Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 39:6
Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up [riches], and knoweth not who shall gather them.
6. Only as a phantom doth each walk to and fro:
Only for vanity do they turmoil:
One heapeth up, and he will not know who doth gather the hoard.
Man is an unsubstantial phantom (or shadow, lit. image), Psa 73:20: , ‘a dream of shadow’ as Pindar calls him (Pyth. viii. 95). With unreal aim and unenduring result do men disturb themselves. The word expresses the idea of restless noisy bustle and uproar. Cp. ‘a tumultuous city’ Isa 22:2, and see note on ‘abundance’, Psa 37:16. Shew (A.V.) must be taken to mean ‘appearance,’ not ‘display’ or ‘pomp.’
One heapeth up riches, treasures, possessions of all kinds (Job 27:16), and he will not know after his death who gathers these hoards as his harvest, or rather, who carries them off as his spoil (Isa 33:4). Cp. Luk 12:20.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Surely every man walketh in a vain show – Margin, an image. The word rendered vain show – tselem – means properly a shade, a shadow; and then, an image or likeness, as shadowing forth any real object. Then it comes to denote an idol, 2Ki 11:18; Amo 5:26. Here the idea seems to be that of an image, as contradistinguished from a reality; the shadow of a thing, as distinguished from the substance. Man seems to be like an image, a shadow, a phantom – and not a real object, walking about. He is a form, an appearance, that soon vanishes away like a shadow.
Surely they are disquieted in vain – That is, they are actively engaged; they bustle about; they are full of anxiety; they form plans which they execute with much toil, care, and trouble; yet for no purpose worthy of so much diligence and anxious thought. They are busy, bustling shadows – existing for no real or substantial purposes, and accomplishing nothing. What shadows we are, and what shadows do we pursue, said the great orator and statesman, Edmund Burke; and what a striking and beautiful comment on the passage before us was that saying, coming from such a man, and from one occupying such a position.
He heapeth up riches – The word used here means to heap up, to store up, as grain, Gen 41:35; or treasures, Job 27:16; or a mound, Hab 1:10. Here it undoubtedly refers to the efforts of men in accumulating wealth, or storing up property. This was the thing which struck the psalmist as the leading employment of these moving shadows – a fact that would strike any one as he looks upon this busy world.
And knoweth not who shall gather them – Who shall gather them to himself; to whom they will go when he dies. Compare Job 27:16-19; Ecc 2:18, Ecc 2:21; Ecc 5:13-14; Luk 12:20. The idea is, that it is not only vanity in itself, considered as the great business of life, to attempt to accumulate property – seeing that this is not what the great object of life should be, and that a life thus spent really amounts to nothing – but vanity in this respect also, that a man can have no absolute control over his property when he is dead, and he knows not, and cannot know, into whose hands his accumulated gains may fall. The facts on this subject; the actual distribution of property after a man is dead; the use often made of it, against which no man can guard – should, together with other and higher motives, be a powerful consideration with every one, not to make the amassing of wealth the great business of life.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 39:6
Surely every man walketh in a vain show.
The bitterness and blessedness of the brevity of life
(with Psa 39:12):–These two sayings are two different ways of putting the same thing. There is a common thought underlying both, but the associations with which that common thought is connected in these two verses are distinctly different. The one is bitter and sad–a gloomy half truth. The other, out of the very same fact, draws blessedness and hope. The one may come from no higher point of view than the level of worldly experience, the other is a truth of faith. The former is at best partial, and without the other may be harmful; the latter completes, explains, and hallows it. And this progress and variety is the key to the whole psalm. The writer, in consequence of some personal calamity–we know not what,–was struck dumb with silence. His thoughts were sad and miserable. At last he speaks out, and complains more than prays concerning the deep sadness of life. He dilates on this, but the thought of it alpine is too dreadful: the blackness of his view was making him reel; therefore he turns to God, And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee. The psalm changes from this point; there is the same sadness contemplated, but with what a difference. He sees the bright light of tope which streams up from the most lurid masses of opaque cloud till their gloom begins to glow with an inward lustre, and softens into solemn purples and reds. He had said, I was dumb with silence–even from good. But when his hope is in God, the silence changes its character and becomes resignation and submission. He is a stranger, but with Thee–that makes all the difference. He is Gods guest in his transient life. That life is short, like the stay of a foreigner in a strange land, but he is under the care of the King of the land; therefore be need not fear nor sorrow. Three points are brought before us.
I. The thought of life common to both verses of the text. Every man walketh in a vain show, and in an image or shadow–he walks as a shadow. That is to say, the whole outward life and activity of every man is represented as fleeting and unsubstantial, like the reflection of a cloud which darkens leagues of the mountains side in a moment, and ere a man can say, behold, is gone again for ever. Then look at the other image employed in the other clause of our text, to express the same idea, I am a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers. The phrase has a history. In that most pathetic narrative of an old-world sorrow long since calmed and consoled, when Abraham stood up from before his dead and craved a burying-place for Sarah from the sons of Heth, he pleaded, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. He was so. And such is mans relation to this world.
II. The gloomy hollowness which that thought apart from God infuses into life, Because life is fleeting, therefore in part, it is so hollow and unsatisfying. Why should we fret and break our hearts, and scorn delights, and live laborious days for purposes which will last so short a time, and things which we shall so soon have to leave? Were it not better to lie still? Such thoughts have at least a partial truth in them, and are difficult to meet as long as we think only of the facts and results of mans life that we can see with our eyes. Yes I if we have said all, when we have said–men pass as a fleeting shadow, if my life has no roots in the eternal, nor any consciousness of a life that does not fade, when it is all flat and unprofitable, an illusion, a folly, a dream. For all the while I yearn for something higher, My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. God hath put eternity in mans heart, as Ecclesiastes says. And all these longings and aspirations witness that such limited life as was can never fill our souls or give us rest. Can you fill up the swamps of the Mississippi with any cartloads of faggots that you can fling in? Can you fill your souls with anything which belongs to this fleeting life? Has a flying shadow an appreciable thickness, or will a million of them pressed together occupy a space in your empty hungry heart? But note how our other text in its significant words gives us–
III. The blessedness which springs from this same thought of life when it is looked at in connection with God. The mere conviction of the brevity and hollowness of life is not in itself a religious or helpful thought. It all depends upon what you associate with it. The words, I am a stranger and a sojourner with Thee, point back to the law of the jubilee, when all lands returned to their original owners. But its religious aim was to keep alive in the minds of Israel their sense of dependence upon God. The land shall not be sold for ever, for the laud is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. Of course, there was a special sense in which that was true with regard to Israel, but David thought that the words were as true in regard to his whole relation of God, as in regard to Israels possession of its national inheritance. If we grasp these words as completing all that we have already said, how different this transient and unsubstantial life looks. You must have the light from both sides to stereoscope and make solid the flat surface picture. Transient! yes–but it is passed in the presence of God. Now, if we will hold to this truth, what calm blessedness will flow into our hearts. For if a stranger with Thee, then we are the guests of the King, the Lord of the land. We have a constant companion and an abiding presence. He is with us, will walk with us, will sit with us and make our hearts glow. Strangers we are, indeed, here–but not solitary, for we are strangers with Thee. As in some ancestral home in which a family has lived for centuries–son after father has rested in these great chambers, and been safe behind the strong walls–so age after age, they who love Him abide in God. Thou has been our dwelling-place in all generations. Strangers with Thee–then we may carry our thoughts forward to the time when we shall go to our true home, nor wander any longer in the land that is not ours. If even here He is with us, what will it be there? And why should we fear death? Is the sentry sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? Is the wanderer in far-off lands sad as he turns his face homewards? And why should not we rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall soon depart to the true metropolis, the mother-country of our souls? I do not know why. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Earths vanities and heavens verities
I. David records his view of human life.
1. He speaks of life as a walk. He seems to have had in his mind the idea of a great procession: Surely every man walketh in a vain show. Such things were more common in Oriental countries than they are with us; but whether it is the Lord Mayors show or any other, it is a picture of what this mortal life is. Among some classes of society, show is everything; they must keep up appearances. Just so; and, all the world over, that is about all there is–appearances–a vain show. I wish we could get a hold of that idea as a practical thing, that everything we can see is shadow, but what we cannot see is the real substance.
2. He speaks of life as a worry. Surely they are disquieted. So they are. How few people are so free from the spirit of the things of this world as to pass through this life quietly. See how they begin life, eager for its joys, its honours, its wealth. Note how they plod, and toil, and labour. How much of brain-work is done by the light of the midnight oil! Many a man agitates his mind, and wearies his spirit, till his life is lost in finding a livelihood. They are trying to live, and lo! life is gone; and they wake up, and wonder how it is that they have let it go, and have not really lived at all.
3. David passes on to speak of life as a success; and he mentions those who were supposed to have been successful in life; though, mark you, it is not success in life, after all, to accumulate riches. He heapeth up riches. That is all he does not partake of them, he does not use them, he merely heaps them up. He accumulates without enjoyment. He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. He leaves his wealth without pleasure. I am sure that there is many a man who would turn in his grave if he knew what was being done with his hard-earned wealth.
II. David expresses his own emotions in contemplation of these things.
1. He has come to a decision. And now, Lord. I like that mode of speech; it is a great thing to come to God with a now. Every moment is solemn if we would but make it so; but there are certain turning-points in life, when a man has had his eyes opened to see the fallacy of his former pursuits, when, stopping where the roads meet, he looks up to the signpost, and says, And now, Lord, guide me; help me to take the right turn, to eschew the shadow, and to seek after that which is substantial. Now, Lord.
2. I also like this expression of Davids emotions, because he consults with God: Every man walketh in a vain show; but, saith he, and now, Lord, there is no vanity with Thee, no deception, no delusion with Thee, behold, I turn away from this mirage, which just now deluded me, to Thee, my God, the Rock of my salvation, and I look to Thee. And now, Lord.
3. He is a man whose hope is in God.
III. David offers an appropriate and needful prayer, Deliver me, etc.
1. From sins committed.
2. From the assaults of sin.
3. From peculiarly dangerous sins.
4. From deserved dishonour.
5. From undeserved defamation.
6. From spiritual disappointment.
7. From dreadful taunts at the last. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Surely they are disquieted in vain.—
Vain disquietudes
I. Because they are utterly useless. Most, if not all, the things that occasion them are inevitable.
1. The approach of age.
2. The advance of reformations.
3. The separation from property.
4. The advent of death.
II. Because they are removable. Since Christianity has come, all the disquietudes of the soul may be hushed. They are kept in perfect peace whose minds are stayed upon God. (Homilist.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 6. Walketh in a vain show] betselem, in a shadow. He is but the semblance of being: he appears for a while, and then vanisheth away. Some of the fathers read, “Although every man walketh in the image of God, yet they are disquieted in vain.”
He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.] He raketh together. This is a metaphor taken from agriculture: the husbandman rakes the corn, &c., together in the field, and yet, so uncertain is life, that he knows not who shall gather them into the granary!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Walketh, i. e. passeth the course of his life; or goeth about busily and restlessly, hither and thither, as this verb in this conjugation signifies, and as the next verb more plainly expresseth.
In a vain show, Heb. in a shadow or image, i.e. in an imaginary rather than a real life; in the pursuit of vain imaginations, in which there is nothing solid or satisfactory. Or, as some read it, like a shadow, to which mans life is compared, Job 14:2. Man and his life, and all his happiness in this world, are rather appearances, and representations, and dreams, than truths and realities.
Disquieted; or, troubled; Heb. they make a noise, or bustling, or tumult, with unwearied industry seeking for riches, as it follows, and troubling and vexing both themselves and others in the pursuit of them, as this word implies.
In vain; to no purpose; or without any real or considerable benefit to him or his.
He heapeth up; for his own use, and for his posterity after him.
Who shall gather them; whether his children, or strangers, or enemies, shall possess and enjoy them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Surely every man walketh in a vain show,…. Or “in an image” z; not “in the image of the Lord”, as the Targum; in the image in which God created man, for that is lost; nor in that which is stamped on men in regeneration; for every man does not walk in that; rather in the image of fallen man, in which every man is born and walks: or “in a shadow” a; or like one; to which the days of man’s life are often compared, 1Ch 29:15; and who, for the most part, busies himself in shadowy and imaginary things; agreeably to all which the poet says b,
“I see that we who live are nothing else but images, and a vain shadow.”
Some c interpret it of “the shadow of death”; and others d of “darkness” itself; and it fitly expresses the state of unregeneracy and darkness in which every man walks without the grace of God; and which will end in utter darkness, if that does not prevent it; and which is called “a walking in the vanity of the mind”, Eph 4:17. Here it seems rather to intend the outward show, pomp, and grandeur of every great man; of emperors, kings, princes, nobles, and the great men of the world; which is all a vain show, a glittering appearance for a while, a glory that passeth away, and will not descend after them when laid in the grave, and oftentimes lasts not so long;
surely they are disquieted in vain; about vain things, as riches and honours, which are fickle and unstable; and sometimes in vain are all the carking cares and disquietude of the mind, and toil and labour of the body, which are here referred to, to obtain these things; some rise early, and sit up late, and yet eat the bread of sorrow; and if they gain their point, yet do not find the pleasure and satisfaction in them they promised themselves and expected;
he heapeth up [riches], and knoweth not who shall gather them: according to Jarchi, the metaphor seems to be taken from a man that has been ploughing and sowing, and reaping and laying up the increase of the field in heaps, and yet knows not who shall gather it into the barn, seeing he may die before it is gathered in; compare with this
Lu 12:16; or the meaning is, when a man has amassed a prodigious deal of wealth together, he knows not who shall enjoy it, whether a son or a servant, a friend or a foe, a good man or a bad man, a wise man or a fool, Ec 2:18.
z “in imagine”, V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Tigurine version, Piscator, Cocceius, Michaelis. a “In umbra”, Gejerus; “instar umbrae”, Musculus; vid. Hackman. Praecidan. Sacr. tom. 1. p. 82. b Sophoclis Ajax, v. 125, 126. c Donesh in Jarchi in loc. d Jarchi & Kimchi in loc. & R. Jonah in Miclol Yophi in loc.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
6. Surely man walketh in a shadow. (69) He still prosecutes the same subject. By the word shadow, he means, that there is nothing substantial in man, but that he is only, as we say, a vain show, and has I know not how much of display and ostentation. (70) Some translate the word darkness, and understand the Psalmist’s language in this sense, That the life of man vanishes away before it can be known. But in these words David simply declares of every man individually what Paul extends to the whole world, when he says,
“
The fashion of this world passeth away.” — 1Co 7:31
Thus he denies that there is any thing abiding in men, because the appearance of strength which displays itself in them for a time soon passes away. What he adds, that men disquiet themselves in vain, shows the very height of their vanity; as if he had said, It seems as if men were born for the very purpose of rendering themselves more and more contemptible: for although they are only as a shadow, yet as if they were fools, or rather insane, they involve themselves needlessly in harassing cares, and vexing themselves to no purpose. He expresses still more plainly how they manifest their folly, when he declares that while they anxiously and carefully heap up riches, they never think that they must soon, and it may be suddenly, leave their present abode. And why is it that they thus fret away their mind and body, but only because they imagine that they can never have enough? for by their insatiable desire of gain, they eagerly grasp at all the riches of the world, as if they had to live a hundred times the life of man. Moreover, David does not in this passage hold up to scorn the covetousness of man in the same sense in which Solomon does, Ecc 5:10; for he not only speaks of their heirs, but declares generally, that men disquiet and vex themselves with care, although they know not who shall reap the fruit of their labor in amassing riches. (71) They may indeed wish to make provision for themselves; but what madness and folly is it for them to torment themselves with incessant and unprofitable cares which have no certain object or limit? David here condemns those ardent and unbridled desires, under the influence of which worldly men are carried away, and talk in a strange manner, confounding heaven and earth; for they admit not that they are mortal, much less do they consider that their life is bounded by the narrow limits of a hand-breadth. David spoke under the influence of a distempered and troubled state of mind; but there is included in his language this very profitable lesson, that there is no remedy better fitted for enabling us to rise above all unnecessary cares, than the recollection that the brief period of our life is only, as it were, a hand-breadth.
(69) In the Hebrew it is literally, “Man walketh in an image;” a phantasm, that which seems to be something real and substantial, but which does not deserve that character, which is an appearance only. Life is a mere show; “the baseless fabric of a vision;” it has the semblance of solidity, but there is no reality in it. The word occurs again in Psa 73:20, “Thou shalt despise their image;” their vain show, or phantastic prosperity. Walford reads, “walketh as a shadow;” observing, that “the prefix ב is often used for כ as a particle of similitude.” he farther observes, that Dathe’s translation, “he pursues a shadow,” gives a good sense, but does not convey the exact notion of the figure that is conveyed by the Hebrew.
(70) “ Et je ne scay quelle parade et ostentation.” — Fr.
(71) It is important to mark the difference between the Hebrew word צכר, tsabar, here rendered to heap together, and the Word אסף, asaph, rendered to gather “The former,” says Hammond, “here appears to contain all the toil of the harvest, in reaping, binding, setting up, and heaping things together, bringing them from the several places where they grow, into a cumulus The latter denotes the stowing or housing, laying it up, removing or carrying it out of the field, where it is heaped or set up, ready for carriage. For so אסף signifies sometimes to lay up, sometimes to take away This, then, is the description of the vanity of our human estate, that when a man hath run through all the labors of acquisition, and hath nothing visible to interpose betwixt him and his enjoyments, yet even then he is uncertain, not only whether himself shall possess it at last, but whether his heir shall do it; nay, he knows not whether his enemy may not; he cannot tell ‘who shall gather them into the barn,’ or enjoy them when they are there.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(6) Surely every man . . .Better, only as a shadow walks a man. A very commonplace of poetry, from the of Pindar downwards. Thus Sophocles, I see that we who live are nothing else but images and vain shadows; Horace, Pulvis et umbra sumus; Burke, What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
The above rendering treats the preposition as the beth essenti. If, however, we keep the Authorised Version, the thought is of mans life, not as a reality, but as a show, a picture, a phantasma (see margin), and himself only an imaginary actor. But this seems modern for the psalms. Shakespeare, no doubt with this passage in his mind, has combined it with the more obvious image:
Out, out, brief candle,
Lifes but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
Surely they . . . Better, Only for a breath they make a stir.
He heapeth up.The substantive is left by the Hebrew to be supplied. So we talk of the desire of accumulating. (For the whole passage, comp. Jas. 4:13-14; Luk. 12:16-21.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
6. Vain show An image, or shadow, as opposed to reality, or substance.
They are disquieted in vain Literally, surely, for a breath will they be disturbed. Such is human frailty, “thrown into tumult, raptured, or dismayed,” at what is empty as breath!
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 39:6. In a vain shew In a vain shew of happiness. Green. The word tselem, is only used twice in the psalms: Here, and Psa 73:20 in both which places it signifies what is imaginary, in opposition to what is real. The Hebrew word iitsbor rendered, He heapeth up, signifies to rake together; in which there is an allusion to the husbandman’s collecting his corn together before he carries it to the barn. The metaphor is elegant, intimating the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of human acquisitions; which, though heaped up together like corn by one person, may soon become the possession of another.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
I have made no break or interruption in these verses, because the subject through the whole is one and the same. Under several very striking and elegant similitudes, the Psalmist in his prayer shows the shortness of life, and the vanity of all earthly things to satisfy the desires of the soul; and from hence takes occasion to seek an interest in the favour and love of God, to guide him, as a stranger and a sojourner, safely home through the whole of the wilderness state. And no doubt, if this prayer be read with an eye to Christ, who alone can give us to inherit substance, and fill our souls with durable riches and righteousness, this will be to convert the vanity of our present state into the means, under God, of procuring substantial good, and over-ruling the shortness of our existence, into the greater opportunity of obtaining in Christ an everlasting duration, in an inheritance that fadeth not away.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 39:6 Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up [riches], and knoweth not who shall gather them.
Ver. 6. Surely every man walketh in a vain show ] Heb. in an image, or in a shadow, as Job 14:2 ; in the shadow of death, as some sense it; his life is like a picture drawn upon the water, saith Theodoret; it passeth away as a hasty, headlong torrent. Verily, surely, surely, it is so; Selah, you may seal to it.
Surely they are disquieted in vain
He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
THE BITTERNESS AND BLESSEDNESS OF THE BREVITY OF LIFE
Psa 39:6
These two sayings are two different ways of putting the same thing. There is a common thought underlying both, but the associations with which that common thought is connected in these two verses are distinctly different. The one is bitter and sad-a gloomy half truth. The other, out of the very same fact, draws blessedness and hope. The one may come from no higher point of view than the level of worldly experience; the other is a truth of faith. The former is at best partial, and without the other may be harmful; the latter completes, explains, and hallows it.
And that this progress and variety in the thought is the key to the whole psalm is, I think, obvious to any one who will examine it with care. I cannot here enter on that task but in the hastiest fashion, by way of vindicating the connection which I trace between the two verses of our text. The Psalmist begins, then, with telling how at some time recently passed-in consequence of personal calamity not very clearly defined, but apparently some bodily sickness aggravated by mental sorrow and anxiety-he was struck dumb with silence, so that he ‘held his peace even from good.’ In that state there rose within him many sad and miserable thoughts, which at last forced their way through his locked lips. They shape themselves into a prayer, which is more complaint than petition-and which is absorbed in the contemplation of the manifest melancholy facts of human life-’Thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before Thee.’ And then, as that thought dilates and sinks deeper into his soul, he looks out upon the whole race of man-and in tones of bitterness and hopelessness, affirms that all are vanity, shadows, disquieted in vain. The blank hopelessness of such a view brings him to a standstill. It is true-but taken alone is too dreadful to think of. ‘That way madness lies,’-so he breaks short off his almost despairing thoughts, and with a swift turning away of his mind from the downward gaze into blackness that was beginning to make him reel, he fixes his eyes on the throne above-’And now, Lord! what wait I for? my hope is in Thee.’ These words form the turning-point of the psalm. After them, the former thoughts are repeated, but with what a difference-made by looking at all the blackness and sorrow, both personal and universal, in the bright light of that hope which streams upon the most lurid masses of opaque cloud, till their gloom begins to glow with an inward lustre, and softens into solemn purples and reds. He had said, ‘I was dumb with silence-even from good.’ But when his hope is in God, the silence changes its character and becomes resignation and submission. ‘I opened not my mouth; because Thou didst it.’ The variety of human life and its transiency is not less plainly seen than before; but in the light of that hope it is regarded in relation to God’s paternal correction, and is seen to be the consequence, not of a defect in His creative wisdom or love, but of man’s sin. ‘Thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity.’ That, to him who waits on the Lord, is the reason and the alleviation of the reiterated conviction, ‘Every man is vanity.’ Not any more does he say every man ‘at his best state,’ or, as it might be more accurately expressed, ‘even when most firmly established,’-for the man who is established in the Lord is not vanity, but only the man who founds his being on the fleeting present. Then, things being so, life being thus in itself and apart from God so fleeting and so sad, and yet with a hope that brightens it like sunshine through an April shower-the Psalmist rises to prayer, in which that formerly expressed conviction of the brevity of life is reiterated, with the addition of two words which changes its whole aspect, ‘I am a stranger with Thee .’ He is God’s guest in his transient life. It is short, like the stay of a foreigner in a strange land; but he is under the care of the King of the Land-therefore he need not fear nor sorrow. Past generations, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-whose names God ‘is not ashamed’ to appeal to in His own solemn designation of Himself-have held the same relation, and their experience has sealed His faithful care of those who dwell with Him. Therefore, the sadness is soothed, and the vain and fleeting life of earth assumes a new appearance, and the most blessed and wisest issue of our consciousness of frailty and insufficiency is the fixing of our desires and hopes on Him in whose house we may dwell even while we wander to and fro, and in whom our life being rooted and established shall not be vain, howsoever it may be brief.
If, then, we follow the course of contemplation thus traced in the psalm, we have these three points brought before us-first, the thought of life common to both clauses; second, the gloomy, aimless hollowness which that thought breathes into life apart from God; third, the blessedness which springs from the same thought when we look at it in connection with our Father in heaven.
I. Observe the very forcible expression which is given here to the thought of life common to both verses.
Then, look at the other image employed in the other clause of our text to express the same idea, ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner, as all my fathers.’ The phrase has a history. In that most pathetic narrative of an old-world sorrow long since calmed and consoled, when ‘Abraham stood up from before his dead,’ and craved a burying-place for his Sarah from the sons of Heth, his first plea was, ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you.’ In his lips it was no metaphor. He was a stranger, a visitor for a brief time to an alien land; he was a sojourner, having no rights of inheritance, but settled among them for a while, and though dwelling among them, not adopted into their community. He was a foreigner, not naturalised. And such is our relation to all this visible frame of things in which we dwell. It is alien to us; though we be in it, our true affinities are elsewhere; though we be in it, our stay is brief, as that of ‘a wayfaring man that turns aside to tarry for a night.’
And there is given in the context still another metaphor setting forth the same fact in that dreary generalisation which precedes my text, ‘Every man at his best state’-or as the word means, ‘established,’- with his roots most firmly struck in the material and visible-’is only a breath.’ It appears for a moment, curling from lip and nostril into the cold morning air, and vanishes away, so thus vaporous, filmy, is the seeming solid fact of the most stable life.
These have been the commonplaces of poets and rhetoricians and moralists in all time. But threadbare as the thought is, I may venture to dwell on it for a moment. I know I am only repeating what we all believe-and all forget. It is never too late to preach commonplaces, until everybody acts on them as well as admits them-and this old familiar truth has not yet got so wrought into the structure of our lives that we can afford to say no more about it.
‘Surely every man walketh in a shadow.’ Did you ever stand upon the shore on some day of that ‘uncertain weather, when gloom and glory meet together,’ and notice how swiftly there went, racing over miles of billows, a darkening that quenched all the play of colour in the waves, as if all suddenly the angel of the waters had spread his broad wings between sun and sea, and then how in another moment as swiftly it flits away, and with a burst the light blazes out again, and leagues of ocean flash into green and violet and blue. So fleeting, so utterly perishable are our lives for all their seeming solid permanency. ‘Shadows in a career, as George Herbert has it-breath going out of the nostrils. We think of ourselves as ever to continue in our present posture. We are deceived by illusions. Mental indolence, a secret dislike of the thought, and the impostures of sense, all conspire to make us blind to, or at least oblivious of, the plain fact which every beat of our pulses might preach, and the slow creeping hands of every parish clock confirm. How awful that silent, unceasing footfall of receding days is when once we begin to watch it! Inexorable, passionless-though hope and fear may pray, ‘Sun! stand thou still on Gibeon; and thou moon! in the valley of Ajalon,’-the tramp of the hours goes on. The poets paint them as a linked chorus of rosy forms, garlanded, and clasping hands as they dance onwards. So they may be to some of us at some moments. So they may seem as they approach; but those who come hold the hands of those who go, and that troop has no rosy light upon their limbs, their garlands are faded, the sunshine falls not upon the grey and shrouded shapes, as they steal ghostlike through the gloom-and ever and ever the bright and laughing sisters pass on into that funereal band which grows and moves away from us unceasing. Alas! for many of us it bears away with it our lost treasures, our shattered hopes, our joys from which all the bright petals have dropped! Alas! for many of us there is nothing but sorrow in watching how all things become ‘part and parcel of the dreadful past.’
And how strangely sometimes even a material association may give new emphasis to that old threadbare truth. Some more permanent thing may help us to feel more profoundly the shadowy fleetness of man . The trifles are so much more lasting than their owners. Or, as ‘the Preacher’ puts it, with such wailing pathos, ‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever.’ This material is perishable-but yet how much more enduring than we are! The pavements we walk upon, the coals in our grates-how many millenniums old are they? The pebble you kick aside with your foot-how many generations will it outlast? Go into a museum and you will see hanging there, little the worse for centuries, battered shields, notched swords, and gaping helmets-aye, but what has become of the bright eyes that once flashed the light of battle through the bars, what has become of the strong hands that once gripped the hilts? ‘The knights are dust,’ and ‘their good swords are’ not ‘rust.’ The material lasts after its owner. Seed corn is found in a mummy case. The poor form beneath the painted lid is brown and hard, and more than half of it gone to pungent powder, and the man that once lived has faded utterly: but the handful of seed has its mysterious life in it, and when it is sown, in due time the green blade pushes above English soil, as it would have done under the shadow of the pyramids four thousand years ago-and its produce waves in a hundred harvest fields to-day. The money in your purses now, will some of it bear the head of a king that died half a century ago. It is bright and useful-where are all the people that in turn said they ‘owned’ it? Other men will live in our houses, will preach from this pulpit, and sit in these pews, when you and I are far away. And other June days will come, and the old rose-trees will flower round houses where unborn men will then be living, when the present possessor is gone to nourish the roots of the roses in the graveyard!
‘Our days are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.’ So said David on other occasions. We know, dear brethren! how true it is, whether we consider the ceaseless flux and change of things, the mystic march of the silent-footed hours, or the greater permanence which attaches to the ‘things which perish,’ than to our abode among them. We know it, and yet how hard it is not to yield to the inducement to act and feel as if all this painted scenery were solid rock and mountain. By our own inconsiderateness and sensuousness, we live in a lie, in a false dream of permanence, and so in a sadder sense we walk in ‘a vain show,’-deluding ourselves with the conceit of durability, and refusing to see that the apparent is the shadowy, and the one enduring reality God. It is hard to get even the general conviction vivified in men’s minds, hardest of all to get any man to reflect upon it as applying to himself. Do not think that you have said enough to vindicate neglect of my words now, when you call them commonplace. So they are. But did you ever take that well-worn old story, and press it on your own consciousness-as a man might press a common little plant, whose juice is healing, against his dim eye-ball-by saying to yourself, ‘It is true of me . I walk as a shadow. I am gliding onwards to my doom. Through my slack hands the golden sands are flowing, and soon my hour-glass will run out, and I shall have to stop and go away.’ Let me beseech you for one half-hour’s meditation on that fact before this day closes. You will forget my words then, when with your own eyes you have looked upon that truth, and felt that it is not merely a toothless commonplace, but belongs to and works in thy life, as it ebbs away silently and incessantly from thee .
II. Let me point, in the second place, to the gloomy, aimless hollowness which that thought, apart from God, infuses into life.
Yes! if we have said all, when we have said that men pass as a fleeting shadow-if my life has no roots in the Eternal, nor any consciousness of a life that does not pass, and a light that never perishes, if it is derived from, directed to, ‘cribbed, cabined, and confined’ within this visible diurnal sphere, then it is all flat and unprofitable, an illusion while it seems to last, and all its pursuits are folly, its hopes dreams, its substances vapours, its years a lie. For, if life be thus short, I who live it am conscious of, and possess whether I be conscious of them or no, capacities and requirements which, though they were to be annihilated to-morrow, could be satisfied while they lasted by nothing short of the absolute ideal, the all-perfect, the infinite-or, to put away abstractions, ‘My soul thirsteth for God, the living God!’ ‘He hath put eternity in their heart,’ as the book of Ecclesiastes says. Longings and aspirations, weaknesses and woes, the limits of creature helps and loves, the disproportion between us and the objects around us-all these facts of familiar experience do witness, alike by blank misgivings and by bright hopes, by many disappointments and by indestructible expectations surviving them all, that nothing which has a date, a beginning, or an end, can fill our souls or give us rest. Can you fill up the swamps of the Mississippi with any cartloads of faggots you can fling in? Can you fill your souls with anything which belongs to this fleeting life? Has a flying shadow an appreciable thickness, or will a million of them pressed together occupy a space in your empty, hungry heart?
And so, dear brethren! I come to you with a message which may sound gloomy, and beseech you to give heed to it. No matter how you may get on in the world-though you may fulfil every dream with which you began in your youth-you will certainly find that without Christ for your Brother and Saviour, God for your Friend, and heaven for your hope, life, with all its fulness, is empty. It lasts long, too long as it sometimes seems for work, too long for hope, too long for endurance; long enough to let love die, and joys wither and fade, and companions drop away, but without God and Christ, you will find it but ‘as a watch in the night.’ At no moment through the long weary years will it satisfy your whole being; and when the weary years are all past, they will seem to have been but as one troubled moment breaking the eternal silence. At every point so profitless, and all the points making so thin and short a line! The crested waves seem heaped together as they recede from the eye till they reach the horizon, where miles of storm are seen but as a line of spray. So when a man looks back upon his life, if it have been a godless one, be sure of this, that he will have a dark and cheerless retrospect over a tossing waste, with a white rim of wandering barren foam vexed by tempest, and then, if not before, he will sadly learn how he has been living amidst shadows, and, with a nature that needs God, has wasted himself upon the world. ‘O life! as futile then as frail’; ‘surely,’ in such a case, ‘every man walketh in a vain show.’
III. But note, finally, how our other text in its significant words gives us the blessedness which springs from this same thought of life, when it is looked at in connection with God.
And the one addition which is needed to incline the whole weight of that conviction to the better side, and to light up all its blackness, is that little phrase in this text, ‘I am a stranger with Thee , and a sojourner.’ There seems to be an allusion here to remarkable words connected with the singular Jewish institution of the Jubilee. You remember that by the Mosaic law, there was no absolute sale of land in Israel, but that every half century the whole returned to the descendants of the original occupiers. Important economical and social purposes were contemplated in this arrangement, as well as the preservation of the relative position of the tribes as settled at the Conquest. But the law itself assigns a purely religious purpose-the preservation of the distinct consciousness of the tenure on which the people held their territory, namely, obedience to and dependence on God. ‘The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me .’ Of course, there was a special sense in which that was true with regard to Israel, but David thought that the words were as true in regard to his whole relation to God, as in regard to Israel’s possession of its national inheritance.
If we grasp these words as completing all that we have already said, how different this transient and unsubstantial life looks! You must have the light from both sides to stereoscope and make solid the flat surface picture. Transient! yes-but it is passed in the presence of God. Whether we know it or no, our brief days hang upon Him, and we walk, all of us, in the light of His countenance. That makes the transient eternal, the shadowy substantial, the trivial heavy with solemn meaning and awful yet vast possibilities. ‘In our embers is something that doth live.’ If we had said all, when we say ‘We are as a shadow,’ it would matter very little, though even then it would matter something, how we spent our shadowy days; but if these poor brief hours are spent ‘in the great Taskmaster’s eye,’-if the shadow cast on earth proclaims a light in the heavens-if from this point there hangs an unending chain of conscious being-Oh! then, with what awful solemnity is the brevity, with what tremendous magnitude is the minuteness, of our earthly days invested! ‘With Thee’-then I am constantly in the presence of a sovereign Law and its Giver; ‘with Thee’-then all my actions are registered and weighed yonder; ‘with Thee’-then ‘Thou, God, seest me.’ Brethren! it is the prismatic halo and ring of eternity round this poor glass of time that gives it all its dignity, all its meaning. The lives that are lived before God cannot be trifles.
And if this relation to time be recognised and accepted and held fast by our hearts and minds, then what calm blessedness will flow into our souls!
‘A stranger with Thee,’-then we are the guests of the King. The Lord of the land charges Himself with our protection and provision; we journey under His safe conduct. It is for His honour and faithfulness that no harm shall come to us travelling in His territory, and relying on His word. Like Abraham with the sons of Heth, we may claim the protection and help which a stranger needs. He recognises the bond and will fulfil it. We have eaten of His salt, and He will answer for our safety.-’He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine eye.’
‘A stranger with Thee,’-then we have a constant Companion and an abiding Presence. We may be solitary and necessarily remote from the polity of the land. We may feel amid all the visible things of earth as if foreigners. We may not have a foot of soil, not even a grave for our dead. Companionships may dissolve and warm hands grow cold and their close clasp relax-what then? He is with us still. He will join us as we journey, even when our hearts are sore with loss. He will walk with us by the way, and make our chill hearts glow. He will sit with us at the table-however humble the meal, and He will not leave us when we discern Him. Strangers we are indeed here-but not solitary, for we are ‘strangers with Thee.’ As in some ancestral home in which a family has lived for centuries-son after father has rested in its great chambers, and been safe behind its strong walls-so, age after age, they who love Him abide in God.-’Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.’
‘Strangers with Thee,’-then we may carry our thoughts forward to the time when we shall go to our true home, nor wander any longer in a land that is not ours. If even here we come into such blessed relationships with God, that fact is in itself a prophecy of a more perfect communion and a heavenly house. They who are strangers with Him will one day be ‘at home with the Lord,’ and in the light of that blessed hope the transiency of this life changes its whole aspect, loses the last trace of sadness, and becomes a solemn joy. Why should we be pensive and wistful when we think how near our end is? Is the sentry sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? Is the wanderer in far-off lands sad when he turns his face homewards? And why should not we rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall soon depart to the true metropolis, the mother-country of our souls? I do not know why a man should be either regretful or afraid, as he watches the hungry sea eating away this ‘bank and shoal of time’ upon which he stands-even though the tide has all but reached his feet-if he knows that God’s strong hand will be stretched forth to him at the moment when the sand dissolves from under him, and will draw him out of many waters, and place him high above the floods in that stable land where there is ‘no more sea.’
Lives rooted in God through faith in Jesus Christ are not vanity. Let us lay hold of Him with a loving grasp-and ‘we shall live also’ because He lives, as He lives, so long as He lives. The brief days of earth will be blessed while they last, and fruitful of what shall never pass. We shall have Him with us while we journey, and all our journeyings will lead to rest in Him. True, men walk in a vain show; true, ‘the world passeth away and the lust thereof,’ but, blessed be God! true, also, ‘He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
every man. Hebrew. ‘Ish. App-14.
walketh: i.e. walketh to and fro, or habitually.
in a vain shew = only in a mere form. Hebrew. zelem. Occurs thirty-three times. Always rendered image, except here and Dan 3:19 (“form”).
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psa 39:6
Psa 39:6
“Surely, every man walketh in a vain show;
Surely they are disquieted in vain:
He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.”
The thought here is merely a continuation of that in the previous two verses. “Man indeed walks about as a mere shadow.” This is the same thought enunciated by the sacred author James: “What is your life? For ye are a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (Jas 4:14). It should not be overlooked that this persistent evaluation of individuals, and even nations, as vanity, as nothing, appearing for a moment, and then vanishing forever, is not spoken of God’s faithful servants but of nations and/or individuals “without God, and without hope in the world.”
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 39:6. This verse is a general reference to the actions of men. They are more interested in this life than in the one to come. They act as if they would live here forever to enjoy the riches they have accumulated. It is foolish for a man thus to spend his days in that way, for he will not stay here always, nor does he know just who will get to use the riches he has spent his life to produce. This thought also is offered in the New Testament (Luk 12:20).
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
a vain show: Heb. an image, There is but the semblance of being: he appeareth for a little, and then vanisheth. 1Co 7:31, Jam 4:14
surely: Ecc 1:14, Ecc 2:17, Ecc 2:18, Ecc 2:20, Ecc 2:21, Ecc 4:7, Ecc 4:8, Ecc 6:11, Ecc 6:12, Ecc 12:8, Ecc 12:13, Isa 55:2, Luk 10:40-42, Luk 12:20, Luk 12:21, Luk 12:29, 1Pe 5:7
he heapeth: Psa 49:10, Psa 49:11, Job 27:16, Job 27:17, Pro 13:22, Pro 23:5, Pro 27:24, Ecc 2:8, Ecc 2:18-21, Ecc 2:26, Ecc 5:14, Luk 12:20, Luk 12:21, Jam 5:3
Reciprocal: Deu 8:13 – General Jos 8:2 – only the spoil 2Sa 19:34 – How long have I to live 1Ki 14:26 – he took away Est 8:1 – give the house Job 14:21 – he knoweth it not Psa 4:6 – many Psa 17:14 – leave Psa 62:10 – riches Psa 73:16 – too painful for me Psa 73:20 – their Psa 89:47 – Remember Psa 102:11 – My days Psa 114:4 – General Psa 119:96 – I have seen Psa 127:2 – vain Psa 144:4 – Man Ecc 1:2 – General Ecc 3:19 – for Ecc 6:2 – but Ecc 6:10 – and it Ecc 7:15 – have I Dan 11:4 – and shall be Hab 2:13 – is it Mat 6:19 – General Mat 6:27 – by Mat 13:45 – seeking Mat 15:9 – in Luk 12:26 – why 1Pe 1:18 – vain 1Jo 2:17 – the world
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 39:6. Surely every man walketh Passeth the course of his life; or, goeth about busily or restlessly hither and thither, as , jithhallech, implies, and as the next verb more plainly expresses: In a vain show Hebrew, , betzelem, in a shadow, or image. The word is used only twice in the Psalms, here and Psa 73:20, in both which places it signifies what is imaginary, in opposition to what is real. Man proceeds on in an imaginary, rather than real life: in the pursuit of vain imaginations, in which there is nothing solid or satisfactory. For such are the interests, distinctions, and pleasures of this world, unsubstantial uncertain, and transitory. Or, as some read it, Like a shadow, to which mans life is compared, Job 14:2. Man and his life, and all his happiness in this world, are rather appearances, and representations, and dreams, than truths or realities. They are disquieted, or troubled, in vain To no purpose; or without any real or considerable benefit to them or theirs. Hebrew, , jehemajun, they make a noise, a bustling, or tumult; with unwearied industry seeking for riches, as it follows, and troubling both themselves and others in the pursuit of them. He heapeth up riches For his own use, he thinks, and for his posterity after him. And knoweth not who shall gather them Whether his children, or strangers, or enemies, shall possess and enjoy them. The Hebrew word , jitzbor, here rendered, He heapeth up, signifies to rake together; in which there is an allusion to the husbandmans collecting his corn together before he carries it to the barn. The metaphor, says Dr. Dodd, is elegant, intimating the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of human acquisitions; which, though heaped up together, like corn, by one person, may soon become the possession of another.