Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 102:6

"I am like a pelican of the wilderness; I am become as an owl of the waste places." — Psalms 102:6 (ASV)

Pelican. See Leviticus 11:18.

It has been objected that the pelican, being a water-bird, cannot, therefore, be the kâath of the Scriptures—the pelican of the wilderness—because it would necessarily starve in the desert.

However, a midbar (wilderness) is often used to denote a wide open space, whether cultivated or uncultivated, and is not restricted to barren, waterless spots. Moreover, as a matter of fact, the pelican, after filling its capacious pouch with fish, molluscs, etc., often does retire to places far inland to consume what it has captured. Similarly, it breeds on the great sandy wastes near the mouths of the Danube.

Thus, the expression pelican in the wilderness, in the psalmist’s pitiable complaint, is a true picture of the bird as it sits in an apparently melancholy mood with its bill resting on its breast (Bible Educator, iv. 8).

Owl. The Hebrew term is khôs . The bird is identified with the “owl” by the Hebrew in this passage, which should be rendered, “owl of the ruins.” Some, however, would identify this bird with the pelican, since khôs means “cup,” rendering it “the pelican, even the pouch-bird” (see Bible Educator, ii. 346). The Septuagint, Aquila, and Theodotion all have “screech-owl”; Symmachus has the “hoopoe.”