Big Idea: Once the repressed thoughts about our transitory lives are verbalized, valuable lessons about our status as foreigners in this world can be learned.

Understanding the Text

Psalm 39 is an individual lament, perhaps prompted by sickness, as was Psalm 38, and the suppliant prays that God will remove his “scourge” (39:10) from him so that he not die.

This psalm shares resemblances to Psalm 381and anticipates shared ideas with Psalms 40 and 41 (see tables 1 and 2). It also has striking similarities to Psalm 62.2

First Chronicles 29:15 provides a link with this psalm, for there David likens Israel to “foreigners and strangers” in God’s sight, “like all our ancestors,” a virtual quote of the Chronicles verse, which adds the observation that our earthly life is “like a shadow, with…