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Psalm 39

Prayer for Wisdom and Forgiveness

To the leader: to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.

I said, “I will guard my ways

that I may not sin with my tongue;

I will keep a muzzle on my mouth

as long as the wicked are in my presence.”

I was silent and still;

I held my peace to no avail;

my distress grew worse,

my heart became hot within me.

While I mused, the fire burned;

then I spoke with my tongue:

“L ord, let me know my end,

and what is the measure of my days;

let me know how fleeting my life is.

You have made my days a few handbreadths,

and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight.

Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. Selah

Surely everyone goes about like a shadow.

Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;

they heap up, and do not know who will gather.

“And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?

My hope is in you.

Deliver me from all my transgressions.

Do not make me the scorn of the fool.

I am silent; I do not open my mouth,

for it is you who have done it.

Remove your stroke from me;

I am worn down by the blows of your hand.

“You chastise mortals

in punishment for sin,

consuming like a moth what is dear to them;

surely everyone is a mere breath. Selah

“Hear my prayer, O L ord,

and give ear to my cry;

do not hold your peace at my tears.

For I am your passing guest,

an alien, like all my forebears.

Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again,

before I depart and am no more.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

12 Hear my prayer, O Jehovah! David gradually increases his vehemence in prayer. He speaks first of prayer; in the second place, of crying; and in the third place, of tears This gradation is not a mere figure of rhetoric, which serves only to adorn the style, or to express the same thing in different language. This shows that David bewailed his condition sincerely, and from the bottom of his heart; and in this he has given us, by his own example, a rule for prayer. When he calls himself a stranger and a sojourner, he again shows how miserable his condition was; and he adds expressly, before God, not only because men are absent from God so long as they dwell in this world, but in the same sense in which he formerly said, My days are before thee as nothing; that is to say, God, without standing in need of any one to inform him, knows well enough that men have only a short journey to perform in this world, the end of which is soon reached, or that they remain only a short time in it, as those who are lodged in a house for pay. ⁷⁸⁷⁸ “Comme des gens qui sont logez en une maison par emprunt.” — Fr. The purport of the Psalmist’s discourse is, that God sees from heaven how miserable our condition would be, if he did not sustain us by his mercy.

⁷⁸ “Comme des gens qui sont logez en une maison par emprunt.” — Fr.