Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Measure of My Days
Psalms 39:1-13
1 For the Chief Musician. For Jeduthun. A Psalm by David. 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.” · WEB
A man determined to say nothing finally speaks, and what comes out is a request to be shown how short his life is.
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" Psalms 39:1.
The resolution is made for a specific reason: there is an audience. He will not complain in front of people who would use it, which is a discipline the previous psalm also practiced.
I was mute with silence. I held my peace, even from good. My sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me. While I meditated, the fire burned Psalms 39:2–3.
The silence does not work. He stopped saying even the things worth saying, and the suppression made the pressure worse rather than less — a fire banked rather than extinguished. Then it breaks.
Yahweh, show me my end, what is the measure of my days. Let me know how frail I am Psalms 39:4.
After all that restraint, this is what comes out. Not a complaint about his enemies and not a request for relief, but a request to be shown the length of his own life. It is a strange thing to want and the psalm treats it as the honest question underneath everything else.
Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath Psalms 39:5.
A hand's width is the smallest unit a person carries with them. And the word rendered breath is the word that dominates Ecclesiastes — vapor, the thing that is there and then is not.
Surely every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn't know who shall gather Psalms 39:6.
The observation is not that accumulating is wrong but that it is done in ignorance of who will end up with it, which is precisely the point of the parable about the man who built bigger barns Luke 12:20.
Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you Psalms 39:7.
The turn, and it is the shortest in the collection. Having established that everything is a breath, the question of what is left is asked and answered in nine words.
I was mute. I didn't open my mouth, because you did it Psalms 39:9.
A second silence, and it is nothing like the first. The earlier one was a policy adopted in front of enemies and it produced a fire. This one is the quiet of a man who has worked out where the trouble came from and has stopped arguing about it.
For I am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers were Psalms 39:12.
The psalm ends unresolved, asking for a little relief before the end, and the letter to the Hebrews takes up this self-description as the settled position of everyone in the book's long list of the faithful Hebrews 11:13.
settled What this mark means