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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 39:4 - 39:4
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(Heb.: 39:5-7) He prays God to set the transitoriness of earthly life clearly before his eyes (cf. Psa 90:12); for if life is only a few spans long, then even his suffering and the prosperity of the ungodly will last only a short time. Oh that God would then grant him to know his end (Job 6:11), i.e., the end of his life, which is at the same time the end of his affliction, and the measure of his days, how it is with this (מָה, interrog. extenuantis, as in Psa 8:5), in order that he may become fully conscious of his own frailty! Hupfeld corrects the text to אָנִי מַה־חֶלֶד, after the analogy of Psa 89:48, because חָדֵל cannot signify “frail.” But חָדֵל signifies that which leaves off and ceases, and consequently in this connection, finite and transitory or frail. מה, quam, in connection with an adjective, as in Psa 8:2; Psa 31:20; Psa 36:8; Psa 66:3; Psa 133:1. By הֵן (the customary form of introducing the propositio minor, Lev 10:18; Lev 25:20) the preceding petition is supported. God has, indeed, made the days, i.e., the lifetime, of a man טְפָחֹות, handbreadths, i.e., He has allotted to it only the short extension of a few handbreadths (cf. יָמִים, a few days, e.g., Isa 65:20), of which nine make a yard (cf. πήχυιος χρόνος in Mimnermus, and 1Sa 20:3); the duration of human life (on חֶלֶד vid., Psa 17:14) is as a vanishing nothing before God the eternal One. The particle אַךְ is originally affirmative, and starting from that sense becomes restrictive; just as רַק is originally restrictive and then affirmative. Sometimes also, as is commonly the case with אָכֵן, the affirmative signification passes over into the adversative (cf. verum, verum enim vero). In our passage, agreeably to the restrictive sense, it is to be explained thus: nothing but mere nothingness (cf. Psa 45:14; Jam 1:2) is every man נִצָּב, standing firmly, i.e., though he stand never so firmly, though he be never so stedfast (Zec 11:16). Here the music rises to tones of bitter lament, and the song continues in Psa 39:7 with the same theme. צֶלֶם, belonging to the same root as צֵל, signifies a shadow-outline, an image; the בְּ is, as in Psa 35:2, Beth essentiae: he walks about consisting only of an unsubstantial shadow. Only הֶבֶל, breath-like, or after the manner of breath (Psa 144:4), from empty, vain motives and with vain results, do they make a disturbance (pausal fut. energicum, as in Psa 36:8); and he who restlessly and noisily exerts himself knows not who will suddenly snatch together, i.e., take altogether greedily to himself, the many things that he heaps up (צָבַר, as in Job 27:16); cf. Isa 33:4, and on - ām = αὐτά, Lev 15:10 (in connection with which אלה הדברים, cf. Isa 42:16, is in the mind of the speaker).