Psalms 39:4-5

39:4 “O Lord, help me understand my mortality

and the brevity of life! ¹ 

Let me realize how quickly my life will pass! ² 

39:5 Look, you make my days short-lived, ³ 

and my life span is nothing from your perspective. ⁴ 

Surely all people, even those who seem secure, are nothing but vapor. ⁵ 

Psalms 89:47-48

89:47 Take note of my brief lifespan! ⁶ 

Why do you make all people so mortal? ⁷ 

89:48 No man can live on without experiencing death,

or deliver his life from the power of Sheol. ⁸  (Selah)

Psalms 90:12

90:12 So teach us to consider our mortality, ⁹ 

so that we might live wisely. ¹⁰ 

Job 7:6-8

7:6 My days ¹¹  are swifter ¹²  than a weaver’s shuttle ¹³ 

and they come to an end without hope. ¹⁴ 

7:7 Remember ¹⁵  that my life is but a breath,

that ¹⁶  my eyes will never again ¹⁷  see happiness.

7:8 The eye of him who sees me now will see me no more; ¹⁸ 

your eyes will look for me, but I will be gone. ¹⁹ 

[39:4]  ¹ tn Heb “Cause me to know, O Lord, my end; and the measure of my days, what it is!”

[39:4]  ² tn Heb “Let me know how transient I am!”

[39:5]  ³ tn Heb “Look, handbreadths you make my days.” The “handbreadth” (equivalent to the width of four fingers) was one of the smallest measures used by ancient Israelites. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 309.

[39:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “is like nothing before you.”

[39:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “surely, all vapor [is] all mankind, standing firm.” Another option is to translate, “Surely, all mankind, though seemingly secure, is nothing but a vapor.”

[89:47]  ⁶ tn Heb “remember me, what is [my] lifespan.” The Hebrew term חֶלֶד (kheled) is also used of one’s lifespan in Ps 39:5. Because the Hebrew text is so awkward here, some prefer to emend it to read מֶה חָדֵל אָנִי (meh khadel ’aniy, “[remember] how transient [that is, “short-lived”] I am”; see Ps 39:4).

[89:47]  ⁷ tn Heb “For what emptiness do you create all the sons of mankind?” In this context the term שָׁוְא (shavah) refers to mankind’s mortal nature and the brevity of life (see vv. 45, 48).

[89:48]  ⁸ tn Heb “Who [is] the man [who] can live and not see death, [who] can deliver his life from the hand of Sheol?” The rhetorical question anticipates the answer, “No one!”

[90:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “to number our days,” that is, to be aware of how few they really are.

[90:12]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and we will bring a heart of wisdom.” After the imperative of the preceding line, the prefixed verbal form with the conjunction indicates purpose/result. The Hebrew term “heart” here refers to the center of one’s thoughts, volition, and moral character.

[7:6]  ¹¹ sn The first five verses described the painfulness of his malady, his life; now, in vv. 6-10 he will focus on the brevity of his life, and its extinction with death. He introduces the subject with “my days,” a metonymy for his whole life and everything done on those days. He does not mean individual days – they drag on endlessly.

[7:6]  ¹² tn The verb קָלַל (qalal) means “to be light” (40:4), and then by extension “to be swift; to be rapid” (Jer 4:13; Hab 1:8).

[7:6]  ¹³ sn The shuttle is the part which runs through the meshes of the web. In Judg 16:14 it is a loom (see BDB 71 s.v. אֶרֶג), but here it must be the shuttle. Hezekiah uses the imagery of the weaver, the loom, and the shuttle for the brevity of life (see Isa 38:12). The LXX used, “My life is lighter than a word.”

[7:6]  ¹⁴ tn The text includes a wonderful wordplay on this word. The noun is תִּקְוָה (tiqvah, “hope”). But it can also have the meaning of one of its cognate nouns, קַו (qav, “thread, cord,” as in Josh 2:18,21). He is saying that his life is coming to an end for lack of thread/for lack of hope (see further E. Dhorme, Job, 101).

[7:7]  ¹⁵ sn Job is probably turning here to God, as is clear from v. 11 on. The NIV supplies the word “God” for clarification. It was God who breathed breath into man’s nostrils (Gen 2:7), and so God is called to remember that man is but a breath.

[7:7]  ¹⁶ tn The word “that” is supplied in the translation.

[7:7]  ¹⁷ tn The verb with the infinitive serves as a verbal hendiadys: “return to see” means “see again.”

[7:8]  ¹⁸ sn The meaning of the verse is that God will relent, but it will be too late. God now sees him with a hostile eye; when he looks for him, or looks upon him in friendliness, it will be too late.

[7:8]  ¹⁹ tn This verse is omitted in the LXX and so by several commentators. But the verb שׁוּר (shur, “turn, return”) is so characteristic of Job (10 times) that the verse seems appropriate here.