Sons of Men
For He looked down from His holy height; from heaven the Lord looked upon the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to set free those who were doomed to death, Psalm 102:19-20 NASB
Those who were doomed – There’s a little footnote next to these words in the NASB. Read it! Why? Because the Hebrew text is not “those who were doomed.” That is the translator’s interpolation. The Hebrew actually is bĕnê tĕmûtâ, a combination that occurs only twice in the Tanakh, here and in Psalm 79:11. As you can see, it is literally “sons of death” (or “children of death”). This idea is not Hebraic. It is found throughout Semitic languages and cultures. Men are born to die. The difference in Hebrew is why this is the case.
Death is the consequence and the punishment of sin. It originated with sin. A grand theme of the ot is God’s holiness, which separates him from all that is not in harmony with his character. Death, then, in the ot means ultimate separation from God due to sin. And sin is any rebellion or lack of conformity to his holy will. All men then, in a sense, are what the Hebrews would call bĕnê māwet “sons of death”; that is, they deserve to die because they are sinners. This and a related term (ʾîš māwet “man of death”) are used (Ps 79:11; 102:20 [H 21]) of the people of God in captivity who must look to him for deliverance from impending doom.[1]
The translation adds a passive inevitability to this thought. “Were doomed” has the feel of some horrible catastrophe perpetrated upon the sons of Man. It reminds us of the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barc, “Man’s greatest sin is being born.” The die is cast. The lot taken. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s over before it begins. Death swallows us all. We’re forced to Qohelet’s conclusion: love the woman you’re with, get some sleep if you can, hope for a few good days along the way to the grave.
But wait! The psalmist introduces this idea not with a verb about fixed inevitability but with a verb about release. “To set free” is the verb pātaḥ, meaning “to open.”[2] If death closes the door, God opens it. God sees the plight of Man. He sees the prison of the yetzer ha’ra. He recognizes our slavery to appetites, confinement to forced obligation, caged self-delusion. Men might be born to die, but God exists to set them free. The problem isn’t death. It’s sin! The solution isn’t immortality. It’s redemption! The God in heaven isn’t immune to our nightmare. He isn’t removed in His holy castle in the sky. He hears our groaning—and He acts. He knows we are bound, chained, imprisoned. And He does something about it.
Topical Index: pātaḥ, to set free, bĕnê māwet, sons of death, Psalm 102:19-20
[1] Smick, E. B. (1999). 1169 מוּת. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 497). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Victor Hamilton, TWOT, 1854 פָּתַח (pātaḥ) I, open: “In the Piel, however, the primary meaning is ‘to loose, untie, strip off, undo,’ either in the sense of ‘to humiliate’ (Job 12:18; 30:11; Isa 45:1), but more often ‘to liberate’ (Isa 58:6; Jer 40:4; Ps 102:20 [H 21]; 116:16).”
