Psalms 39

I said, “I will watch my ways, so that I don’t sin with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me.” Wesley: I said—I fully resolved. Take heed—To order all my actions right, and particularly to govern my tongue. Resolve aims first at the tongue under the wicked's eye.

Set a deliberate watch on speech before the wicked. Guard ways and muzzle the mouth; do not let presence of the ungodly bait you into sinful talk.

Calvin: I said marks purpose of the heart before God, not boasting before men; conscious of weakness and Satan's devices, he muzzles the mouth that not one impatient word escape. While the wicked standeth—even while the worst prosper, exalted and despising, he determined not to be troubled at it.

Bridle affections so no impious dissatisfaction against God slips out. Watch while the wicked prosper; patience is proved when exaltation of the ungodly is before your eyes.

I was mute with silence. I held my peace, even from good. My sorrow was stirred. Wesley: 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.

Own that forced silence can deepen grief. Forbear indecent speech without pretending the heart is quiet; bring the stirred distress to God.

Calvin: long and steadfast silence, as if deaf—not a momentary whim. From good: though able adequately to defend himself with just grounds of complaint, he refrained of his own mere will rather than indulge intemperate sorrow; yet at length the violence of grief broke through the barriers.

Prefer forgoing even a righteous self-defense to murmuring. When silence finally breaks, fear the same fall; learn from David's failure mid-course.

My heart was hot within me. While I meditated, the fire burned. I spoke with my tongue: Inward heat under musing breaks the resolve; speech follows fire.

Watch the musing that kindles. Heat within is not harmless private thought; bring burning meditation to God before the tongue runs.

Calvin: suppressed grief became the more inflamed; the more one strives to obey and exercise patience, the more vigorously Satan assails. Like hot exhalations meeting clouds, resistance of the flesh raises thunder; at last he uttered foolish and unadvised words—a mirror of infirmity.

Expect hotter conflict when you resist. Do not despair when fire burns in musing; take warning and seek shelter under God's wings rather than loud complaint.

“O LORD, show me my end, what is the measure of my days. Let me know how frail I am! Wesley: My end—Make me sensible of the shortness and uncertainly of life, and the near approach of death. The broken silence turns to a plea for felt frailty.

Ask to feel how fleeting you are. Sensibility of short days should humble pride and hurry you toward God, not toward despair.

Calvin: transported by improper and sinful excess of passion, he finds fault with God—why deal so severely with a mortal whose life is but a moment? There is irony: he does not ask to learn brevity as if unknown, but presses whether remaining years can recompense such miseries.

Learn frailty without murmuring at severity. Feel your nothingness so as to seek mercy; refuse the complaint that treats God's rigor as unjust toward a short life.

Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath! Wesley: Before thee—If compared with thee, and with thy everlasting duration. Handbreadths and breath measure every standing human life before the Eternal.

Compare your days with his everlasting duration. Let mere breath cut down pretension; seek the God before whom lifetime is nothing.

Calvin: a hand-breadth—life flies so that end touches beginning; wholly vanity even while standing—in prime and seeming power, still a bubble. Prosperity intoxicates men into dreaming an immortal state on earth; adversity makes them feel nothingness before God.

Confess vanity at full strength, not only in weakness. Refuse earth-immortality dreams; let felt frailty drive you as a humble suppliant to his compassion.

Surely every man walks like a shadow. Surely they busy themselves in vain. He heaps up, and doesn’t know who shall gather! Wesley: Vain shew—Heb. in a shadow or image; in an imaginary rather than a life… appearances and dreams, than truths and realities. Disquieted—bustling tumult seeking riches, vexing themselves and others.

Name the empty bustle around wealth. Do not mistake shadow-life for solid happiness; release anxious heaping to the God who outlasts gatherers.

Calvin: nothing substantial in man—only display and ostentation; the fashion passes away. Height of vanity: they disquiet themselves in vain, heaping riches without knowing who shall gather—insatiable desire as if to live a hundred lives. Recollection of hand-breadth life is the remedy for unnecessary cares.

Cut unbridled acquisition by remembering brevity. Refuse the madness that confounds heaven and earth as if mortal man would never leave his heap.

“And Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you. Wesley: Now 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. Brevity drives hope to the only solid refuge.

Answer vanity with hope in God alone. When enjoyments prove short, wait for him; seek happiness nowhere else.

Calvin: having felt ardent emotion and disquiet, he returns to a calm settled mind—the turn from inconsiderate complaint to appropriate prayer. Now has force: flattery no longer deceives; yet conviction of vanity must press forward until expectation depends on God who creates something out of nothing.

Pass through felt frailty into hope toward him. Do not stop at emptied vanity like worldly men who grow insensible; wait on the Lord as your only support.

Deliver me from all my transgressions. Don’t make me the reproach of the foolish! Hope asks first for deliverance from sins, then shielding from fools' reproach.

Seek pardon as the root of relief. Ask to be spared the scorn of the foolish; keep transgression, not mere circumstance, at the center of the plea.

Calvin: no longer murmuring, he humbly acknowledges guilt and has recourse to mercy—deliverance from all transgressions, not one only. Trace miseries to their source; as soon as reconciled, chastisement ceases. Reproach of the foolish: either not abandoned to the wicked's mockery, or not involved in the disgrace of the reprobate.

Pray forgiveness before you pray only for eased pain. Dry the source; ask that fools not make your chastening their sport.

I was mute. I didn’t open my mouth, because you did it. Silence returns on a new ground: the Lord's own doing shuts the mouth.

Close the mouth because he has done it. Accept the stroke as from his hand; refuse the open complaint that denies his agency.

Calvin: not unbroken restraint as praise, but self-correction—what doest thou, murmuring against God? The profitable lesson: we have to do not with mortal man but with God, who maintains his righteousness. Affliction proceeded from him; therefore keep silence and submit under his mighty hand as to a righteous Judge.

Recall whose hand it is when grief swells. Humble yourself under the Judge; let persuasion of his righteousness kill outrageous accusation.

Remove your scourge away from me. I am overcome by the blow of your hand. Wesley: Remove—Take off the judgment which thou hast inflicted upon me. I am—Help me before I am utterly lost. Spent under hostility, he asks the stroke lifted before ruin is complete.

Plead for removal while owning the hand that struck. Ask help before you are utterly lost; urgency and confession belong together.

Calvin: confirms the prayer for pardon joined to gentle dealing; such prayer, framed by the word, is not noisy provocation but proceeds from calm faith and patience. He has fainted by the blow of God's hand—bearing infirmity, not excusing fault.

Ask mitigated stroke after seeking forgiveness. Own that you faint under his hand; seek relief as a penitent, not as a plaintiff against his justice.

When you rebuke and correct man for iniquity, you consume his wealth like a moth. Surely every man is but a breath. Selah! Wesley: 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.

Tremble at secret consuming under rebuke for iniquity. What is dear wastes like cloth under the moth; let breath-vanity send you to mercy.

Calvin: rebukes here mark severe punishments—tokens of strict justice, not the tempered fatherly rod that mingles comfort for believers. No man of valor or excellence withstands when this rigor is felt; God as moth secretly gnaws what pride esteems precious, though the world may not hear thunder.

Distinguish crushing rebuke from tempered chastisement. Let moth-like loss of excellency cure pride; search the heart until vanity unseats presumption.

“Hear my prayer, LORD, and give ear to my cry. Don’t be silent at my tears. For I am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers. Wesley: A stranger—I am only in my journey or passage to my home, which is in the other world. Prayer, cry, and tears rise from a guest's brief stay.

Pray as a sojourner headed home. Hold tears before him; refuse to live as if this lodging were the final house.

Calvin: gradation—prayer, then crying, then tears—shows sincere bottom-heart pleading, a rule for prayer. Stranger and sojourner before God: he knows without informant how short the paid lodging of human life; from heaven he sees how miserable we would be without his sustaining mercy.

Increase vehemence without losing reverence. Plead as a guest whose fathers also passed through; ask hearing because he already knows the brevity.

Were. Oh spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go away and exist no more!” Wesley: No more—Among the living, or in this world. The close asks relief of the gaze of judgment so joy may return before death ends earthly life.

Ask for restored smile under mercy before departure. Own that life in this world ends; seek the look that heals rather than consumes, while hope remains in him.

Calvin: cease from me—grant relaxation that he may recover strength before departure. He speaks from disquiet of the flesh, asking respite at least to die; he errs in exceeding proper limits, yet still acknowledges no restoration without God's ceased displeasure. Be no more names despairing form, not denial of salvation.

Pray for relief without demanding a merely quiet death as the goal. Correct fleshly excess; seek calm to commit the soul into his hands, hope still anchored in the Lord.