Kejadian 47:9

47:9 Jacob said to Pharaoh, “All ¹  the years of my travels ²  are 130. All ³  the years of my life have been few and painful; ⁴  the years of my travels are not as long as those of my ancestors.” ⁵ 

Ayub 7:7

7:7 Remember ⁶  that my life is but a breath,

that ⁷  my eyes will never again ⁸  see happiness.

Mazmur 39:6

39:6 Surely people go through life as mere ghosts. ⁹ 

Surely they accumulate worthless wealth

without knowing who will eventually haul it away.” ¹⁰ 

Mazmur 39:1

Psalm 39 ¹¹ 

For the music director, Jeduthun; a psalm of David.

39:1 I decided, ¹²  “I will watch what I say

and make sure I do not sin with my tongue. ¹³ 

I will put a muzzle over my mouth

while in the presence of an evil man.” ¹⁴ 

1 Petrus 1:24

1:24 For

all flesh ¹⁵  is like grass

and all its glory like the flower of the grass; ¹⁶ 

the grass withers and the flower falls off,

[47:9]  ¹ tn Heb “the days of.”

[47:9]  ² tn Heb “sojournings.” Jacob uses a term that depicts him as one who has lived an unsettled life, temporarily residing in many different places.

[47:9]  ³ tn Heb “the days of.”

[47:9]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew word רַע (ra’) can sometimes mean “evil,” but that would give the wrong connotation here, where it refers to pain, difficulty, and sorrow. Jacob is thinking back through all the troubles he had to endure to get to this point.

[47:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “and they have not reached the days of the years of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.”

[7:7]  ⁶ sn Job is probably turning here to God, as is clear from v. 11 on. The NIV supplies the word “God” for clarification. It was God who breathed breath into man’s nostrils (Gen 2:7), and so God is called to remember that man is but a breath.

[7:7]  ⁷ tn The word “that” is supplied in the translation.

[7:7]  ⁸ tn The verb with the infinitive serves as a verbal hendiadys: “return to see” means “see again.”

[39:6]  ⁹ tn Heb “surely, as an image man walks about.” The preposition prefixed to “image” indicates identity here.

[39:6]  sn People go through life (Heb “man walks about”). “Walking” is here used as a metaphor for living. The point is that human beings are here today, gone tomorrow. They have no lasting substance and are comparable to mere images or ghosts.

[39:6]  ¹⁰ tc Heb “Surely [in] vain they strive, he accumulates and does not know who gathers them.” The MT as it stands is syntactically awkward. The verb forms switch from singular (“walks about”) to plural (“they strive”) and then back to singular (“accumulates and does not know”), even though the subject (generic “man”) remains the same. Furthermore there is no object for the verb “accumulates” and no plural antecedent for the plural pronoun (“them”) attached to “gathers.” These problems can be removed if one emends the text from הֶבֶל יֶהֱמָיוּן (hevel yehemaun, “[in] vain they strive”) to הֶבְלֵי הָמוֹן (hevley hamon, “vain things of wealth”). This assumes a misdivision in the MT and a virtual dittography of vav (ו) between the mem and nun of המון. The present translation follows this emendation.

[39:1]  ¹¹ sn Psalm 39. The psalmist laments his frailty and mortality as he begs the Lord to take pity on him and remove his disciplinary hand.

[39:1]  ¹² tn Heb “I said.”

[39:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “I will watch my ways, from sinning with my tongue.”

[39:1]  ¹⁴ sn The psalmist wanted to voice a lament to the Lord (see vv. 4-6), but he hesitated to do so in the presence of evil men, for such words might be sinful if they gave the wicked an occasion to insult God. See C. A. Briggs and E. G. Briggs, Psalms (ICC), 1:345.

[1:24]  ¹⁵ sn Here all flesh is a metaphor for humanity – human beings as both frail and temporary.

[1:24]  ¹⁶ tn Or “a wildflower.”