Psalms

Chapter 39

I Will Watch My Ways

This psalm begins with David restraining his speech so that he will not sin while the wicked watch, but his silence only intensifies the fire within him until he turns to prayer. He asks the LORD to teach him the brevity and frailty of human life, confesses that his only hope is in God, interprets his suffering as divine discipline, and ends by pleading for forgiveness and a merciful easing of God's gaze before his life passes away.

Psalm 39 is a meditation on mortality spoken from within chastening. It joins wisdom about human vapor-like existence with penitence and dependence, teaching that the right answer to life's brevity is neither cynicism nor self-importance, but waiting on the Lord whose forgiveness alone makes a fleeting life bearable.

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Psalms 39

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vv. 1-13

I Will Watch My Ways

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F¹or the choirmaster. For Jeduthun. A Psalm of David. ²I was speechless and still; ³My heart grew hot within me;

⁴“Show me, O LORD, my end ⁵You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, ⁶Surely every man goes about like a phantom;

⁷And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? ⁸Deliver me from all my transgressions; ⁹I have become mute; ¹⁰Remove Your scourge from me; ¹¹You discipline and correct a man for his iniquity,

¹²Hear my prayer, O LORD, ¹³Turn Your gaze away from me,

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01vv. 1-13I Will Watch My WaysDavid begins by resolving to guard his speech in the presence of the wicked, yet the pressure of inward grief forces him into prayer. He asks the LORD to show him how brief and insubstantial human life is, confesses that his hope is in God alone, pleads to be delivered from his transgressions and from the reproach of fools, and closes by asking the Lord to hear him and lift the scourge of discipline so that he may recover strength before he is gone.