Psalms 90:4-5

90:4 Yes, ¹  in your eyes a thousand years

are like yesterday that quickly passes,

or like one of the divisions of the nighttime. ² 

90:5 You bring their lives to an end and they “fall asleep.” ³ 

In the morning they are like the grass that sprouts up;

Psalms 90:9-10

90:9 Yes, ⁴  throughout all our days we experience your raging fury; ⁵ 

the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh. ⁶ 

90:10 The days of our lives add up to seventy years, ⁷ 

or eighty, if one is especially strong. ⁸ 

But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression. ⁹ 

Yes, ¹⁰  they pass quickly ¹¹  and we fly away. ¹² 

Genesis 47:9

47:9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “All ¹³  the years of my travels ¹⁴  are 130. All ¹⁵  the years of my life have been few and painful; ¹⁶  the years of my travels are not as long as those of my ancestors.” ¹⁷ 

Job 7:6

7:6 My days ¹⁸  are swifter ¹⁹  than a weaver’s shuttle ²⁰ 

and they come to an end without hope. ²¹ 

Job 9:25-26

Renewed Complaint

9:25 “My days ²²  are swifter than a runner, ²³ 

they speed by without seeing happiness.

9:26 They glide by ²⁴  like reed ²⁵  boats,

like an eagle that swoops ²⁶  down on its prey. ²⁷ 

Job 14:1-2

The Brevity of Life

14:1 “Man, born of woman, ²⁸ 

lives but a few days, ²⁹  and they are full of trouble. ³⁰ 

14:2 He grows up ³¹  like a flower and then withers away; ³² 

he flees like a shadow, and does not remain. ³³ 

James 4:14

4:14 You ³⁴  do not know about tomorrow. What is your life like? ³⁵  For you are a puff of smoke ³⁶  that appears for a short time and then vanishes.

[90:4]  ¹ tn Or “for.”

[90:4]  ² sn The divisions of the nighttime. The ancient Israelites divided the night into distinct periods, or “watches.”

[90:5]  ³ tn Heb “you bring them to an end [with] sleep.” The Hebrew verb זָרַם (zaram) has traditionally been taken to mean “flood” or “overwhelm” (note the Polel form of a root זרם in Ps 77:17, where the verb is used of the clouds pouring down rain). However, the verb form here is Qal, not Polel, and is better understood as a homonym meaning “to make an end [of life].” The term שֵׁנָה (shenah, “sleep”) can be taken as an adverbial accusative; it is a euphemism here for death (see Ps 76:5-6).

[90:9]  ⁴ tn Or “for.”

[90:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “all our days pass by in your anger.”

[90:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “we finish our years like a sigh.” In Ezek 2:10 the word הֶגֶה (hegeh) elsewhere refers to a grumbling or moaning sound. Here a brief sigh or moan is probably in view. If so, the simile pictures one’s lifetime as transient. Another option is that the simile alludes to the weakness that characteristically overtakes a person at the end of one’s lifetime. In this case the phrase could be translated, “we end our lives with a painful moan.”

[90:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “the days of our years, in them [are] seventy years.”

[90:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “or if [there is] strength, eighty years.”

[90:10]  ⁹ tn Heb “and their pride [is] destruction and wickedness.” The Hebrew noun רֹהַב (rohav) occurs only here. BDB 923 s.v. assigns the meaning “pride,” deriving the noun from the verbal root רהב (“to act stormily [boisterously, arrogantly]”). Here the “pride” of one’s days (see v. 9) probably refers to one’s most productive years in the prime of life. The words translated “destruction and wickedness” are also paired in Ps 10:7. They also appear in proximity in Pss 7:14 and 55:10. The oppressive and abusive actions of evil men are probably in view (see Job 4:8; 5:6; 15:35; Isa 10:1; 59:4).

[90:10]  ¹⁰ tn or “for.”

[90:10]  ¹¹ tn Heb “it passes quickly.” The subject of the verb is probably “their pride” (see the preceding line). The verb גּוּז (guz) means “to pass” here; it occurs only here and in Num 11:31.

[90:10]  ¹² sn We fly away. The psalmist compares life to a bird that quickly flies off (see Job 20:8).

[47:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “the days of.”

[47:9]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “sojournings.” Jacob uses a term that depicts him as one who has lived an unsettled life, temporarily residing in many different places.

[47:9]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the days of.”

[47:9]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew word רַע (ra’) can sometimes mean “evil,” but that would give the wrong connotation here, where it refers to pain, difficulty, and sorrow. Jacob is thinking back through all the troubles he had to endure to get to this point.

[47:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and they have not reached the days of the years of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.”

[7:6]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ 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]  ²¹ 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).

[9:25]  ²² tn The text has “and my days” following the thoughts in the previous section.

[9:25]  ²³ sn Job returns to the thought of the brevity of his life (7:6). But now the figure is the swift runner instead of the weaver’s shuttle.

[9:26]  ²⁴ tn Heb “they flee.”

[9:26]  ²⁵ tn The word אֵבֶה (’eveh) means “reed, papyrus,” but it is a different word than was in 8:11. What is in view here is a light boat made from bundles of papyrus that glides swiftly along the Nile (cf. Isa 18:2 where papyrus vessels and swiftness are associated).

[9:26]  ²⁶ tn The verb יָטוּשׂ (yatus) is also a hapax legomenon; the Aramaic cognate means “to soar; to hover in flight.” The sentence here requires the idea of swooping down while in flight.

[9:26]  ²⁷ tn Heb “food.”

[14:1]  ²⁸ tn The first of the threefold apposition for אָדָם (’adam, “man”) is “born of a woman.” The genitive (“woman”) after a passive participle denotes the agent of the action (see GKC 359 §116.l).

[14:1]  ²⁹ tn The second description is simply “[is] short of days.” The meaning here is that his life is short (“days” being put as the understatement for “years”).

[14:1]  ³⁰ tn The third expression is “consumed/full/sated – with/of – trouble/restlessness.” The latter word, רֹגֶז (rogez), occurred in Job 3:17; see also the idea in 10:15.

[14:2]  ³¹ tn Heb יָצָא (yatsa’, “comes forth”). The perfect verb expresses characteristic action and so is translated by the present tense (see GKC 329 §111.s).

[14:2]  ³² tn The verb וַיִּמָּל (vayyimmal) is from the root מָלַל (malal, “to languish; to wither”) and not from a different root מָלַל (malal, “to cut off”).

[14:2]  ³³ tn The verb is “and he does not stand.” Here the verb means “to stay fixed; to abide.” The shadow does not stay fixed, but continues to advance toward darkness.

[4:14]  ³⁴ tn Grk “who” (continuing the description of the people of v. 13). Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[4:14]  ³⁵ tn Or “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”

[4:14]  ³⁶ tn Or “a vapor.” The Greek word ἀτμίς (atmis) denotes a swirl of smoke arising from a fire (cf. Gen 19:28; Lev 16:13; Joel 2:30 [Acts 2:19]; Ezek 8:11).