He prays: "I said, O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days." Jehovah does not answer with a mercy that added fifteen years to the threatened life, as in Hezekiah's case. He replies with this marvellous statement of the Sufferer's glory.
The psalm holds two things together, and both belong to the believer:
This psalm (102) is one of unusual strength and blessing to the believer. It brings before us, on one side, the identity of Christ in spirit with His suffering people, and on the other side, His identity with Jehovah... Our Lord's sufferings become the pledge of glory to those that are His. The triumph of Christ comes to be the pledge of deliverance and blessing to them... Of this the resurrection of Jesus was the great witness.
- Weakened. The speaker is the rejected Messiah, cut off with nothing though every promise rested on Him. He bore this for His people's sake.
- Shortened. His days ran to less than half the seventy years of Psalm 90. He took that weakness willingly when He became man.
- Felt. That weakness was real. So He can sympathise with ours and give the help we need.
- Answered. God does not add years, as He did for Hezekiah. He answers the dying Man by naming Him Creator of earth and heaven, who endures when they perish.
- Shared. The crucified One is the Eternal One. So His triumph is the pledge of blessing for His people, and His resurrection is the proof.
I said, My God, take me not away in the midst of my days! ... Thy years are from generation to generation.
Psalm 102 is a prayer of someone afflicted and faint, pouring out his complaint to the LORD. Here the sufferer, worn down in strength, asks God not to take him away half-way through life — and the verse ends with years that never run out.
Commentators say the afflicted sufferer in this psalm is the Messiah. His weakness looks like ours, and that is where the comfort lies.
Remember that "the afflicted" here is no less a Person than the Messiah in the midst of His sorrow and rejection... He says in verse 23, "He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened my days." How it endears our precious Saviour to our hearts, that we are allowed to see Him in circumstances so closely resembling our own. By becoming man, He bore the feeling and experience of weakness, and the shortness of human life.
The phrase points to a life cut short. One writer sees the same thing in ears of grain that were green and yet full.
Notice that the ears were green, yet they were full ears, that is, they were mature. Does this not remind us of the prophet's wonderful lament, "I said, O my God, take Me not away in the midst of My days" (Ps. 102:24)? At about the age of thirty-three our Lord's life was cut off. And yet though He was, as to His manhood, only a young man (as men reckon), He was marked by full maturity.
Earlier in the psalm God promises to rebuild Zion and gather the nations. That promise makes this prayer urgent: if the King dies young, who will reign?
In the hundred and second, the time has come, Zion is to be built up again, the nations gathered together to serve the Lord. But where is He that is to rule? Is it a Man cast down in the divine wrath, His strength weakened in the way, His days shortened? Hear Him as He pleads, "O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days! Your years are throughout all generations."
Commentators read the second half of the verse, and the verses after it, as God's reply. The reply says nothing about His circumstances. It says who the sufferer is.
"Your years are throughout," etc., is in answer to verse 23 and the first clause of verse 24. Jesus, in His humiliation, breathes out His broken heart to Jehovah. The Psalm anticipates the rebuilding of Zion. If so, where would this smitten Messiah be? If cut off in the midst of His day, how could He be there? God's answer is that He, the holy sufferer, is Jehovah, the creator and disposer of all things. What a testimony to His unchangeable deity!
That answer reaches far beyond the short life He pleads over. It runs past the end of time.
He may, and surely must, die as man according to the counsels of God; but time can make no change to Him. His works may perish, and grow old... Cut off in the midst of His days as man, when He had lived only half the span allotted to man on earth, He proves to be the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and ending, the first and the last. He is the Ancient of days. He was there before time was counted. When time ends, His years will not be finished.
Read straight through, the verse sounds like one unbroken prayer. The Spirit of God shows otherwise: the words that follow are God's, spoken to the Son.
Suppose the Spirit of God Himself had not applied these words to Christ. We would have thought they were part of our Lord's address to God. Read it straight through. Does it not sound as though the Lord was going on to say, "Take Me not away in the midst of My days: Your years are throughout all generations. Of old You have laid the foundation of the earth"? But here we are told that it is God who is addressing His blessed Son.
The prayer was not answered by postponing death. It was answered on the far side of it.
Death was before Him. Compare here Heb. 5:7. He asked life of Jehovah, and He is heard. But how, after all? In length of days (as man) for ever and ever. "His glory," they say to Jehovah, "is great in Your salvation: honour and majesty You have laid upon him."
- Days — the speaker is the Messiah, His strength weakened and His days cut short, feeling the shortness of human life as we feel it.
- Doubt — if Zion is to be rebuilt and the nations gathered, where is the King who was cut off at thirty-three?
- Deity — God's reply names Him as the Creator whose years never fail, and it comes at the moment He looks weakest.
- Disclosure — the Spirit of God supplies the key; without it, readers would have taken God's answer as more of the sufferer's own prayer.
- Deliverance — God heard the prayer for life. He did not spare Him death; He gave Him length of days forever.