Bible Strands
Psalms 102:6
I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist speaks from a state of severe physical wasting and sleepless isolation, positioned between verses describing groaning and lying awake. The address is directed to God amid acute personal affliction.
The words — דָּ֭מִיתִי (Damiti) translates literally as "I am like," and חֳרָבֽוֹת (choravot) means "waste places" or ruins. These terms anchor the simile in deliberate, structural desolation.
The thread — Zephaniah 2:14 places desert owls among ruined pillars, and Revelation 18:2 describes fallen Babylon as a haunt for unclean spirits. Both passages extend the image of abandoned structures to depict widespread desolation.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of how acute suffering reduces a person to a state of exposed, unsheltered isolation. It requires the reader to confront the reality of affliction without softening the imagery of desolation.
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
I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 38:14 I chirp like a swallow or crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak as I look upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security.”
- Zephaniah 2:14 Herds will lie down in her midst, creatures of every kind. Both the desert owl and screech owl will roost atop her pillars. Their calls will sound from the window, but desolation will lie on the threshold, for He will expose the beams of cedar.
- Revelation 18:2 And he cried out in a mighty voice: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a lair for demons and a haunt for every unclean spirit, every unclean bird, and every detestable beast.
- Job 30:29 I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.
- Isaiah 34:11 The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.
- Micah 1:8 Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich.