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 139:16

139:16 Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb. ⁶ 

All the days ordained for me

were recorded in your scroll

before one of them came into existence. ⁷ 

[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.”

[139:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “Your eyes saw my shapeless form.” The Hebrew noun גֹּלֶם (golem) occurs only here in the OT. In later Hebrew the word refers to “a lump, a shapeless or lifeless substance,” and to “unfinished matter, a vessel wanting finishing” (Jastrow 222 s.v. גּוֹלֶם). The translation employs the dynamic rendering “when I was inside the womb” to clarify that the speaker was still in his mother’s womb at the time he was “seen” by God.

[139:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “and on your scroll all of them were written, [the] days [which] were formed, and [there was] not one among them.” This “scroll” may be the “scroll of life” mentioned in Ps 69:28 (see the note on the word “living” there).