I lie awake, I have become like a solitary bird on a housetop.
Parallel translations
- WEB I watch, and have become like a sparrow that is alone on the housetop.
- KJV I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.
- BSB I lie awake; I am like a lone bird on a housetop.
- NKJV I lie awake, And am like a sparrow alone on the housetop.
- NLT I lie awake, lonely as a solitary bird on the roof.
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
He lies awake, like a solitary sparrow on a rooftop. Sleepless and alone, he bears his grief.
Overview
The image of a lone sparrow on a housetop captures the psalmist's sleepless, friendless suffering. Isolation deepens the pain of affliction. Yet even in such solitude, he continues to pour out his heart to the God who never abandons His own.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Ps 77:4You hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I can’t speak.
- Lam 3:28–30Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he has laid it on him.
- Mark 14:33–37He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be greatly troubled and distressed.
- Ps 38:11My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague. My kinsmen stand far away.
- Deut 28:66–67Your life will hang in doubt before you. You will be afraid night and day, and will have no assurance of your life.
- Ps 130:6My soul longs for the Lord more than watchmen long for the morning; more than watchmen for the morning.
- Ps 22:2My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer; in the night season, and am not silent.
- Job 7:13–16When I say, ‘My bed shall comfort me. My couch shall ease my complaint;’
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 102:7 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.