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39. Psalm 39

¹ I said, “I will watch my ways
   and keep my tongue from sin;
I will put a muzzle on my mouth
   while in the presence of the wicked.”
² So I remained utterly silent,
   not even saying anything good.
But my anguish increased;
    ³ my heart grew hot within me.
While I meditated, the fire burned;
   then I spoke with my tongue:

    ⁴ “Show me, LORD, my life’s end
   and the number of my days;
   let me know how fleeting my life is.
⁵ You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
   the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath,
   even those who seem secure. The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here and at the end of verse 11.

    ⁶ “Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom;
   in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth
   without knowing whose it will finally be.

    ⁷ “But now, Lord, what do I look for?
   My hope is in you.
⁸ Save me from all my transgressions;
   do not make me the scorn of fools.
⁹ I was silent; I would not open my mouth,
   for you are the one who has done this.
¹⁰ Remove your scourge from me;
   I am overcome by the blow of your hand.
¹¹ When you rebuke and discipline anyone for their sin,
   you consume their wealth like a moth—
   surely everyone is but a breath.

    ¹² “Hear my prayer, LORD,
   listen to my cry for help;
   do not be deaf to my weeping.
I dwell with you as a foreigner,
   a stranger, as all my ancestors were.
¹³ Look away from me, that I may enjoy life again
   before I depart and am no more.”

12 Hear my prayer, O Jehovah! David gradually increases his vehemence in prayer. He speaks first of prayer; in the second place, of crying; and in the third place, of tears This gradation is not a mere figure of rhetoric, which serves only to adorn the style, or to express the same thing in different language. This shows that David bewailed his condition sincerely, and from the bottom of his heart; and in this he has given us, by his own example, a rule for prayer. When he calls himself a stranger and a sojourner, he again shows how miserable his condition was; and he adds expressly, before God, not only because men are absent from God so long as they dwell in this world, but in the same sense in which he formerly said, My days are before thee as nothing; that is to say, God, without standing in need of any one to inform him, knows well enough that men have only a short journey to perform in this world, the end of which is soon reached, or that they remain only a short time in it, as those who are lodged in a house for pay. ⁷⁸⁷⁸ “Comme des gens qui sont logez en une maison par emprunt.” — Fr. The purport of the Psalmist’s discourse is, that God sees from heaven how miserable our condition would be, if he did not sustain us by his mercy.