Psalm 39 - The number of my days

Read: Psalm 39 vs 1-13

David was a king and kings have lots of things to think about and lots of things to organise and sort out. David had a God centred vision of how he went about his work and how he sought to organise Israel’s national life. In 1 Chronicles 16 we learn that one of David’s governing priorities was to ensure that Israel had a national life that was centred on worship of God. In 1 Chronicles 16 vs 41-42 we read that one of the people David appointed to lead the nation in ‘giving thanks to the LORD’ was Jeduthun.

I find that kind of background helpful when it comes to reading Psalm 39, a Psalm written by David, for Jeduthun. A regular pattern of worship and thanksgiving was at the core of who David was as an individual and who he sought to be as a leader. This Psalm begins with a quiet and anxious David (vs 1-3). In vs 4 he asks that God would show him his ‘life’s end’ and ‘the number of his days’. David looks around him and he is gripped by an awareness of the brevity of life. 

My grandfather worked as an undertaker. For over 60 years he worked day and daily around death. The story is told of how at times he quoted a line from an old hymn ‘Life at best is very brief / Like the falling of a leaf’. This awareness hits David in Psalm 39 

David realises that he, like all his ancestors, lives as ‘a foreigner’, a ‘stranger’, someone passing through this life. Really feeling this, really ‘getting this’ is not any easy thing to come to terms with. We don’t skip on from a truth like this. The final line of this Psalm (asking God to ‘look away’) isn’t what you expect to find on the lips of a believer. Yet in the big picture there is room for these kind of emotions (Job 7:19), this kind of wrestling, as we honestly deal with God. In Hebrew poetry the focus of a piece often comes in the middle. Surrounded by all kinds of thought and struggles David, at the centre (vs 7) holds on to these words: ‘My hope is in you.’

Prayer: Lord life at best is very brief. Help me today to place my hope in you and to life each day humbly looking to you.