Psalms 39: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

David decides to keep silent while wicked people are watching him, but the pain builds up inside until he speaks. He asks the LORD to show him how short his life is, and says that a person's lifetime is nothing before God, that wealth is piled up for someone else to take, and that his hope is in God alone. He asks God to forgive him and to stop striking him, and closes by asking for relief before he dies, saying he is only a guest passing through, as his ancestors were.

Claim by Claim

1. 39:1
   • The speaker said that he would take heed to his ways.
   • The purpose of watching his ways was that he not sin with his tongue.
   • He said he would guard his mouth with a muzzle.
   • He would do this as long as the wicked was in his presence.
2. 39:2
   • The speaker was mute and silent.
   • He kept still even from speaking what was good.
   • His pain was stirred up.
3. 39:3
   • His heart grew hot within him.
   • While he mused, a fire burned.
   • Then he spoke with his tongue.
4. 39:4
   • The speaker asked the LORD to make him know his end.
   • He asked to know the measure of his days.
   • He asked this so that he might know how fleeting he is.
5. 39:5
   • God has made the speaker's days as handbreadths.
   • The speaker's lifetime is as nothing before God.
   • Every man, however firmly established, is altogether a breath.
   • Selah.
6. 39:6
   • Every man goes about as a mere image or shadow.
   • Men are in turmoil for nothing.
   • A man heaps up wealth.
   • He does not know who will gather it.
7. 39:7
   • The speaker asked the Lord what he waits for.
   • The speaker's hope is in the Lord.
8. 39:8
   • The speaker asked to be delivered from all his transgressions.
   • He asked not to be made the reproach of the fool.
9. 39:9
   • The speaker was mute.
   • He did not open his mouth.
   • The reason was that God had done it.
10. 39:10
    • The speaker asked God to remove his stroke from him.
    • The speaker is consumed by the hostility of God's hand.
11. 39:11
    • God corrects a man with rebukes for iniquity.
    • God consumes away what that man treasures, like a moth.
    • Surely every man is a breath.
    • Selah.
12. 39:12
    • The speaker asked the LORD to hear his prayer.
    • He asked God to give ear to his cry.
    • He asked God not to be silent at his tears.
    • The speaker is a foreigner with God.
    • The speaker is a sojourner.
    • All his fathers were sojourners as well.
13. 39:13
    • The speaker asked God to turn his gaze away from him, which the King James renders as a plea to be spared.
    • The purpose was that he might recover cheer or strength.
    • He asked this before he departs and is no more.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

39:1

"Take heed to my ways" is Hebrew idiom for watching one's conduct, not one's route. The "bridle" of the King James is literally a muzzle, the strap put on an animal's mouth to stop it biting or eating. "Before me" means in their presence, within earshot.

39:2

"Dumb" in 1611 English means unable to speak and carries no suggestion of stupidity, and "held my peace" simply means stayed silent. "Even from good" means the silence was total: he would not even say the harmless or helpful things he could have said.

39:3

In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thought as well as feeling, closer to "mind" than to romantic emotion. A heart growing hot is a mind working itself up.

39:4

"The measure of my days" treats a lifespan as a length that can be measured out, which sets up the hand's-width image in the next verse.

39:5

A handbreadth is the width of the palm across the base of the four fingers, about three inches, the smallest ordinary unit of measure in ancient Israel, used for things like the thickness of a rim. The King James "vanity" translates Hebrew *hebel*, meaning a breath or puff of vapor: something real but weightless and gone at once. It is the same word repeated throughout Ecclesiastes. "Selah" is a term of unknown meaning that appears in the Psalms; it is probably a musical or performance direction, and translators leave it untranslated rather than guess.

39:6

The word behind "vain shew" means an image, a reflection, a shape, something that looks solid but has nothing behind it. "Disquieted" in 1611 English meant agitated and bustling, not merely uneasy. "Who shall gather them" is the ordinary word for bringing in a harvest: someone else collects the crop he worked for.

39:8

"The foolish" in Hebrew writing does not mean the unintelligent. A fool is someone morally reckless who despises restraint, and the sting is having such people be the ones entitled to sneer.

39:9

The "it" is his suffering. He stays silent not because he is calm but because he takes the affliction to be God's own doing, which leaves him no one to protest to.

39:10

The word rendered "stroke" or "plague" covers any affliction sent as a blow, and is the standard term in the law codes for a diseased spot on skin, cloth or a wall. The line can be read as sickness as easily as misfortune.

39:11

Cloth was stored wealth in the ancient world (garments were inherited, given as gifts and used to settle debts), so a moth quietly destroying fabric in a chest was a familiar image for value eaten away unseen. What is consumed is literally "what he desires", his most prized possession.

39:12

"Stranger" and "sojourner" are two legal terms for a resident foreigner: someone living in a land he does not own, holding no inherited land, dependent on a host's protection. Israelite landholders described themselves this way toward God, who was reckoned the land's true owner.

39:13

"O spare me" is literally "look away from me". A divine gaze here means scrutiny and pressure, so asking God to stop looking is asking for relief, not for abandonment. "Recover strength" translates a verb meaning to brighten or cheer up. "Go hence" is the plain word for departing, i.e. dying.