Psalm 39:1-6

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Psalm 39:1 sn Psalm 39. The psalmist laments his frailty and mortality as he begs the Lord to take pity on him and remove his disciplinary hand.
2. Psalm 39:1 tn Heb “I said.”
3. Psalm 39:1 tn Heb “I will watch my ways, from sinning with my tongue.”
4. Psalm 39:1 sn The psalmist wanted to voice a lament to the Lord (see vv. 4-6), but he hesitated to do so in the presence of evil people, for such words might be sinful if they gave the wicked an occasion to insult God. See C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms (ICC), 1:345.
5. Psalm 39:2 tn Heb “I was mute [with] silence.”
6. Psalm 39:2 tn Heb “I was quiet from good.” He kept quiet, resisting the urge to find emotional release and satisfaction by voicing his lament.sn I held back the urge to speak. For a helpful discussion of the relationship (and tension) between silence and complaint in ancient Israelite lamentation, see E. S. Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part I (FOTL), 166-67.
7. Psalm 39:2 tn Heb “and my pain was stirred up.” Emotional pain is in view here.
8. Psalm 39:3 tn Heb “my heart was hot within me.”
9. Psalm 39:3 tn Heb “In my reflection fire burned.” The prefixed verbal form is either a preterite (past tense) or an imperfect being used in a past progressive or customary sense (“fire was burning”).
10. Psalm 39:3 tn Heb “I spoke with my tongue.” The phrase “these words” is supplied in the translation for clarification and for stylistic reasons.
11. Psalm 39:4 tn Heb “Cause me to know, O Lord, my end; and the measure of my days, what it is!”
12. Psalm 39:4 tn Heb “Let me know how transient I am.”
13. Psalm 39:5 tn Heb “Look, handbreadths you make my days.” The “handbreadth” (equivalent to the width of four fingers) was one of the smallest measures used by ancient Israelites. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 309.
14. Psalm 39:5 tn Heb “is like nothing before you.”
15. Psalm 39:5 tn Heb “surely, all vapor [is] all mankind, standing firm.” Another option is to translate, “Surely, all mankind, though seemingly secure, is nothing but a vapor.”
16. Psalm 39:6 tn Heb “surely, as an image man walks about.” The preposition prefixed to “image” indicates identity here.sn People go through life (Heb “man walks about”). “Walking” is here used as a metaphor for living. The point is that human beings are here today, gone tomorrow. They have no lasting substance and are comparable to mere images or ghosts.
17. Psalm 39:6 tc Heb “Surely [in] vain they strive, he accumulates and does not know who gathers them.” The MT as it stands is syntactically awkward. The verb forms switch from singular (“walks about”) to plural (“they strive”) and then back to singular (“accumulates and does not know”), even though the subject (generic “man”) remains the same. Furthermore there is no object for the verb “accumulates” and no plural antecedent for the plural pronoun (“them”) attached to “gathers.” These problems can be removed if one emends the text from הֶבֶל יֶהֱמָיוּן (hevel yehemayun, “[in] vain they strive”) to הֶבְלֵי הָמוֹן (hevle hamon, “vain things of wealth”). The present translation follows this emendation.