Psalm 39:10

Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) Stroke.—See Note to Psalm 38:11.

Blow.—Margin, “conflict.” A word only found here; from a root meaning rough. LXX. and Vulg. have “strength.”

Calvin’s last words are said to have been a reminiscence of this verse.

Benson Commentary

Psalm 39:10-11. Remove thy stroke away from me — But though I may not, I will not, open my mouth to complain, yet I may open it to pray, that thou wouldest take off the judgment that thou hast inflicted upon me. I am consumed, &c. — Help me, therefore, before I be utterly and irrecoverably lost. When thou with rebukes — That is, with punishments, which are often so called; dost correct man for iniquity — Dost punish him as his iniquity deserves. Thou makest his beauty to consume away — Hebrew, חמודו, chamudo, desiderabile ejus, his desirable things, as this word signifies, Lamentations 1:11; Daniel 9:23; Daniel 10:3; Daniel 10:11; Daniel 10:19; his comeliness, strength, wealth, prosperity, and all his present excellences and felicities; like a moth — As a moth is easily crushed to pieces with a touch. Thus the Chaldee paraphrase, Like a moth broken asunder: or, rather, as a moth consumeth a garment, as Job 13:28; Isaiah 50:9, to which God compares his judgments secretly and insensibly consuming a people, Isaiah 51:8; Hosea 5:12. Surely every man is vanity — As was affirmed, Psalm 39:5, and is hereby confirmed. For though men in the height of their prosperity will not believe it, yet when God contendeth with them by his judgments, they are forced to acknowledge it.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

39:7-13 There is no solid satisfaction to be had in the creature; but it is to be found in the Lord, and in communion with him; to him we should be driven by our disappointments. If the world be nothing but vanity, may God deliver us from having or seeking our portion in it. When creature-confidences fail, it is our comfort that we have a God to go to, a God to trust in. We may see a good God doing all, and ordering all events concerning us; and a good man, for that reason, says nothing against it. He desires the pardoning of his sin, and the preventing of his shame. We must both watch and pray against sin. When under the correcting hand of the Lord, we must look to God himself for relief, not to any other. Our ways and our doings bring us into trouble, and we are beaten with a rod of our own making. What a poor thing is beauty! and what fools are those that are proud of it, when it will certainly, and may quickly, be consumed! The body of man is as a garment to the soul. In this garment sin has lodged a moth, which wears away, first the beauty, then the strength, and finally the substance of its parts. Whoever has watched the progress of a lingering distemper, or the work of time alone, in the human frame, will feel at once the force of this comparison, and that, surely every man is vanity. Afflictions are sent to stir up prayer. If they have that effect, we may hope that God will hear our prayer. The believer expects weariness and ill treatment on his way to heaven; but he shall not stay here long : walking with God by faith, he goes forward on his journey, not diverted from his course, nor cast down by the difficulties he meets. How blessed it is to sit loose from things here below, that while going home to our Father's house, we may use the world as not abusing it! May we always look for that city, whose Builder and Maker is God.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Remove thy stroke away from me - And yet this calm submission, as expressed in Psalm 39:9, does not take away the desire that the hand of God may be removed, and that the suffering that is brought upon us may cease. Perfect submission is not inconsistent with the prayer that, if it be the will of God, the calamity may be removed: Luke 22:42. On the word here rendered "stroke" - נגע nega‛ - see the notes at Psalm 38:11. It is equivalent here to chastisement, or judgment. It refers to the trial which he was then enduring, whatever it was, which had given occasion to the feelings that he says Psalm 39:1-2 he had felt bound to suppress when in the presence of the wicked, but in reference to which he had learned entirely to acquiesce Psalm 39:9. From that trial itself he now prays that he may be delivered.

I am consumed - I am wasting away. I cannot long bear up under it. I must sink down to the grave if it is not removed. See Psalm 39:13.

By the blow of thine hand - Margin, as in Hebrew: "conflict." That is, the blow which God brings on anyone when he has, as it were, a "strife" or a "conflict" with him. It is designed here to express his affliction, as if God had "struck" him.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8-10. Patiently submissive, he prays for the removal of his chastisement, and that he may not be a reproach.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

But although I may not, I will not, open my mouth to complain of thee, yet I may open it to complain and pray to thee, that thou wouldst take off the judgment which thou hast inflicted upon me.

I am consumed; help me, therefore, before I be utterly and irrecoverably lost.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Remove thy stroke away from me,.... The psalmist still considers his affliction as coming from the hand of God, as his stroke upon him, and which lay as a heavy burden on him, and which God only could remove; and to him he applies for the removal of it, who is to be sought unto by his people to do such things for them; nor is such an application any ways contrary to that silence and patience before expressed;

I am consumed by the blow of thine hand; meaning either that his flesh was consumed by his affliction, which came from the hand of God, or he should be consumed if he did not remove it: he could not bear up under it, but must sink and die; if he continued to strive and contend with him, his spirit would fail before him, and the soul that he had made; and therefore he entreats he would remember he was but dust, and remove his hand from him; for this is a reason enforcing the preceding petition.

Geneva Study Bible

Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. stroke] The same word as that rendered plague in Psalm 38:11. Cp. Job 9:34.

I am consumed &c.] By the conflict of thy hand am I consumed. ‘I’ stands in emphatic contrast with ‘thy hand’. When the power of the Almighty contends with me, I, frail mortal that I am, must needs perish. Cp. Job 10:2 ff.

10–13. Petition for relief (10, 11) and respite (12, 13).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - Remove thy stroke away from me (camp. Psalm 38:11). I am consumed by the blow of thine hand; literally, by the quarrel of thine hand. But our version gives the true meaning. The "quarrel" has led the "hand" to deal the "stroke" by which the sufferer is "consumed" or "wasted away" (Kay). Psalm 39:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

(Heb.: 39:8-12) It is customary to begin a distinct turning-point of a discourse with ועתּה: and now, i.e., in connection with this nothingness of vanity of a life which is so full of suffering and unrest, what am I to hope, quid sperem (concerning the perfect, vid., on Psalm 11:3)? The answer to this question which he himself throws out is, that Jahve is the goal of his waiting or hoping. It might appear strange that the poet is willing to make the brevity of human life a reason for being calm, and a ground of comfort. But here we have the explanation. Although not expressly assured of a future life of blessedness, his faith, even in the midst of death, lays hold on Jahve as the Living One and as the God of the living. It is just this which is so heroic in the Old Testament faith, that in the midst of the riddles of the present, and in the face of the future which is lost in dismal night, it casts itself unreservedly into the arms of God. While, however, sin is the root of all evil, the poet prays in Psalm 39:9 before all else, that God would remove from him all the transgressions by which he has fully incurred his affliction; and while, given over to the consequences of his sin, he would become, not only to his own dishonour but also to the dishonour of God, a derision to the unbelieving, he prays in Psalm 39:9 that God would not permit it to come to this. כּל, Psalm 39:9, has Mercha, and is consequently, as in Psalm 35:10, to be read with (not ŏ), since an accent can never be placed by Kametz chatûph. Concerning נבל, Psalm 39:9, see on Psalm 14:1. As to the rest he is silent and calm; for God is the author, viz., of his affliction (עשׂה, used just as absolutely as in Psalm 22:32; Psalm 37:5; Psalm 52:11, Lamentations 1:21). Without ceasing still to regard intently the prosperity of the ungodly, he recognises the hand of God in his affliction, and knows that he has not merited anything better. But it is permitted to him to pray that God would suffer mercy to take the place of right. נגעך is the name he gives to his affliction, as in Psalm 38:12, as being a stroke (blow) of divine wrath; תּגרת ידך, as a quarrel into which God's hand has fallen with him; and by אני, with the almighty (punishing) hand of God, he contrasts himself the feeble one, to whom, if the present state of things continues, ruin is certain. In Psalm 39:12 he puts his own personal experience into the form of a general maxim: when with rebukes (תּוכחות from תּוכחת, collateral form with תּוכחה, תּוכחות) Thou chastenest a man on account of iniquity (perf. conditionale), Thou makest his pleasantness (Isaiah 53:3), i.e., his bodily beauty (Job 33:21), to melt away, moulder away (ותּמס, fut. apoc. from המסה to cause to melt, Psalm 6:7), like the moth (Hosea 5:12), so that it falls away, as a moth-eaten garment falls into rags. Thus do all men become mere nothing. They are sinful and perishing. The thought expressed in Psalm 39:6 is here repeated as a refrain. The music again strikes in here, as there.