Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
We spend our years as a tale - The Vulgate has: Anni nostri sicut aranea meditabuntur; "Our years pass away like those of the spider." Our plans and operations are like the spider' s web; life is as frail, and the thread of it as brittle, as one of those that constitute the well-wrought and curious, but fragile, habitation of that insect. All the Versions have the word spider; but it neither appears in the Hebrew, nor in any of its MSS. which have been collated.
My old Psalter has a curious paraphrase here: "Als the iran (spider) makes vayne webs for to take flese (flies) with gile, swa our yeres ere ockupide in ydel and swikel castes about erthly thynges; and passes with outen frute of gude werks, and waste in ydel thynkyns." This is too true a picture of most lives.
But the Hebrew is different from all the Versions. "We consume our years ( kemo hegeh ) like a groan." We live a dying, whining, complaining life, and at last a groan is its termination! How amazingly expressive!
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