Every time I think I really know the Bible, I run into something new. “I am like a pelican of the wilderness” (Psalm 102:6a, King James Version). A Pelican of the wilderness? I checked the verse in other translations. The New Revised Standard Version and some others name the bird an owl, the Good News Bible says wild bird. What’s going on here? Turns out no one is quite sure what the Hebrew word qa’ath means. Maybe it’s a pelican, maybe a cormorant, maybe a vulture, maybe a hawk. Pelican was used by the translators of the KJV because that’s the way it appears in the ancient Greek translation of the Scriptures.

The difficulty in understanding ancient Hebrew gives me some caution in making any remark that begins, “The Bible says . . .”  I’m going to go with the translation “pelican” for now because it’s so ridiculous. Pelicans are waterfowl. What would one be doing in the wilderness? I think that’s exactly the point. You probably can’t get much more out of place than a pelican in the wilderness.

Psalm 102 has a heading:  “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the LORD.” Imagine a person who seems completely out of place, despairing, like a pelican in the wilderness. So the person prays, but with confidence that the Lord “will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer” (17).

I think it’s important to pray with such complete confidence in God even when we feel like a pelican in the wilderness.

Read Psalm102 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne