Wesley's Notes on the Bible < 39:1 I said - I fully resolved. Take heed - To order all my actions right, and particularly to govern my tongue.
I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. 39:2 Dumb - Two words put together, expressing the same thing, to aggravate or increase it. I held - I forbear to speak, what I justly might, lest I should break forth into some indecent expressions. Stirred - My silence did not assuage my grief, but increase it.
My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue,
LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am. 39:4 My end - Make me sensible of the shortness and uncertainly of life, and the near approach of death.
Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. 39:5 Before thee - If compared with thee, and with thy everlasting duration.
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. 39:6 Vain shew - Heb. in a shadow or image; in an imaginary rather than a real life: in the pursuit of vain imaginations, in which there is nothing solid or satisfactory: man in and his life, and all his happiness in this world, are rather appearances and dreams, than truths and realities. Disquieted - Heb. They make a noise, bustling, or tumult, with unwearied industry seeking for riches, and troubling and vexing both themselves and others in the pursuit of them.
And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee. 39:7 Mow Lord - Seeing this life and all its enjoyments are so vain and short. My hope - I will seek for happiness no where but in God.
Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish.
I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.
Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. 39:10 Remove - Take off the judgment which thou hast inflicted upon me. I am - Help me before I am utterly lost.
When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah. 39:11 Beauty - His comeliness and all his excellencies or felicities. Moth - As a moth consumeth a garment, to which God compares himself and his judgments, secretly and insensibly consuming a people, Isa 51:8.
Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. 39:12 A stranger - I am only in my journey or passage to my real home, which is in the other world.
O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more. 39:13 No more - Among the living, or in this world. Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible by John Wesley [1754-65] Bible Hub |
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