John Gill 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)

I am like a pelican of the wilderness
It may be so called, to distinguish it from another of the same name that lives upon the waters; which has the name of "pelican" in the Greek tongue, as is said, from its smiting and piercing its breast, and letting out blood for the reviving of its young; and in the Hebrew language, from its vomiting shell fish it has swallowed down; (See Gill on Leviticus 11:18) where the word is rendered a "pelican" as here, and in (Deuteronomy 14:17) , the same we call the "shovelard"; but a "cormorant" in (Isaiah 34:11) (Zephaniah 2:14) , however, it seems to be a bird of solitude, and therefore the psalmist compares himself to it. According to Isidore ^F7 , it is an Egyptian bird, that inhabits the desert of the river Nile, from which it has the name of Canopus Aegyptus:

I am like an owl of the desert ;
or "of desert places"; so the Tigurine version; it is translated "the little owl" in (Leviticus 11:17) (Deuteronomy 14:16) . It delights to be on old walls, and in ruined houses, and cares not to consort with other birds, and it makes a hideous sorrowful noise ^F8 . Jarchi renders it the hawk, but that, as Kimchi ^F9 observes, is found in habitable places. Bochart ^F11 thinks the "onocrotalos" is meant, a bird so much of the same kind with the pelican, that they are promiscuously used by learned men; and which is a creature, as Jerom

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FOOTNOTES:

• F7: Origin. l. 12. c. 7.
• F8: "Solaque culminibus ferali carmine Bubo, saepe queri----", Virgil. Aeneid. 4.
• F9: Sepher Shorash. rad. (owk) .
• F11: Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 2. c. 20. col. 275, 276.