As I read this Psalm it was like déja vu all over again! The themes and the applications sounded so familiar to me:
- David’s righteous anger at the wicked in his presence (v 1). He wanted to say something but refrained but he got hotter and hotter in his heart (v 2). Presumably justice was not being applied to them (v 3).
- Finally he had to speak and he directs his words to the Lord. He focuses on the shortness of his life. His life - and all mankind’s is but a breath. (v 4-5, 11)
- Man is in turmoil for nothing and heaps up wealth but doesn’t know who will get it after him (v 6)
This was the point where I remembered the place where all these messages are contained - in Ecclesiastes, which we looked at so recently! So I checked the Hebrew word translated “breath” and “nothing” (in bold above). Sure enough, it is the same word translated “vanity” In Ecclesiastes 1:2 and throughout the book! Everything is a vapor, a breath, said Solomon there, in effect. It is insubstantial and momentary. Hence, from Solomon’s “under the sun” perspective in that book, it is essentially meaningless.
I was fascinated that David should express such similar ideas in such similar language in Ps 39 but it makes it clear where some of the seeds for Solomon’s book came from! I have noticed other places before where Solomon quotes David - for example in Psalm 72:5-6, where the similarity with some of David’s last words in 2 Samuel 23:4 is striking. But this seems to be another instance. In passing, those of us who are parents should be encouraged to keep instructing our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, because clearly David’s teaching found a resting place in Solomon’s heart!
This is all very interesting, but what shall we learn from this Psalm that is different than we have seen in Ecclesiastes?
David asks that he might know how fleeting his life is (v 4). He is talking here about its shortness, not its vanity. He asks basically the same question in Psalm 90:12. Why is that an important question to ask?
One of the tricks of our enemy is to convince us that we are never going to die. Once we have that belief (even subconsciously) we begin to live differently. We put off getting right with God, or maintaining a close walk with Him. “There’ll be time enough for that later on,” we say to ourselves. We allow ourselves to enjoy the world too much and to spend too much time with its attractions, because our hearts are here and we don’t believe that will change any time soon. The world is intoxicating, and the message that we will be here forever is very persuasive and we fall under its spell and drift through our lives.
Thankfully, God is merciful! He will send things into our lives to make us realize that we won’t carry on like this indefinitely. Change is coming. We will transition out of this life and into the next. We need to live now in the light of that truth.
It’s clear that David was being disciplined by the Lord at the time he wrote this Psalm (v 10-11). He had come to see the shortness of his own life, the vanity of the world and the sinfulness of his actions more clearly. He finally seems to have asked himself “What am I waiting for?”(v 7) And so he prayed for deliverance from his sins (v 8 - we all need to do this). It leads me to think that David’s transgression was somehow bound up with his keeping silent in the earlier part of the Psalm when he should perhaps have been praying to God (which he finally does in v 4) and speaking to expose the deeds of the wicked (which he didn’t want to do in v 1-2).
So God jolted David out of his complacency with a trial that was clearly painful. The Lord took some things away from David that were precious to him, and in his grief he wept (v 11-12).
Hebrews 12:11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Can we apply this to ourselves in relation to the current time? Certainly the coronavirus is a jolt to our system, and a terribly painful one for some. Certainly it is causing us to realize that we are frail creatures who are subject to death, and that there is something after this life that we need to be prepared for (are you right with God?) Maybe we have been too much in love with the world and God is using this time to wean us away from it and back to Him. Possibly, He is challenging us to be doing something for Him that we have been reluctant to do until now, and that we have been pushing off into the dim and distant future. Whatever it is, may the Lord help us all to learn what He wants to teach us through this time. May we all come through it closer to Him, more useful to Him, and with a clearer understanding that we don’t belong in this world if we are His children - our citizenship is in heaven and we’re just passing through!
