BibleInTonguesWEB
Psalms 39
The poet tries to muzzle himself. Determined not to sin with his tongue while the wicked watch, he clamps his mouth shut (v.1-2), but the silence only stokes the heat inside until it bursts out as a question about how short life is. The answer is bleak: days measured in hand widths, every person 'a breath', wealth eaten away like cloth by a moth (v.11). Watch the repeated Selah pauses framing that hard arithmetic of mortality.
- 1
I said, “I will watch my ways, so that I don’t sin with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me.”
- 2
I was mute with silence. I held my peace, even from good. My sorrow was stirred.
- 3
My heart was hot within me. While I meditated, the fire burned. I spoke with my tongue:
- 4
“LORD, show me my end, what is the measure of my days. Let me know how frail I am.
- 5
Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath.” Selah.
- 6
“Surely every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn’t know who shall gather.
- 7
Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you.
- 8
Deliver me from all my transgressions. Don’t make me the reproach of the foolish.
- 9
I was mute. I didn’t open my mouth, because you did it.
- 10
Remove your scourge away from me. I am overcome by the blow of your hand.
- 11
When you rebuke and correct man for iniquity, you consume his wealth like a moth. Surely every man is but a breath.” Selah.
- 12
“Hear my prayer, LORD, and give ear to my cry. Don’t be silent at my tears. For I am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers were.
- 13
Oh spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go away and exist no more.”
From held tongue to fragile prayer
What begins as disciplined silence becomes the opposite: once he speaks, he can't stop asking God to show him his 'end' and measure his frailty. The restraint was never peace; it was pressure.
He calls himself 'a stranger' and 'a foreigner' before God (v.12), like all his ancestors, and asks only for a little relief before he is gone. After Psalm 38's illness, this is the wider thought beneath it: what is any human life worth measuring at all?
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