I am become like the pelican of the wilderness, I am as an owl in desolate places;
This verse sits inside a prayer poured out by someone overwhelmed. He reaches for lonely desert birds to picture what his life has become, and commentators ask whose sorrow this really is.
Writers on this psalm hear the Messiah Himself in these lines, told not as a report about Him but as an account from inside His own experience.
Psalm 102 is not merely a prophecy about the rejection, the sorrow and the judgment-bearing that marked our blessed Lord, and about the mercy that should flow to men as a result. It does give us these things. But the account comes to us as from His own lips, and we get His thoughts and feelings as He passed through it all.
Darby fixes the moment: a man raised to the highest place among his people, and then cast off.
The psalm looks fully at Christ as a man chosen out of the people and raised to be Messiah. Now, instead of taking the kingdom, He is rejected and cast off... He is in trouble. His heart is struck down, like a pelican of the wilderness and an owl of the desert. His days are like a fading shadow; He is withered like grass. Such was Messiah, and to Him all the promises belonged.
Where the ESV reads desert owl, older translations read pelican. The older reading carries its own picture of the bird.
The Psalmist said, "I am like a pelican of the wilderness," which points to the bird sitting alone for hours while it digests its store of fish. It was an unclean bird.
The force of the image is that the creature is somewhere it was never made to be.
"I am like a pelican of the wilderness" (v. 6). The pelican is a water bird, but here out of its proper habitat. The Lord Jesus was used to the refreshing joy of the Father's presence in heaven. So a wilderness world was strange to Him, completely unlike His rightful place of perfect circumstances. "Also, like an owl of the desert" — this speaks of loneliness in a place with no provision.
One writer reads the whole opening section, and traces the bleak surroundings back to God's own hand.
The first seven verses state in general terms the cause of the Sufferer's prayer. His plea is His distress. There is no confession of sin, and on the other hand no claim of innocence. In verse 6 the figures seem to speak of God's hand upon His circumstances, making Him like a bird of the deserts or of ruined places.
Darby does not treat this loneliness as mere misfortune. He reads it as part of the beauty of the place Christ held.
He was alone; His loneliness was the essence of the beauty and perfectness of that place of love. He could be like a sparrow on the housetop and like a pelican in the wilderness. In His sorrow He looked for someone to pity Him, but there was none. He looked for comforters, but found none.
The psalm's later verses (23-28) speak of the One who created all things. Set that beside the birds, and see how far down He came.
First we have a prophetic picture of the lonely One, like a pelican, an owl in the desert and as a sparrow alone upon the house top. What a deep humiliation for Him who created all things (verses 23-28) to take the lowest place, even like a sparrow.
Faithful witness has always carried a cost. One writer traces the same pattern from Christ to Paul.
Everyone left Him. He was "like a pelican of the wilderness, like an owl of the desert, and as a sparrow alone upon the housetops" (Ps. 102). And what came of Paul's faithful testimony, who followed so closely in the footsteps of his Master? "All who are in Asia turned away from me." "At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me... But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me."
The psalm does not stop in the desert. Its later verses turn to Zion, and one writer links the two halves.
Read only as far as verse 10 of this psalm, and you find a great Person who bears the indignation and wrath that God's judgment brings. Reach verse 13, and you find that mercy is to flow out to Zion. The bearing of the judgment leads to the extending of the mercy. That is the wonderful story.
- Voice — the words come to us as from His own lips, giving His thoughts and feelings as He passed through it.
- Displacement — a water bird in a wilderness. He was out of His proper place, far from the joy of the Father's presence.
- Design — the desert and the ruins show God's hand on His circumstances, not bad luck.
- Depth — the Creator of all things took the lowest place, looking for pity and comforters and finding none.
- Destination — the One cast down is the One through whom mercy reaches Zion. His bearing of judgment opens the way for mercy.
I watch, and am like a sparrow alone upon the housetop.
Psalm 102 is headed as the prayer of an afflicted man who is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint before the Lord. Verse 7 sets that grief in one picture: a small bird awake on a roof, with no company, and it raises two questions — who is speaking, and why a sparrow?
Commentators read this prayer as more than a description of rejection seen from outside. We hear it as though we stood close enough to catch His own words.
Psalm 102 is not merely a prophecy about the rejection and sorrow and judgment-bearing that marked our blessed Lord, and about the mercy which should flow to men as a result. It gives us these things truly. But it gives them in such a way that the account comes to us as from His own lips, and we get His thoughts and feelings as He passed through it all.
The force of the image lies in the bird's own nature.
The sparrow is the social bird, found in flocks. The Lord Jesus did desire company. But even when He was with His disciples, we read that He was praying alone (Luke 9:18). His disciples did not enter into His thoughts, so His exercises were solitary. In the same way, the house speaks of fellowship, but where fellowship was desired it was lacking. How little we understand the loneliness of the path of the Lord Jesus in the world!
Another writer weighs what this prayer pleads, and whose hand set the scene.
The first seven verses state in general terms the cause of the Sufferer's prayer. His plea is His distress. There is no confession of sin. In the sixth verse the figures, as well as the number, seem to speak of God's hand upon His circumstances, making Him like a bird of the deserts or of ruined places. The picture of the sparrow heightens the desolation still more. It has social instincts, and it sits in the very place where those instincts would find satisfaction, yet it watches alone.
Writers connect these opening verses to Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus prayed in deep distress.
As we consider the first section, we can hardly help thinking of what the New Testament records about Gethsemane. There it was that He lifted up His prayer as One who was in trouble. There His heart was smitten, and there came the voice of His groaning: there He watched and was as a sparrow alone on the housetop. There too it was that He wept.
Others linger on what made this solitude unlike ours: no one around Him was able to share it.
He was alone in that dark hour, like the sparrow alone on the housetop. He had "looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters," but found none. No one could share His loneliness. No one could sympathise with it, because they did not understand.
Yet one writer sees a reason behind this emptiness, and a beauty in it.
The time had not yet come for union with that blessed source of all blessedness. The Head must be exalted before the body could be joined to Him. He was alone. His loneliness was the essence of the beauty and perfectness of that place of love.
The New Testament settles who this psalm is about. And the psalm that shows Him at His lowest also names Him as Creator.
This Psalm is a prophecy about the sufferings of Christ, His humiliation and death, and the gracious results that flow from it. The quotation in the first chapter of Hebrews confirms this. First we have a prophetic picture of the lonely One, like a pelican, an owl in the desert and as a sparrow alone on the housetop. What a deep humiliation for Him who created all things (verses 23-28) to take the lowest place, even like a sparrow.
Psalm 84 uses the same bird, and writers set the two verses side by side as picture and answer.
The sparrow is a true figure of friendless desolation, with no one to care for it. But it is no longer on the housetop in its loneliness (Ps. 102:7). It is sheltered in the sanctuary of Him who cares for all His works. The swallow's repeated wanderings have ended in the rest God gives through sacrifice.
- Voice — The psalm is a prayer of the afflicted. It reaches us as if from the Lord's own lips, with His own thoughts and feelings.
- Alone — A sparrow belongs in a flock, and a house means fellowship. The verse names both, and He has neither.
- Awake — He watches alone, in the one place where company should have been.
- Unshared — He looked for pity and for comforters and found none. Those closest to Him did not understand.
- Answered — The Creator took the lowest place. In Psalm 84 the same lonely bird is sheltered in God's sanctuary.