Psalm 39

Psalms 39:1-3

The Hebrew title, not carried on this page, reads To the chief Musician, even to Jeduthun, A Psalm of David, naming one of David's three chief musicians alongside Asaph and Heman, whose name also heads Psalms 62 and 77. The psalmist opens with a vow of silence, I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me, refusing to voice a complaint in front of men who might misuse it. The resolve does not hold: while I was musing the fire burned, then spake I with my tongue, and the outburst that follows is addressed to God rather than to the wicked he had resolved to keep quiet before.

Psalms 39:4-6

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days asks not for a date but for a right sense of life's shortness, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth measuring a lifetime against the width of a hand. Every man at his best state is altogether vanity is stated as plain fact rather than complaint, wisdom literature's own theme surfacing inside a psalm of personal distress. He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them widens the point from the psalmist's own case to every man's, the gathering of wealth undone by the same brevity.

Psalms 39:7-9

And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee turns the meditation on mortality into a settled answer, the only thing worth waiting for named in one line. Deliver me from all my transgressions asks for rescue from sin rather than from suffering, and make me not the reproach of the foolish asks that his affliction not become evidence for those who mock faith. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it returns to the silence of verse 2, now held not before the wicked but before God's own hand, the affliction accepted as his doing without argument.

Psalms 39:10-11

Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand keeps the affliction as God's own hand at work, the same claim as verse 9 turned into direct petition. Verse 11 states the principle behind it, when thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth, discipline pictured as the slow, quiet ruin moths cause rather than a single blow. Selah closes the verse, a term of uncertain meaning that recurs seventy-one times across the Psalter and three times in Habakkuk 3, read variously as a musical pause, a lifted voice, or an invitation to weigh what was just said.

Psalms 39:12-13

Hear my prayer, O Lord: Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears grounds the plea in a claim on identity, for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were, the patriarchal language of Genesis applied to the whole of Israel's life before God. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more ends the psalm without resolution, the same brief unanswered space of verse 5 now become the last word rather than a complaint answered. The commentators note that this psalm, unlike many laments, closes on the request itself rather than a turn to praise.