Ps. 39.5 (everything is merely)

“Behold / you have made / my days / mere handbreaths – and my lifetime / is as nothing / before you. – The totality / of mankind / standing firm / is merely vapor.” As a prefatory remark, here in verse 5 the focus will be on the ‘duration’ of man and its utter inconsequentiality; verse 6 will focus on man’s plans (in other words, his ‘will’). Both of these, man’s life and man’s plans, dissolve into nothingness. By comparing both of these, and subjecting them to the same judgment, the psalmist is attempting to show how the entirety of mankind, from his being to his willing, is insubstantial and but the gesture of vaporous images. It is disturbing. Verse 5: Here begins what could be called an anti-liturgical hymn to creation. It is stark, profoundly disturbing and almost seemingly sarcastic to Yhwh. This is felt from the very first word, “Behold”. Although this word often does ring out when Yhwh’s majesty is present, and even when his utter superiority over creation is emphasized, here it feels very different. In other contexts it is a word of comfort, that Yhwh’s superiority in comparison with creation is supposed to emphasize that he is utterly superior to whatever forces are at odds with his covenant partner. Here, by contrast, it seems to focus more on the paltriness and banality of creation than on Yhwh’s superiority. There is nothing ‘comforting’ about this ‘beholding’ of creation. This sense is confirmed in the repeated use of “merely”: “my days mere handbreaths…mankind is merely vapor…man is merely an image…wealth is merely vapor.” When the curtain is pulled back all one catches a glimpse of is shadows and vapor (although ‘handbreaths’ refers to one of the smallest measurements I wonder if this sense of ‘breath’ is what to play off of ‘vapor’). That is all creation is before Yhwh. Nothing is solid, nothing is permanent, nothing is enduring. Rather, everything is subjected to this withering description of ‘merely’. This small but devastating word is the adjective prior to all of the created order of mankind. Nothing is more than ‘merely’. And this, importantly, is what Yhwh “has made”. Even when all of mankind “stands firm” in its own sight, it is “merely vapor”. The psalmist, here, for the first time now expands his vision out of personal and into the totality; he moves from “my days” to “the totality of mankind”. As for one, so for the whole. Just as his life is “nothing”, so too is “all of mankind”. All sense of proportion is lost.