I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days - This was the burden of my prayer, for this I earnestly pleaded. See Psalm 30:9; Isaiah 38:1-3, Isaiah 38:9-18. The word used here means "to cause to ascend or go up" and the expression might have been translated, "Cause me not to ascend." The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate render it, "Call me not away." Dr. Horsley," Carry me not off." In the word there may be an allusion - an obscure one, it is to be admitted - to the idea that the soul ascends to God when the body dies. The common idea in the Old Testament is that it would descend to the regions of the departed spirits - to Sheol. It is plain, however, that there was another idea - that the soul would ascend at once to God when death occurred. Compare Ecclesiastes 3:21; Ecclesiastes 12:7. The word rendered "in the midst" means properly in the half; as if life were divided into two portions. Compare Psalm 55:23.

Thy years are throughout all generations - Thou dost not die; thou art ever the same, though the generations of people are cut off. This seems to have been said here for two reasons:

(1) As a ground of consolation, that God was ever the same; that whatever might happen to people, to the psalmist himself, or to any other man, God was unchanged, and that his great plans would be carried forward and accomplished;

(2) As a reason for the prayer. God was eternal. He had an immortal existence. He could not die. He knew, in its perfection, the blessedness of "life" - life as such; life continued; life unending. The psalmist appeals to what God himself enjoyed - as a reason why life - so great a blessing - should be granted to him a little longer. By all that there was of blessedness in the life of God, the psalmist prays that that which was in itself - even in the case of God - so valuable, might yet a little longer be continued to "him."

I said, O my God - This and the following verses seem to be the form of prayer which the captives used previously to their deliverance.

Thy years are throughout all generations - This was a frequent argument used to induce God to hear prayer. We are frail and perishing; thou art everlasting: deliver us, and we will glorify thee.

I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days;.... Which was always reckoned as a judgment, as a token of God's sore displeasure, and as what only befell wicked men, Psalm 55:23, in the Hebrew it is, "cause me not to ascend" (f); either as smoke, which ascends, and vanishes away; or rather it designs the separation of the soul from the body at death, when it ascends upwards to God that gave it; so Aben Ezra compares it with Ecclesiastes 12:7, the Targum is,

"do not take me out of the world in the midst of my days, bring me to the world to come:''

some, who think that Daniel was the penman of this psalm, or some other, about the time of the Babylonish captivity, curiously observe, that that period was much about the middle between the building of Solomon's temple and the coming of Christ, the antitype of it; which was about a thousand years, of which four hundred and ninety were to come, according to Daniel's weeks; so, representing the church, prays they might not be destroyed, as such; but be continued till the Messiah came:

thy years are throughout all generations; which are not as men's years, of the same measure or number; but are boundless and infinite: the phrase is expressive of the eternity of God, or Christ; which the psalmist opposes to his own frailty, and which he illustrates in the following verses, by setting it in contrast with the discontinuance and changeableness of the heavens and the earth; see Job 10:5.

(f) "ne ascendere facias me", Montanus, Gejerus.

I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations.

102:24 I said - Do not wholly destroy thy people Israel. In the midst - Before they come to a full possession of thy promises and especially of that fundamental promise of the Messiah. Thy years - Though we die, yet thou art the everlasting God.

102:23-28 Bodily distempers soon weaken our strength, then what can we expect but that our months should be cut off in the midst; and what should we do but provide accordingly? We must own God's hand in it; and must reconcile this to his love, for often those that have used their strength well, have it weakened; and those who, as we think, can very ill be spared, have their days shortened. It is very comfortable, in reference to all the changes and dangers of the church, to remember that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. And in reference to the death of our bodies, and the removal of friends, to remember that God is an everlasting God. Do not let us overlook the assurance this psalm contains of a happy end to all the believer's trials. Though all things are changing, dying, perishing, like a vesture folding up and hastening to decay, yet Jesus lives, and thus all is secure, for he hath said, Because I live ye shall live also.