Ps. 102.4b-7 (dessert owl)

Because of my loud groans
my bones / stick to my skin
I have become / like a dessert owl
I am like the owl / that lives in ruins
I lie awake / and am
like a solitary bird / on a housetop. 

The psalmist previously referred to his ‘bones’ as being the fuel to the fire that consumes his life. Here, it as if he were ‘groaning’ out his life such that his ‘bones stick to my skin’. What we see here, as we saw previously and will see again in the following verses, is a life that is as if ‘poured out’. It takes nothing in but instead is dissipating, losing itself and its integrity. It ‘goes up in flames’ and, here, is spent in groaning. The psalmist then shifts images and turns to the ‘owl’ and ‘bird’. It is not entirely clear to me what this image is meant to convey. On the one hand, it seems to evoke the psalmist as ‘living in darkness and night’. Like the owl his ‘time’ is now the night. Later he describes his life as a ‘lengthening shadow’ (the fall of day). He ‘lies awake’. Along with this image of a night-dweller is the fact that his surroundings are ‘ruin’. His time and his place are times of destruction. He is dwelling (either his body or his social place) is decay. 

In addition, what I think we are to see here is an intense loneliness. The image of the owl and bird on a housetop conveys the sense of social isolation. He has been ‘cast out’ into the realm of ‘ruins’.  The ‘ruins’ are a place of abandoned habitation. They are where people have ceased living, for whatever reason. That place is now his place. His surroundings, in other words, mirrors his social reality. He is a ‘thing abandoned’ and he lives in abandonment.  

Moreover, this is the place he has been 'thrown' by Yhwh. (vs. 10). The fact that he describes himself as a 'dessert' owl may indicate that he now dwells in the 'dessert', which is typically a place of demons and the forces of chaos.

As we have indicated throughout, the psalmist and Zion are intimately related. The question then becomes whether or not this imagery of the psalmist somehow coincides with that of Zion. I think it does. Zion is described as existing “in rubble” in verse 14. And it is clear that Zion’s redemption will be its ‘rebuilding’. It is, in other words, a ‘thing abandoned’ and ‘in ruins’. Its place as a habitation---of Yhwh!—is no longer. Like the ruins the owl/psalmist dwells in, Zion has been abandoned by its ‘inhabitant’. Accordingly, when Zion is rebuilt it is not simply that it is reconstructed. Rather, it will be indwelt. It’s ‘inhabitant’ (Yhwh) will return. Only then will Zion be Zion, just as the psalmist will only be truly the psalmist when Yhwh’s “Face” turns toward him.