with my tongue,” unable any longer to keep in my pain. What now follows is not what was said by the poet when in this condition. On the contrary, he turns away from his purpose, which has been proved to be impracticable, to God Himself with the prayer that He would teach him calm submission.
Verses 4-6
Psa 39:4-6 (Hebrew_Bible_39:5-7) He prays God to set the transitoriness of earthly life clearly before his eyes (cf. Psa 90:12); for if life is only a few spans long, then even his suffering and the prosperity of the ungodly will last only a short time. Oh that God would then grant him to know his end (Job 6:11), i.e., the end of his life, which is at the same time the end of his affliction, and the measure of his days, how it is with this (מה, interrog. extenuantis, as in Psa 8:5), in order that he may become fully conscious of his own frailty! Hupfeld corrects the text to אני מה־חלד, after the analogy of Psa 89:48, because חדל cannot signify “frail.” But חדל signifies that which leaves off and ceases, and consequently in this connection, finite and transitory or frail. מה, quam, in connection with an adjective, as in Psa 8:2; Psa 31:20; Psa 36:8; Psa 66:3; Psa 133:1. By הן (the customary form of introducing the propositio minor, Lev 10:18; Lev 25:20) the preceding petition is supported. God has, indeed, made the days, i.e., the lifetime, of a man טפחות, handbreadths, i.e., He has allotted to it only the short extension of a few handbreadths (cf. ימים, a few days, e.g., Isa 65:20), of which nine make a yard (cf. πήχυιος χρόνος in Mimnermus, and 1Sa 20:3); the duration of human life (on חלד vid., Psa 17:14) is as a vanishing nothing before God the eternal One. The particle אך is originally affirmative, and starting from that sense becomes restrictive; just as רק is originally restrictive and then affirmative. Sometimes also, as is commonly the case with אכן, the affirmative signification passes over into the adversative (cf. verum, verum enim vero). In our passage, agreeably to the restrictive sense, it is to be explained thus: nothing but mere nothingness (cf. Psa 45:14; Jam 1:2) is every man נצּב, standing firmly, i.e., though he stand never so firmly, though he be never so stedfast (Zec 11:16). Here the music rises to tones of bitter lament, and the song continues in Psa 39:7 with the same theme. צלם, belonging to the same root as צל, signifies a shadow-outline, an image; the בּ is, as in Psa 35:2, Beth essentiae: he walks about consisting only of an unsubstantial shadow.
