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Psalms

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Psalm 144

1 By David. The Lord, my Protector, deserves praise—the one who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war, 2 who loves me and is my stronghold, my refuge and my deliverer, my shield and the one in whom I take shelter, who makes nations submit to me. 3 O Lord, of what importance is the human race that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind that you should be concerned about them?⁠ 4 People are like a vapor,⁠ their days like a shadow that disappears.⁠ 5 O Lord, make the sky sink and come down. Touch the mountains and make them smolder. 6 Hurl lightning bolts and scatter the enemy. Shoot your arrows and rout them. 7 Reach down from above. Grab me and rescue me from the surging water, from the power of foreigners 8 who speak lies, and make false promises. 9 O God, I will sing a new song to you. Accompanied by a ten-stringed instrument, I will sing praises to you, 10 the one who delivers kings and rescued David his servant from a deadly sword. 11 Grab me and rescue me from the power of foreigners who speak lies and make false promises. 12 Then our sons will be like plants, that quickly grow to full size. Our daughters will be like corner pillars, carved like those in a palace. 13 Our storehouses will be full, providing all kinds of food. Our sheep will multiply by the thousands and fill our pastures. 14 Our cattle will be weighted down with produce. No one will break through our walls, no one will be taken captive, and there will be no terrified cries in our city squares. 15 How blessed are the people who experience these things. How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.

Texts in conversation

Compare Psalm 144:3 and Job 7:17

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Psalm 144 wonders why humans, so small and fragile, should matter at all, reflecting on the shortness of life. Job uses the same language but shifts to a darker and more cynical tone, where constant divine attention feels overwhelming and harsh.

Passages

Psalm 144:3

Hebrew Bible
1 By David. The Lord, my Protector, deserves praise—the one who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war, 2 who loves me and is my stronghold, my refuge and my deliverer, my shield and the one in whom I take shelter, who makes nations submit to me. 3 O Lord, of what importance is the human race that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind that you should be concerned about them? 4 People are like a vapor, their days like a shadow that disappears. 5 O Lord, make the sky sink and come down. Touch the mountains and make them smolder.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

Job 7:17

Hebrew Bible
15 so that I would prefer strangling and death more than life. 16 I loathe it; I do not want to live forever; leave me alone, for my days are a vapor! 17 “What is mankind that you make so much of them, and that you pay attention to them? 18 And that you visit them every morning, and try them every moment? 19 Will you never look away from me, will you not let me alone long enough to swallow my spittle?
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Job

References

"... if the formula in Psalm 8:5 (“what is man that you should remember him, and the son of man that you should visit him”) would already have the sense of “accusation” and “punishment,” there is nothing in Job 7:17–18 to parody the viewpoint of Psalm 8:5. Following Coats’s view, Raymond van Leeuwen argues that the claim that Job 7:17–18 is a parody of Psalm 8:5 should be dismissed since the lexical formula is “stereotypical, with free variations” and should most likely be comprehended as “literary adaptations still standing close to a living, oral formula.” Then, one needs to consider the viewpoint of humanity in Job 7:17–18, which has more reasonable homogeneity with Psalm 144:3–4 than Psalm 8:5–7 ..."
JiSeong J. Kwon, “Not Parody, but Irony: Irony in the Book of Job,” in Irony in the Bible: Between Subversion and Innovation, ed. Tobias Häner, Virginia Miller, and Carolyn J. Sharp (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 114–131.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Psalm 144:3 and Job 7:17

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