Bible Strands
Psalms 102:14
For Your servants delight in her stones and take pity on her dust.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist speaks corporately about Zion, addressing God and describing the future response of His people after a period of desolation. The moment follows the declaration that God will rise up and show mercy to Zion at the appointed time.
The words — רָצוּ (ratsu) means they take pleasure in, and יְחֹנֵנוּ (yechonenu) means they show favor or take pity. These verbs describe the servants’ reverent care for Zion’s ruined stones and dust.
The thread — The pattern of God’s people valuing Zion’s restoration appears in Ezra 1:5 and Ezra 3:1, where the exiles assemble and rebuild. The immediate context in Psalms 102:13 ties this human response directly to God’s prior mercy and the fulfillment of His appointed time.
Why it lands — The text states that divine intervention precedes human reverence, not the reverse. Readers must recognize that caring for what God values flows from His prior compassion, not from independent human initiative.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof.
Cross-references
- Nehemiah 4:2 before his associates and the army of Samaria, saying, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Can they restore the wall by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble?”
- Ezra 1:5 So the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites—everyone whose spirit God had stirred—prepared to go up and rebuild the house of the LORD in Jerusalem.
- Ezra 3:1 By the seventh month, the Israelites had settled in their towns, and the people assembled as one man in Jerusalem.
- Ezra 7:27 Blessed be the LORD, the God of our fathers, who has put into the heart of the king to so honor the house of the LORD in Jerusalem,
- Nehemiah 1:3 And they told me, “The remnant who survived the exile are there in the province, in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
- Nehemiah 2:3 and replied to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should I not be sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
- Nehemiah 2:17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in. Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned down. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we will no longer be a disgrace.”
- Nehemiah 4:6 So we rebuilt the wall until all of it was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.
- Nehemiah 4:10 Meanwhile, the people of Judah said: “The strength of the laborer fails, and there is so much rubble that we will never be able to rebuild the wall.”
- Psalms 79:1 A Psalm of Asaph. The nations, O God, have invaded Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy temple and reduced Jerusalem to rubble.