Psalm 39:13-14

New Catholic Bible

¹³^[a]“Hear my prayer, O Lord;
    do not be deaf to my cry
    or ignore my weeping.
For I am a wayfarer^[b] before you,
    a nomad like all my ancestors.
¹⁴Turn your eyes away so that I may be glad
    before I depart and am no more.”^[c]

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Footnotes

Psalm 39:13 The psalmist—a sinner and overcome with adversity—feels like a stranger in God’s presence and in his world. Still, he has no doubts about belonging to the covenant community. So he begs the Lord to remove his judgment from him so that the psalmist may know joy once again.
Psalm 39:13 Wayfarer: that is, one who is only a temporary sojourner on earth (see Lev 25:23: “The land belongs to me and you are my aliens and tenants”; see also Ps 119:19; 1 Pet 2:11).
Psalm 39:14 Am no more: in the time of the psalmist there apparently was no idea of any resurrection, even a mitigated one in the netherworld (see note on Ps 6:6).