Psalms 39:5

"Behold, thou hast made my days as handbreadths;

And my lifetime is as nothing before thee:

Surely every man at his best estate is altogether vanity. (Selah)"

It appears to us that David mentions the pitiful brevity and vanity of life here as implied reasons leading up to some far greater reality than the pitiful summary of mortal life as all men know it.

The Bard of Avon commented upon this very futility and nothingness of mortal life in these words:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. - William Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth, Act. V, Scene 5, Lines 11-20."

One can hardly resist the speculation that Shakespeare had evidently read this psalm and made his comment on it in the lines just quoted.

We cannot believe, however, that David arrived at the same conclusion as did Shakespeare. There was indeed an answer to David's perplexity, as we shall see. "The very purpose of David's prayer, beginning with this verse, was based in his hope of being led back to a quiet confidence in God, which would dispel the vain thoughts."[17] This vein of thought was applied to all the nations of the world by Isaiah, "All the nations are as nothing before God; they are accounted by him as less than nothing, and vanity" (Isaiah 40:17). This being true of nations, indeed of all nations, how much more is it true of an individual? Not merely David, but all mankind continually stand in crying need of answers to such questions as surface here.