pray that God would suffer mercy to take the place of right. נגעך is the name he gives to his affliction, as in Psa 38:12, as being a stroke (blow) of divine wrath; תּגרת ידך, as a quarrel into which God's hand has fallen with him; and by אני, with the almighty (punishing) hand of God, he contrasts himself the feeble one, to whom, if the present state of things continues, ruin is certain. In Psa 39:12 he puts his own personal experience into the form of a general maxim: when with rebukes (תּוכחות from תּוכחת, collateral form with תּוכחה, תּוכחות) Thou chastenest a man on account of iniquity (perf. conditionale), Thou makest his pleasantness (Isa 53:3), i.e., his bodily beauty (Job 33:21), to melt away, moulder away (ותּמס, fut. apoc. from המסה to cause to melt, Psa 6:7), like the moth (Hos 5:12), so that it falls away, as a moth-eaten garment falls into rags. Thus do all men become mere nothing. They are sinful and perishing. The thought expressed in Psa 39:6 is here repeated as a refrain. The music again strikes in here, as there.
Verses 12-13
Psa 39:12-13 (Hebrew_Bible_39:13-14) Finally, the poet renews the prayer for an alleviation of his sufferings, basing it upon the shortness of the earthly pilgrimage. The urgent שׁמעה is here fuller toned, being שׁמעה.[1]
Side by side with the language of prayer, tears even appear here as prayer that is intelligible to God; for when the gates of prayer seem to be closed, the gates of tears still remain unclosed (שׁערי דמעות לא ננעלו), B. Berachoth 32b. As a reason for his being heard, David appeals to the instability and finite character of this earthly life in language which we also hear from his own lips in 1Ch 29:15. גּר is the stranger who travels about and sojourns as a guest in a country that is not his native land; תּושׁב is a sojourner, or one enjoying the protection of the laws, who, without possessing any hereditary title, has settled down there, and to whom a settlement is allotted by sufferance. The earth is God's; that which may be said of the Holy Land (Lev 25:23) may be said of the
- ↑ So Heidenheim and Baer, following Abulwalîd, Efodi, and Mose ha-Nakdan. The Masoretic observation לית קמץ חטף, “only here with Kametzchateph,” is found appended in codices. This Chatephkametz is euphonic, as in לקחה, Gen 2:23, and in many other instances that are obliterated in our editions, vid., Abulwalîd, חרקמה ס, p. 198, where even מטּהרו = מטּהרו, Psa 89:45, is cited among these examples (Ges. §10, 2 rem.).
