Psalms 102:27
in Psalms 102But You remain the same, and Your years will never end.
BSB
The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾
ASV
But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end.
KJV
But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
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This verse in Psalms 102
Commentary
20 notes on this verseA commentator
Athanasius of Alexandria296–373
Discourses Against the Arians 1.10.36 · Written before 373.
Therefore the Image of the unalterable God must be unchangeable; for "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." And David in the psalm says of him, "You, Lord, in the beginning have laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They shall perish, but you remain; and they all shall grow old as does a garment. And you shall fold them up as a piece of clothing, and they shall be changed, but you are the same, and your years shall not fail."
This site's exposition
You laid the foundations of the earth
on Psalms 102:25-27
The earth has a beginning and the heavens are made things, and both will wear out like clothing while God stays the same. Hebrews 1:10 addresses them to the Son: In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth. The complaint becomes a hymn.
This site's exposition
But You remain the same
You remain the same reads You are He in the Hebrew, the LORD's own words at Deuteronomy 32:39 and Isaiah 43:10. Hebrews 1:12 ends its quotation here, on years that never end. Hebrews 13:8 says the same of Jesus Christ, yesterday, today and forever.
The record, by era
The Church Fathers5 voices
But this opinion of prophecy could not withstand the evidence, which the divine majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ also confirmed in the Gospel. For David said: In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, O Lord, and the works of your hands are the heavens. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, and like clothing you will change them, and they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end. The Lord approved so much in the Gospel that He said: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Perhaps by the heavens we here may understand, without being far-fetched, the righteous themselves, the saints of God, abiding in whom God has thundered in His commandments, lightened in His miracles, watered the earth with the wisdom of truth, for "The heavens have declared the glory of God." But shall they perish? Shall they in any sense perish? In what sense? As a garment. What is, as a garment? As to the body. For the body is the garment of the soul; since our Lord called it a garment, when He said, "Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" [Matthew 6:25] How then does the garment perish? "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." [2 Corinthians 4:16] They then shall perish: but as to the body: "But You shall endure."...Such heavens therefore shall perish; not, however, for ever; they shall perish, that they may be changed. Does not the Psalm say this? Read the following: "They shall all wax old as does a garment; and as a vesture shall Thou change them, and they shall be changed." You hear of the garment, of the vesture, and do you understand anything but the body? We may therefore hope for the change of our bodies also, but from Him who was before us, and abides after us...."But You are the same, and Your years shall not fail" [Psalm 102:27]. But what are we to those years with these beggarly years? And what are they? Yet we ought not to despair. He had already said in His great and exceeding Wisdom, "I Am That I Am;" and yet He says to console us, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob:" [Exodus 3:6] and we are Abraham's seed: [Galatians 3:29] even we, although abject, although dust and ashes, trust in Him. […]
Suppose they say, though, that the Lord's own divine substance is not the same when he is with the Father as it was when he wished to show himself on earth without taking a body, then what else have the poor fools committed themselves to, but saying that the divine substance is subject to change in place and time? They do not want to read, or they find it difficult to understand, what is said by the prophet, "They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them, and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end"; and what is written in the book of divine Wisdom about Wisdom: "While remaining in herself, she renews all things."
If, however, they do not say "so impure" but "so weak," we agree entirely. And that is why Christ is our strength, because he was not changed by our weakness. Here I recognize the aptness of the prophet's words, "You will change them, and they shall be changed; but you yourself are the same, and your years shall not fail." Not only did the weakness of the flesh not change him for the worse, but by him it was changed for the better.
These things that we hold according to our faith, and which reason also demonstrates, can be supported by testimonies from the divine Scriptures, so that the less intelligent who cannot follow the argument may believe on divine authority and so may deserve to reach understanding. Those who understand, and are less instructed in ecclesiastical sacred books, are not to think that we have produced them out of our heads and that they are not in the Scriptures. That God is immutable is written thus in the Psalms: "You shall change them, and they shall be changed; but you are the same." And in the book of Wisdom it is written of Wisdom: "Abiding in herself she renews all things." The apostle Paul says, "To the invisible, incorruptible, only wise God." The apostle James writes, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Because the Son was not made, but all things were made through him, it is written, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made."
12 more voices on this verse
The Church Fathers3 voices
There are many allusions to the last judgment in the Psalms, but for the most part only casual and slight. I cannot, however, omit to mention what is said there in express terms of the end of this world: "In the beginning hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, O Lord; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shall endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; and as a vesture Thou shall change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail."
Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands; they shall perish, but thou shalt remain. This they distort, not understanding that here also in contrast to the uncreated deity he speaks of …
Even in the case of our own soul, when we say that it cannot die, we do not predicate weakness of it, but we proclaim its capacity of immortality. And similarly when we confess the immutability, impassibility and immortality of God, we cannot attribute to …
The Medieval Church1 voice
A commentator
BonaventureQuaestiones Disputatae, De Mysterio Trinitatis, Question 6 · Written in the 13th century.
proposed
That the divine being is immutable is shown by authority. The Psalm: You shall change them, and they shall be changed, but You are the selfsame; the Gloss says: "immutable." For inasmuch as it is simple, it is immutable from itself: for it has nothing …
The Puritans and the Awakening4 voices
The apostle quotes these verses ( Heb. i. 10-12 ) and tells us, He saith this to the Son, and in that exposition we must acquiesce. It is very comfortable, in reference to all the changes that pass over the church, and all the dangers it is in, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
Christ will be the same in the performance that he was in the promise, the same to his church in captivity that he was to his church at liberty. Let not the church fear the weakening of her strength, or the shortening of her days, while Christ himself is both her strength and her life; he is the same, and has said, Because I live you shall live also.
But thou art the same,....
God and the world, Christ and the creature, are rivals for the innermost and uppermost place in the soul of man, the immortal soul; now what is here said, one would think, were enough to decide the controversy immediately and to determine us for God and Christ.
The Nineteenth Century4 voices
But thou art the same, or, "thou art he." As a man remains the same when he has changed his clothing, so is the Lord evermore the unchanging One, though his works in creation may be changed, and the operations of his providence may vary.
A commentator
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown1802–1910
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)
God's eternal existence is a pledge of faithfulness to His promises. in the way--of providence. weakened--literally, "afflicted," and made fearful of a premature end, a figure of the apprehensions of the Church, lest God might not perform His promise, drawn from those of a person in view of the dangers of early death (compare Ps 89:47).
But thou art the same, or, "thou art he." As a man remains the same when he has changed his clothing, so is the Lord evermore the unchanging One, though his works in creation may be changed, and the operations of his providence may vary. When heaven and earth shall flee away from the dread presence of the great Judge, he will be unaltered by the terrible confusion, and the world in conflagration will effect no change in him; even so, the Psalmist remembered that when Israel was vanquished, her capital destroyed, and her temple levelled with the ground, her God remained the same self-existent, all-sufficient being, and would restore his people, even as he will restore the heavens and the earth, bestowing at the same time a new glory never known before. The doctrine of the immutability of God should be more considered than it is, for the neglect of it tinges the theology of many religious teachers, and makes them utter many things of which they would have seen the absurdity long ago if they had remembered the divine declaration, "I am God, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." And thy years shall have no end. God lives on, no decay can happen to him, or destruction overtake him. What a joy is this! We may lose our dearest earthly friends, but not our heavenly Friend. Men's days are often suddenly cut short, and at the longest they are but few, but the years of the right hand of the Most High cannot be counted, for they have neither first nor last, beginning nor end. O my soul, rejoice thou in the Lord always, since he is always the same.
But thou art the same - ואתה הוא veattah Hu, but thou art He, that is, The Eternal; and, consequently, he who only has immortality. Thy years shall have no end - לא יתמו lo yittammu, “they shall not be completed.” Every thing has its revolution - its conception, growth, perfection, decay, dissolution, and death, or corruption. It may be said that regeneration restores all these substances; and so it does in a measure, but not without deterioration. The breed of animals, as well as vegetables, wears out; but God’s eternal round has no completion. I repeat it, - what is necessarily eternal is unchangeable and imperishable; all created beings are perishable and mutable, because not eternal. God alone is eternal; therefore God alone is imperishable and immutable.
The words behind it
5 Hebrew wordsEvery Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.
| Hebrew | Sound | Meaning | Word study | In the Bible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| וְאַתָּה־ | veatah- | and you | H859 → | 1094 times |
| ה֑וּא | hu' | [are] he | H1931 → | 1879 times |
| וּ֝שְׁנוֹתֶ֗יךָ | ushenoteikha | and years your | H8141 → | 877 times |
| לֹ֣א | lo' | not | H3808 → | 5168 times |
| יִתָּֽמּוּ׃ | yitamu | they will come to an end | H8552 → | 63 times |
וְאַתָּה־and you
veatah-H859 →1094 times
ה֑וּא[are] he
hu'H1931 →1879 times
וּ֝שְׁנוֹתֶ֗יךָand years your
ushenoteikhaH8141 →877 times
לֹ֣אnot
lo'H3808 →5168 times
יִתָּֽמּוּ׃they will come to an end
yitamuH8552 →63 times
A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.
The walk
8 stopsEach card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.
Through
Malachi 3:6“Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.
it leads to
- Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Numbers 23:19
Through
Hebrews 13:8Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
it leads to
- James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Isaiah 44:6
Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.
Reached by 2 separate paths from here.
- Malachi 3:6
“Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.
- Revelation 1:8
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come—the Almighty.
- James 1:17
Through
James 1:17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow.
it leads to
- John 3:27
John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.
- Matthew 7:11
So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
- John 3:27
Where this verse is studied
On this page
Studies1
About Psalms

This page draws on 16 works. Open the list of works
This page draws on Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Ambrose of Milan, The Six Days of Creation; Athanasius of Alexandria, Discourses Against the Arians 1.10.36; Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 102; Augustine of Hippo, SERMON 12:10; Augustine of Hippo, SERMON 12:12; Augustine of Hippo, ON THE NATURE OF THE GOOD 24; Augustine of Hippo, City of God 20.24; Bonaventure, Quaestiones Disputatae, De Mysterio Trinitatis, Question 6; Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Vol. 4; Cosmas Indicopleustes, The Christian Topography, Book 7; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Theodoret of Cyrus, LETTER 144.
