Psalm 39 Bible study: Only a breath

Three times Psalm 39 uses hevel, the word the WEB gives as breath (tap breath): "Surely every man stands as a breath" (39:5), "Surely they busy themselves in vain" (39:6), where in vain is hevel, and "Surely every man is but a breath" (39:11). Brown-Driver-Briggs gives hevel as "vapour, breath". Each of those lines opens with the same Hebrew word, akh, the WEB's Surely, and so does a fourth: "Surely every man walks like a shadow" (39:6). And here is what almost everyone misses: the psalm has Selah twice, and both times it comes straight after the words that every man is a breath (39:5, 39:11).

Psalms 39:5→leads toMatthew 6:27

Teaching his disciples on the mountain (Matthew 5:1-2), Jesus asked, "Which of you by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan?" (Matthew 6:27). The psalm prays, "LORD, show me my end, what is the measure of my days" (Psalm 39:4), and says, "Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you" (Psalm 39:5). Matthew doesn't name Psalm 39, so setting the two together is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, the measure of a life and who sets it: "you have made my days" (Psalm 39:5), and no one can add a moment to it (Matthew 6:27). One reading hears Jesus's question speaking to what the psalm asks to know: the length of a life isn't in a person's own hands, and the psalm, knowing it, turns to the LORD, "My hope is in you" (Psalm 39:7). Another keeps each to its own setting: Jesus's question comes after "Therefore I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear" (Matthew 6:25), and the WEB words the same saying in Luke as "add a cubit to his height" (Luke 12:25), while the psalmist, under the LORD's hand (Psalm 39:10), asks to know how frail he is. These notes don't choose between them, and this line doesn't make the psalmist Jesus, or set Jesus's words as a rebuke of his prayer.

הֶבֶלhevelsay HEH-vel

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "vapour, breath". Strong's: "emptiness or vanity; figuratively, something transitory and unsatisfactory". Psalm 39 has it three times: "Surely every man stands as a breath" (39:5); "Surely they busy themselves in vain" (39:6), where in vain is hevel; and "Surely every man is but a breath" (39:11). The Psalms have it nine times in Hebrew. Psalm 62 has it twice in one verse: "Surely men of low degree are just a breath, and men of high degree are a lie. In the balances they will go up. They are together lighter than a breath" (Psalm 62:9). And Psalm 144 has it beside days: "Man is like a breath. His days are like a shadow that passes away" (Psalm 144:4).