Today’s Passage: Psalm 39
David begins this psalm with a resolution. He will watch his ways and hold his tongue, keeping still so that no bitter word slips out while the wicked are near. But the silence gives him no peace; it only stirs his sorrow, until his heart grows hot within him and the fire burns, and at last he has to speak. And when he speaks, it is not the complaint he had been swallowing. It is a prayer about how short a life really is: show me, O LORD, my end, and let me know how fleeting my days are. He looks honestly at what a man amounts to, a breath here and gone, and instead of despairing he turns and sets his hope on the only One who lasts. And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.
As you read, hold this: My days are a breath. My hope is in You.
Context For Jeduthun
The heading names a real man. Jeduthun was one of the three chief musicians David appointed over Israel’s worship (1 Chronicles 25:1), a leader set over a real choir of real singers. That line at the top is not a note that someone added later; it is part of the psalm itself, Scripture handed down to us together with the words that follow.
Psalm 39:1-3 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. For Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.
¹ I said, “I will watch my ways so that I will not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle as long as the wicked are present.” ² I was speechless and still; I remained silent, even from speaking good, and my sorrow was stirred. ³ My heart grew hot within me; as I mused, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue:
Notice how hard he tries to keep quiet. He puts a muzzle on his mouth and holds back even the good he might have said, and all that swallowed sorrow only stirs him up the more. His heart grows hot within him, the fire burns, and at last the words break out of him. There are some griefs that will not stay silent forever.
Psalm 39:4-6 (BSB)
⁴ “Show me, O LORD, my end and the measure of my days. Let me know how fleeting my life is. ⁵ You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. Selah ⁶ Surely every man goes about like a phantom; surely he bustles in vain; he heaps up riches not knowing who will haul them away.
What he asks for is unusual. Most of us would rather not know how short our days are, yet David asks the LORD to show him plainly. And the answer is a humbling one. Our whole lifetime is no wider than a hand held up against the sky, and at our very best we are only a hevel, pronounced HEH-vel. Strong's H1892, vapor, breath, fleeting, insubstantial. It means a vapor, the little cloud of breath you can see on a cold morning that is gone almost before you have noticed it.
Ecclesiastes would later take this same word and make it the refrain of a whole book, and here the psalm uses it twice over. Life, even life at its very finest, does not stay. It rises for a moment, and then it is gone.. A man hurries about and piles up his riches, and he cannot even say who will carry them all off once he is gone. It is an honest look at how little we really keep.
Psalm 39:7-9 (BSB)
⁷ And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You. ⁸ Deliver me from all my transgressions; do not make me the reproach of fools. ⁹ I have become mute; I do not open my mouth because of what You have done.
Having faced all of that, David asks himself the only question that is left to ask: for what, then, do I wait? And his answer is settled. His hope is in the Lord, and nowhere else. He asks to be delivered from his sins and spared the scorn of fools, and then he falls silent once more, this time not out of stubbornness but out of reverence for what God has done. The hope and the silence rest together in the same prayer.
Study notes The same word, a whole book's refrain
"“Futility of futilities,” says the Teacher, “futility of futilities! Everything is futile!”" Ecclesiastes 1:2 (BSB)
The word the Teacher repeats there, rendered futility, is the very same breath our psalm keeps returning to. Both writers are honest about one hard fact: human life, however busy and full, does not last. But David does not leave us standing at that bare fact and call it wisdom. He takes one step further, and it is the step that changes everything: my hope is in You.
Psalm 39:10-13 (BSB)
¹⁰ Remove Your scourge from me; I am perishing by the force of Your hand. ¹¹ You discipline and correct a man for his iniquity, consuming like a moth what he holds dear; surely each man is but a vapor. Selah ¹² Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry for help; do not be deaf to my weeping. For I am a foreigner dwelling with You, a stranger like all my fathers. ¹³ Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may again be cheered before I depart and am no more.”
He feels the weight of God’s hand upon him and knows himself, once again, to be only a vapor. He calls himself a foreigner and a stranger passing through, the way all his fathers passed through before him. Then he makes a startling request: turn Your gaze away from me, that I might know a little gladness again before I depart and am no more. We should not smooth that ending into something softer than it is. The hope was already spoken back in verse seven, and the honest ache of departing is spoken here, and both of them belong to the psalm. A believer can carry his hope and his grief in the same breath and still be telling the whole truth.
My days are a breath. My hope is in You.