This Psalm has been a tough nut to crack, trying to find something to write about. I spent a good few hours racking my brain yesterday before I needed to get on with my day hence why I decided to delay it till today. Heck I even wrote two drafts on slightly different things, but I didn’t like what I wrote.
But something struck my fancy this morning, that is the word vanity. The psalmist sings that:
5Behold, 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. (KJV)
Vanity can pretty much be found in the King James Version only, it was translated as vapour and breath in the NKJV and NIV respectively, and it was leading me down the wrong track. I was thinking of the vapour as something good. But instead understanding the word as vanity, allows me to recognise that David is driving the point home at how transient our lives on earth is.
The Chinese bible goes one step further and uses the word 虚 幻 and is translated as unreal (according to babelfish). Our very image, our beauty is just a facade that is consumed away like a moth (v11). So really there isn’t any point in busying ourselves with the world.
6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow;
Surely they busy themselves in vain;
He heaps up riches,
And does not know who will gather them. (NKJV)
No one cares who you are, as you are but a shadow. If you go about trying to get rich, even if you think it’s for yourself, you can’t even be secure about it, because ultimately our life is still hollow, mere vanity.
7 “And now, Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in You.
Filed under: Cogitations, God, Life, Psalm
