“Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again before I depart and am no more.” Psalm 39:13 NASB Away from– The end of David’s autobiographical, public revelation is just as counter-intuitive as the beginning. Having reached the point of a desperate cry for mercy, and an identification with YHVH estranged from creation, we expect David to…
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not be silent at my tears; for I am a stranger with You, a sojourner like all my fathers.” Psalm 39:12 NASB Stranger with You– David’s short autobiography is coming to an end. It is coming to the only end possible: a cry for mercy. “Hear my…
“With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity; You consume as a moth what is precious to him; surely every man is a mere breath.” Selah. Psalm 39:11 NASB Precious– By now we should have noticed that David’s vocabulary pushes us back into the history of Israel. From allusions to Moses, we returned to Egypt. From Egypt we made our…
“With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity; You consume as a moth what is precious to him; surely every man is a mere breath.” Selah. Psalm 39:11 NASB Reproofs– The apostolic letters don’t stray far from roots in the Tanakh. We should not be surprised. The letters are commentary on the Bible of the apostles, the Tanakh. So…
“Remove Your plague from me; because of the opposition of Your hand I am perishing.” Psalm 39:10 NASB Am perishing– There’s a lot of important vocabulary here. There are also a lot of “connect-the-dots” clues. Let’s start with “remove.” The verb is sur, here in the imperative, ha-ser. In other words, David doesn’t ask. He demands. “YHVH,…
“I have become mute, I do not open my mouth, because it is You who have done it.” Psalm 39:9 NASB Become mute– Where have we heard this before? Oh, yes, verse 2. The same verb, the same tense. Bound. Tied up. But between verse 2 and verse 9, David has really said quite a bit. He has revealed…
“Deliver me from all my transgressions; make me not the reproach of the foolish.” Psalm 39:8 NASB Reproach – David’s song reaches a crescendo. It starts with silence, then proceeds to murmur, explodes in what appears to be judgment, but swiftly turns into an indictment of humanity and a personal disclosure. The audience is kept off guard, reeling…
“And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.” Psalm 39:7 NASB For what – Remember the punctuation. Hebrew doesn’t have any. So the phrase, ma(h)-q-qiwwiti, could be a question or it could be a statement, like, “I wait for.” Or it could be, “Now, Lord, what. I wait.” The verb is qāwâ,…
“Surely every man walks about as a phantom; surely they make an uproar for nothing; he amasses riches and does not know who will gather them.” Psalm 39:6 NASB Phantom– Perhaps we should credit David as the original author of “The Walking Dead.” Certainly he paints that picture. Men are but wisps of wind in the eternal night. Their lives amount…
“Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; surely every man at his best is a mere breath.” Selah. Psalm 39:5 NASB Ecclesiastes is a thorough examination of life from inside the box. The result: get it while you can! Most scholars believe that the epilogue, those last few verses that attempt to redeem the…
