For Your servants take pleasure in her stones, And show favor to her dust.
Parallel translations
- WEB For your servants take pleasure in her stones, and have pity on her dust.
- KJV For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof.
- BSB For Your servants delight in her stones and take pity on her dust.
- NASB Surely Your servants take pleasure in her stones, And feel pity for her dust.
- NLT For your people love every stone in her walls and cherish even the dust in her streets.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God's servants love even the stones and dust of Zion. Their hearts long for the restoration of God's city.
Overview
The faithful cherish Zion so deeply that even its ruined stones and dust are dear to them. This love reflects their devotion to the place of God's presence and promise. It points beyond the earthly city to the heavenly Zion, the lasting city believers seek in Christ (Hebrews 12:22).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- Neh 4:2He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, since they are burned?”
- Neh 1:3They said to me, “The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”
- Ezra 7:27Blessed be Yahweh, the God of our fathers, who has put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify Yahweh’s house which is in Jerusalem;
- Neh 2:3I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why shouldn’t my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates have been consumed with fire?”
- Neh 4:6So we built the wall; and all the wall was joined together to half its height: for the people had a mind to work.
- Neh 2:17Then I said to them, “You see the bad situation that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come, let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we won’t be disgraced.”
- Ezra 3:1–3When the seventh month had come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.
- Ezra 1:5Then the heads of fathers’ households of Judah and Benjamin, the priests, and the Levites, all whose spirit God had stirred to go up rose up to build Yahweh’s house which is in Jerusalem.
- Ps 79:7–10For they have devoured Jacob, and destroyed his homeland.
- Ps 137:5–6If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
- Ps 79:1A Psalm by Asaph. God, the nations have come into your inheritance. They have defiled your holy temple. They have laid Jerusalem in heaps.
- Neh 4:10Judah said, “The strength of the bearers of burdens is fading, and there is much rubble; so that we are not able to build the wall.”
- Dan 9:16Lord, according to all your righteousness, let your anger and please let your wrath be turned away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a reproach to all who are around us.
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 102:14 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.