Just A Traveler Passing Through

Psalm 39:8-13

8Rescue me from my rebellion,

for even fools mock me when I rebel.

9I am silent before you; I won’t say a word.

For my punishment is from you.

10Please, don’t punish me anymore!

I am exhausted by the blows from your hand.

11When you discipline people for their sins,

their lives can be crushed like the life of a moth.

Human existence is as frail as breath.

Interlude

12Hear my prayer, O LORD!

Listen to my cries for help!

Don’t ignore my tears.

For I am your guest—

a traveler passing through,

as my ancestors were before me.

13Spare me so I can smile again

before I am gone and exist no more.

David may have been thinking of Abraham when he wrote verse 12. Abraham was a stranger in a foreign land when he came to Canaan. Or perhaps David was thinking of someone like Ittai, one of his generals.

Ittai, a Philistine from the city of Gath, commanded a contingent of six hundred Gittites in David’s army. When David was fleeing from Absalom and everything was in disarray, David told Ittai to go back. “You are a guest in Israel, a foreigner in exile. . . . I don’t even know where we will go. Go on back.”

But Ittai responded, “I will go wherever you go, no matter what happens—whether it means life or death” (2 Samuel 15:19-21).

Or maybe instead of Ittai, David was thinking of his great-grandmother, Ruth, a Moabite, who had chosen to live as a foreigner in the land of Canaan. She told her mother-in-law, “Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God” (Ruth 1:16).

“My only hope is in you,” David confessed earlier in this psalm (verse 7). Now, recognizing his sinfulness, David pleads for God’s mercy. He knew he had no rightful claim on God’s favor. But God had established laws to protect the guests and travelers in the land, and David was coming as Abraham, Ittai, and Ruth had come. He knew that whenever people came as outcasts—requesting, not demanding, and trusting in God’s goodness—God always proved merciful.

I once was an outcast stranger on earth,

A sinner by choice, and an alien by birth;

But I’ve been adopted, my name’s written down,

An heir to a mansion, a robe, and a crown.

HARRIET E. BUELL

A Word on Words

Regarding verse 11: “The moths of the East are very large and beautiful, but short lived. After a few showers these splendid insects may be seen fluttering in every breeze, but the dry weather, and their numerous enemies, soon consign them to a common lot.”

JOHN KITTO

Bible Networking

For some of the regulations that God had established to safeguard the rights of aliens and guests in the land, see Exodus 12:48-49; 22:21; Leviticus 19:33-34; Deuteronomy 10:18-19.