Measuring the Mist Text: Psalm 39:4-6
Introduction: The Unsettling Question
There are certain truths that modern man will do almost anything to avoid. We live in a culture that has perfected the art of distraction. We have our entertainments, our ambitions, our politics, and our endless scrolling, all of it a grand conspiracy to keep one particular question from ever landing with its full weight. It is the question of our own finitude. It is the question of our own mortality. We know in the abstract that we will die, but we live as though we are exempt. We are like men on a train hurtling toward a cliff, who spend all their time redecorating their cabin.
David, in this psalm, refuses to play that game. He is agitated. He is unsettled. Earlier in the psalm, he resolved to keep silent before the wicked, because he knew that if he spoke of his troubles, they would twist his words. The ungodly have no category for honest wrestling before a holy God. They see a man troubled by the brevity of life and they call it despair. But David’s trouble is not the despair of an unbeliever; it is the holy agitation of a man who wants to see reality for what it is. He wants God to teach him wisdom, and he knows that wisdom begins with a right understanding of our own creaturely limits.
This is a prayer that God would teach him a lesson he desperately needs to learn. It is a request for a divine education in transience. He is asking God to pull back the curtain and show him the arithmetic of his own life. This is not a morbid obsession. It is the necessary prerequisite for a life of true significance. As Moses prayed, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). If you do not know how short your life is, you will waste it. You will spend your handbreadth of time chasing after the wind, piling up treasures for a stranger's garage sale. But if God grants you this unsettling wisdom, if He teaches you to measure the mist, then and only then can you begin to live a life that counts for eternity.
The Text
“Yahweh, cause me to know my end And what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am. Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my lifetime as nothing before You; Surely every man, even standing firm, is altogether vanity. Selah. Surely every man walks about as a shadow; Surely they make an uproar in vain; He piles up riches and does not know who will gather them.”
(Psalm 39:4-6 LSB)
A Divine Education in Frailty (v. 4)
David begins with a direct petition. He wants God to be his instructor in the hard school of reality.
“Yahweh, cause me to know my end And what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am.” (Psalm 39:4)
This is a dangerous prayer, but a necessary one. David is asking God to make him spiritually sober. "Let me know my end." This is not a request for the date of his death on a calendar. It is a request for a deep, settled, heart-level understanding of his own mortality. He wants to live his life in light of its certain conclusion. The word for "transient" here carries the idea of ceasing, of failing. "Let me know how quickly I will cease to be."
Our culture tells us to think positive, to not dwell on such things. But the Bible tells us that true wisdom, true joy, is only found on the other side of this recognition. You cannot truly live until you have come to terms with the fact that you are going to die. This is why the Puritans used to say, "Keep death's head before you." They understood that a constant awareness of our frailty is a powerful antidote to pride, and a powerful stimulant to faithful action.
David wants to know the "extent" of his days. He wants to see the measuring tape laid out next to his life. This is a prayer against the self-deception that plagues us all. We naturally think we have more time than we do. We procrastinate repentance, we delay obedience, we assume there will always be a tomorrow. David is asking God to shatter that illusion. He is saying, "Lord, cure me of my presumption. Show me the finish line, not so I can despair, but so I can run the race with all my might."
God's Measurement and Man's Reality (v. 5)
In verse 5, the answer to David's prayer begins to dawn on him. He sees his life from God's perspective, and the sight is humbling.
"Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my lifetime as nothing before You; Surely every man, even standing firm, is altogether vanity. Selah." (Psalm 39:5 LSB)
God is the one who has fashioned things this way. Our lives are short on purpose. God has made our days like "handbreadths." A handbreadth is the width of four fingers. It is a tiny measurement. It is a way of saying that our time here is compressed, brief, and gone in a flash. My lifetime, David says, is "as nothing before You." In the presence of the eternal God, who inhabits eternity, our eighty years are not even a rounding error. They are a zero.
And this is not just true for the weak or the sickly. It is true for "every man, even standing firm." Take a man at his absolute best, in the prime of his life, at the height of his power and influence, looking like he could conquer the world. What is he? "Altogether vanity." The Hebrew word is hebel. It means vapor, smoke, a puff of wind. It is the central theme of Ecclesiastes. All is hebel. This is not a statement that life is meaningless. It is a statement about its substance. It is insubstantial. It is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:14).
Then comes that crucial word: "Selah." This is a musical notation, but it is also an instruction to the reader. It means pause. Think about this. Let it sink in. Don't just rush on to the next thought. Meditate on the fact that your life, in its most robust state, is a puff of smoke before the eternal God. This is not meant to crush us, but to cure us of our self-importance. We are not the center of the universe. We are not masters of our fate. We are smoke. And this realization is the beginning of sanity.
The Vain Show (v. 6)
Verse 6 expands on this theme of hebel, showing how this vanity plays out in the frantic, pointless activity of man apart from God.
"Surely every man walks about as a shadow; Surely they make an uproar in vain; He piles up riches and does not know who will gather them." (Psalm 39:6 LSB)
Man "walks about as a shadow." A shadow has form but no substance. It is a mere image, a phantom. This is a picture of the life lived for this world alone. It looks impressive, it makes a shape on the ground, but there is nothing to it. It is a "vain show," a parade of pomp and circumstance signifying nothing of eternal worth.
And what does this shadow-man do? "Surely they make an uproar in vain." Look at our world. Look at the sound and fury of our politics, our media, our corporate ladder-climbing. It is a constant uproar, a noisy, agitated striving. And for what? In vain. It is the energy of hamsters on a wheel. It is a great commotion that accomplishes nothing of lasting value.
The psalmist gives the prime example: "He piles up riches and does not know who will gather them." This is the great folly of materialism. A man spends his entire handbreadth of life, his puff of smoke, raking together a pile of wealth. He is like a miser with arthritic hands, good for nothing but scraping coins into a pile. And he is doing nothing but raking smoke for someone else to inherit, someone who will likely waste it. Jesus told the parable of the rich fool, who built bigger barns for his stuff, only to have his soul required of him that very night. "Then whose will those things be which you have provided?" (Luke 12:20). It is the ultimate exercise in futility.
From Vanity to Hope
Now, if the psalm ended here, it would be nothing more than the bleakest despair. If all we are is smoke and shadow, then why bother? But this psalm does not end here. This clear-eyed assessment of our creaturely vanity is not the end of the story; it is the foundation for the gospel. The very next verse provides the turning point: "And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You" (Ps. 39:7).
Understanding our own nothingness is what drives us out of ourselves and into the arms of God. The man who thinks he is something will never flee to Christ. The man who believes his life is a great and solid thing will never seek the Rock of Ages. It is only when we see that we are hebel, that we are smoke, that we are a vain show, that we are driven to find our hope, our substance, and our meaning in the one who is eternal.
This is why this meditation is so profoundly Christian. We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Heb. 11:13). This world, in its current form, is not our home. Our life is a handbreadth here, but our citizenship is in heaven. The recognition of our transience is what frees us from the tyranny of this present age. It frees us to stop piling up smoke and to start laying up treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys.
The gospel does not deny the vanity of man; it answers it. In Jesus Christ, the eternal Word became flesh. The one who is all substance took on the form of a shadow, so that we who are shadows might be given true substance in Him. He endured the ultimate futility of the cross, so that our short, smoky lives could be infused with eternal purpose. Because of the resurrection, we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). The uproar of the world is vanity, but the quiet work of a mother raising her children in the fear of the Lord is an eternal weight of glory. The frantic piling up of riches is smoke, but a cup of cold water given in Jesus' name echoes in eternity.
So let us pray David's prayer. Lord, teach us to number our days. Show us our frailty. Let us see that we are but a handbreadth, a vapor, a shadow. And in that humbling knowledge, drive us to the only place where hope is to be found. Drive us out of our vain shows and into the glorious, substantial, and eternal reality of Jesus Christ. For our hope is in Him, and in Him alone.