Psalms 39 YLT
Summary: A meditation on mortality and restrained speech, Psalm 39 opens with the psalmist resolving to guard his tongue in the presence of the wicked, a silence that becomes unbearable until he finally speaks (v. 1-3). His plea is strikingly existential: "let me know my end... let me know how fleeting my life is" (v. 4), comparing a lifetime to "a few handbreadths" (v. 5). It closes asking God to look away so he might "smile again, before I depart and am no more" (v. 13), one of the Psalter's starkest confrontations with human transience.
1To the Overseer, to Jeduthun. --A Psalm of David. I have said, `I observe my ways, Against sinning with my tongue, I keep for my mouth a curb, while the wicked is before me.'
2I was dumb with silence, I kept silent from good, and my pain is excited.
3Hot is my heart within me, In my meditating doth the fire burn, I have spoken with my tongue.
4`Cause me to know, O Jehovah, mine end, And the measure of my days--what it is,' I know how frail I am.
5Lo, handbreadths Thou hast made my days, And mine age is as nothing before Thee, Only, all vanity is every man set up. Selah.
6Only, in an image doth each walk habitually, Only, in vain, they are disquieted, He heapeth up and knoweth not who gathereth them.
7And, now, what have I expected? O Lord, my hope--it is of Thee.
8From all my transgressions deliver me, A reproach of the fool make me not.
9I have been dumb, I open not my mouth, Because Thou--Thou hast done it.
10Turn aside from off me Thy stroke, From the striving of Thy hand I have been consumed.
11With reproofs against iniquity, Thou hast corrected man, And dost waste as a moth his desirableness, Only, vanity is every man. Selah.
12Hear my prayer, O Jehovah, And to my cry give ear, Unto my tear be not silent, For a sojourner I am with Thee, A settler like all my fathers.
13Look from me, and I brighten up before I go and am not!
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