The psalm before us is "A prayer of Moshe, the man of God," and in this section we arrive at the verses dealing with the brevity of human life: how many years man is given, what substance fills those days, and what one is meant to accomplish during them. We will follow the order of the verses - from the famous question regarding "seventy years," through the meaning of "gevurot" (strength), "rohebam" (their pride), and "gaz chish" (swiftly cut off), culminating in the plea "Teach us to number our days aright."
יְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרׇהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן כִּי־גָז חִישׁ וַנָּעֻפָה׃ - The days of our years within them are seventy years, and if by reason of strength, eighty years; yet their pride is travail and vanity, for it is swiftly cut off, and we fly away.
Radak asks a straightforward question: this psalm was composed by Moshe Rabbeinu, and Moshe lived for one hundred and twenty years. How, then, could he say, "The days of our years within them are seventy years"?
Tosafot in Tractate Yevamot address this and explain: even though this verse appears in the prayer of Moshe, and Moshe lived one hundred and twenty years, David presumably stated it, for we find that David lived that long, whereas Moshe lived longer. That is to say, David HaMelech incorporated Moshe's songs into his book of Tehillim, and when it says "seventy years," these words were expressed by David, even though the psalm as a whole originates from Moshe.
However, Radak maintains that this is not a difficulty at all, because the verse speaks of the majority. Moshe is lamenting the brevity of life about which every generation laments in exile: our days are short, and we cannot endure and expect to live to see the salvation and redemption with our own eyes, since our days are seventy years, or with strength, eighty years. Moshe himself was an exception, and one does not use an anomaly as the standard for human life.
At first glance, applying the term "gevurot" (strength) to an eighty-year-old seems paradoxical: for a thirty-year-old to reach strength is understandable, but an eighty-year-old has reached frailty, not strength. Radak explains, however, that the "strength" here does not refer to man's vigor, but rather to the force of nature: nature's strength prevailed within him and sustained him until the age of eighty. It is the natural course of bodily strength to decline to nothingness around the age of seventy; if the power of nature overcomes and holds strong, one may live to eighty. Beyond eighty, Radak notes, only a very rare few are to be found.
It is worth noting that general life expectancy has risen. While it is commonly said that average life expectancy in the Middle Ages was around forty years, this is a misleading statistic: it does not mean people naturally died at forty, but rather that infant and child mortality was widespread. Anyone whose family immigrated from abroad can tell of siblings and relatives who passed away in childhood. The slightest infection could prove fatal. There was no tetanus shot, no vaccines, polio was a devastating epidemic, and there were no antibiotics. Women also frequently died during childbirth, or shortly thereafter from minor infections, since modern sterilization did not exist. Death was far more common then than it is today.
Today, for several decades now, statistics demonstrate that human life expectancy continues to rise. Part of this is due to medications and medical procedures: someone with a heart condition once departed from this world, whereas today a catheterization is performed, opening the arteries, granting another twenty years. There is dialysis, there are life-prolonging machines, and people live years that would have been unattainable in earlier eras.
Yet here, proper perspective must be maintained. Suppose the mail carrier arrives and delivers a letter containing two thousand dollars sent by an uncle from the United States. One might be overwhelmed: "Listen, this mailman is an amazing person! He brought me two thousand dollars! Maybe you can set up a meeting with him, he is so wonderful!" That is precisely what people do when speaking of a doctor. The doctor is merely the messenger; he is not the one who sent the gift.
Thus, one should not wonder at "seventy years, and if with strength, eighty years," for this is the reality of most of the world. And Moshe, who lived to one hundred and twenty, was an exception, and one cannot extrapolate from him to the life span of all mankind.
"Their pride" (rohbom) refers to the strength of those days, as in the phrase "the youth will act brazenly against the elder" (yirhabu ha-na'ar bazaken), meaning that the youth will assert strength against the elder. That is to say, even one whose days are peaceful - they too are toil and futility, for his days are not long and are continually growing shorter. "Toil and futility" (amal va'aven) means effort and exertion that have no real substance; "aven" is an expression of falsehood, an action that yields no benefit.
What is the meaning of "gaz"? It means to fly and depart from its place, as in "and swept quail from the sea" (vayagaz salvim) - meaning He blew the quail over; and similarly, "from my mother's womb You drew me forth" (attah gozi) - bringing me out quickly. So too here: the strength of days passes away, and through this we fly toward the grave. Life is shortened and ends swiftly.
They tell of Rav Chaim Kanievsky that he would always speak in verses - whatever question he was asked, everything came from sources, everything from the Torah. Once he was sitting in a car and the driver had not started driving, so he said to him: "Gaz chish vena'ufah" - step on the gas and start moving! And once someone asked him: "Rabbi, when will Mashiach come?" The inquirer thought he would receive dates and hours. Rav Chaim told him: "When he comes, you will be notified."
Rashi explains "and if with strength, eighty years" - if his days grew strong and were not cut short, he reaches eighty. In his view, "their pride" (rohbom) is an expression of greatness and dominion, like "Rahab" said of Egypt, and "nor turned to the arrogant and strayers after falsehood" (rehavim vesatei khazav). Rahav denotes pride, and the meaning is: the greatness and dominion a person possesses during these days are toil and futility. In an instant, very quickly, it flies away and is gone: "for it passes swiftly, and we fly away" - we swiftly fly away and die.
The Malbim explains: "The days of our years among them" - in our ordinary years, seventy years; "and if with strength" - which is beyond the natural course - they extend to eighty years. "And their pride" refers to the elevation of the days: those matters through which a person elevates his life, the deeds by which he leaves an imprint and becomes renowned as one who accomplished and built - they too are toil and futility.
And "chish" is an expression of speed, as in "they hastened and went swiftly," and as in "quick, make haste, do not stand still." The rush of time is called chish. And "gaz" is from the language of shearing and cutting: with every passing moment, a moment of life is sheared away and becomes history. Another minute is cut off and passes into the past, and another minute, and another minute - and one could say the same of seconds and milliseconds. "And we fly away" - we fly swiftly toward absence, toward cessation, toward nothingness.
Yet one should not despair over this; quite the contrary. Every moment that passes, one has the opportunity to fill it. If one studied Torah during it, heard a shiur, spoke words of Torah, fulfilled a mitzvah, or performed an act of kindness, it certainly did not pass in vain. But if one wasted it on nonsense, then the heart truly aches: another moment is burned away, and another moment, and life steadily burns out. What is our life? Moments. Time is a person's very life, and man is given each moment in order to fill it.
"And Avraham was old, well on in years [literally: came with his days]" - all of his days were full and holy, and he arrived with them, without a single day missing. But a person who has one day where "it just didn't work out for me," another day where "I woke up tired," and a third where "melancholy overtook me" - every day brings a different excuse, life passes by, and that lost reality will never return.
A story is told of a teacher who wanted to show his student, who was wasting a great deal of time, how his days were vanishing into nothingness. He brought him a wooden board and told him: For every day you waste and do not study properly, drive a nail into a square. Day after day after day. By the end of the year, he had a board completely covered with nails, resembling a bed of nails. When he saw this, he received the shock of his life and resolved to change. He went to the teacher and said: I want to change. The teacher replied: A new year is beginning - for every day you utilize properly, pull out one nail. And so it was: he studied properly, and nail after nail came out. At the end of the year, he came to the teacher with a sense of triumph: Look, even the last nail has been extracted. The teacher said: That is not how I gave you the board. The student looked and said: True, it is full of holes. So what? The teacher told him: A hole remains a hole.
It is heartbreaking. A person says: Fine, now I will do it - but the hole remains a hole. What you missed, you lost. This is what Chazal meant by, "A twisted thing cannot be made straight." If I did not recite Shema yesterday, and tomorrow I will recite it on time - what was not recited yesterday is a twisted thing that cannot be repaired, and the hole remains. You can do teshuvah, and by that you have pulled out the nail; but filling the hole is impossible. I regretted it, I repented, fine - but in actual reality, I did not recite it.
From this, a person should realize how worthwhile it is to seize every moment. Reality passes and flies away, "for it is soon cut off, and we fly away," and the question is how we fill it and pour substance into it. A moment that, instead of turning into mere history and passing into nothingness and absence, we transferred into eternity, because it was filled with Torah, with a mitzvah, with doing the will of Hashem. It is not burned away, nor does it perish and vanish. Indeed, this is reflected in the Hebrew word used by our more secular brethren when they speak of going out to have fun: "levalot" (to spend time / hang out). It is a precise definition - derived from beliyah, wear and decay. There was a moment, and that moment had tremendous potential, and what did you do with it? You wore it away, turned it into something threadbare and spent, a moment lost from life. Yet you had the opportunity to fill it.
מִי־יוֹדֵעַ עֹז אַפֶּךָ וּכְיִרְאָתְךָ עֶבְרָתֶךָ׃ - Who knows the power of Your wrath, and Your fury is according to the fear due You?
Rashi explains: Who, in such a brief span of time, can acquire the heart to know the power of Your wrath so as to fear You? In simple terms, time is too short to attain fear of Heaven within such a brief lifespan as we have seen. And on the words "and Your fury is according to the fear due You," Rashi comments: Just as You are awesome, so Your fury is harsh, and You exact retribution from sinners. In proportion to the degree of fear one ought to feel before Him, such is the degree of anger and wrath upon one who did not fear Him, but defied His word.
The Radak explains: "Who knows the power of Your wrath" - who can protect himself from Your wrath, and are there any signs to foresee it? To this the verse responds: Here is a sign - "Your fury is according to the fear due You." Notice the direction: In proportion to how much fear of You resides in a person, so is Your fury directed at him. This is the opposite of what we might have thought. The more a person possesses fear of Hashem, the more His wrath falls upon him when he sins.
Consider Moshe Rabbeinu: for a sin so subtle that it is virtually imperceptible, requiring a magnifying glass and a telescope even to attempt to comprehend it. The holy Or HaChaim presents ten explanations there, refutes them all, and offers his own explanation - which others challenge as well. This shows how difficult it is to understand what Moshe's sin even was. And Moshe was the greatest person of fear of Heaven in all generations, yet "Hashem was furious with me because of you." "Your fury is according to the fear due You" - and that very same sin, as Radak phrases it, would not have been held against anyone else. Likewise, we find regarding the sons of Aharon, "I will be sanctified through those who are near to Me," and similarly, "You alone have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you." On the contrary - precisely from someone of stature is a strict reckoning demanded.
This makes complete sense. If a troublemaker in class misses three days, the teacher is in no rush to investigate; no big deal, let him take a vacation, nobody is pressing him. By contrast, an outstanding student who breathes life into the class misses just one day, and immediately the phone calls begin: What happened? The class simply isn't the same. People might ask: That other student was absent for three days and you didn't call, yet for this one you call after only one day? The answer is: It is you I want. As for the other one, let him stay away for two weeks; maybe he will switch classes or even switch schools, baruch Hashem! But to lose you? As long as someone is a person of stature, there is someone to talk to, and there is purpose in holding him accountable; but from one who is lowly and weak, what can you demand?
And this is what Chazal say, that the way of the Holy One, blessed be He, is like a merchant: a merchant who wants to show you that his product is good selects the very finest specimen to demonstrate with. Once, someone went to buy pecans - his wife had sent him, so he passed by the market and went in. He asked: "Do you have pecans? Are they good? Full?" The vendor replied: "Of course!" He took two and cracked them open - and both were empty. Not very pleasant. There was another instance where someone wanted to demonstrate that a certain product was unbreakable; he threw it down from above - and it shattered. A merchant who wants to demonstrate always takes the best specimen, not a defective one, so that he can prove the item is truly superior.
In the same way, one must understand: when the Holy One, blessed be He, puts someone to the test, it is only with sound vessels, not with broken or cracked ones. One does not put such a vessel to the test; rather, one takes a good vessel. So too, when there is fury before Him, blessed be He, it is directed at a worthy person, whom it makes sense to hold to high standards and expect great things from, because he is a person of high spiritual stature. But one whose level is already low and whose spirituality is diminished - there His awe is absent, and consequently His fury is absent. This does not mean he will not pay a price; whoever sins will pay the price, if not now then in the future. It is simply that it does not come immediately and with intense wrath as we saw with Moshe.
And this is what was said earlier, "For all our days pass away in Your wrath": as a result of that anger, death was decreed upon the entire human race. And this is comparable to the great fear of Hashem that encompasses the whole world - for when you see one person who strayed and rebelled just once, and how profoundly this affects all of humanity for generations, from this comes fear of Heaven: to understand how careful a person must be not to err, for behold, a single mistake - see what follows in its wake.
לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חׇכְמָה׃ - So teach us to number our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom.
The Malbim explains: since, due to the brevity of our days, we have no grasp of either Your anger or Your wrath - our lives are short, and they end even before we have begun to learn. As the saying goes, a person studies his entire life and in the end dies a fool. How much can we accomplish in such a short time? Surely we cannot achieve perfection. Therefore we plead: Master of the Universe, it is fitting that You make known to us how to number our days in a way that we may bring into them a heart of wisdom.
The Malbim emphasizes that venavi ("and we may bring") does not stem from navi (prophet), but from hava'ah (bringing) - that we shall bring. In contrast to what was stated earlier, "their pride is weariness and futility," we ask that You teach us how to bring wisdom into the days of our lives, so that our days will not be weariness and futility, and we will not invest them in vanity and emptiness. Rather, may we know how to utilize this life in the proper way, to increase the service of Hashem within it, and not sink into an empty reality devoid of benefit and substance.
Rashi explains: "To number our days" - make known in the world the tally of our days, meaning give us good tidings of length of days, so that we may acquire understanding and bring into them a heart of wisdom. Rashi, too, interprets venavi as related to bringing: if You prolong our days, we will have enough time to bring a heart of wisdom; we will have a life long enough to learn and fulfill Hashem's commandments properly.
And there is a beautiful allusion here: How long is our lifespan? Seventy years. And ken ("so") in gematria - chaf equals twenty and nun equals fifty - is seventy. "To number our days ken," corresponding to the number of years in our lives, which is seventy years, meaning they are few.
And what is the meaning of hoda ("make known")? Rashi brings an additional explanation, that it is an expression of suffering and chastisement, as in "and he disciplined (vayoda) with them the men of Sukkot" - that he thrashed them with thorns. Meaning: Master of the Universe, our days are so short, and in these few days You afflict us as well - "ken hoda."
It was once noted that this number is also hinted at in the words of Esther. She asks Mordechai to decree a fast of three days - which amounts to seventy-two hours. However, Chazal say that when someone fasts for three days, his appearance deteriorates, his breath turns foul, and he becomes very weak; and Esther could not appear before the king in such a state. Therefore she says: "Fast for me... three days" - seventy-two hours - "and I and my maidens will also fast ken" - I myself will only fast ken, seventy hours alone. Even so, "u'vechen (and with this) I will go to the king, which is not according to the law" - I come with the power of the "ken" of seventy-two, because I come with their merits, since they fasted seventy-two hours; but for myself I will fast only seventy, so that I can function properly and make a good impression before the king.
A story is told of someone who came to a rabbi and said: "Honored Rabbi, my father, peace be upon him, passed away yesterday." The rabbi said to him: "Baruch Dayan Ha'emet, and what is your question?" He replied: "It came as a complete surprise, I was not prepared, my schedule is packed with meetings, and I cannot sit shiva; it really does not suit me. My father never consulted me during his lifetime when he was healthy, and he didn't consult me now either - he just left without asking if it was convenient for me." He went to a very liberal, easygoing rabbi, who asked him: "So what do you want to do?" He replied: "To hire someone to sit in my place." The rabbi said to him: "All right, a person's agent is like himself; you may hire someone to sit shiva for your father instead of you." Delighted, the man hurried off before the rabbi could reconsider. Suddenly he remembered he had another question, turned back, and said: "Excuse me, Rabbi, may I ask one more question? Tell me, do I also have a mitzvah to go and comfort him?"
These verses lay before us the span of human life: seventy years, and if natural strength endures - eighty, and even those days are mostly filled with toil and futility. "For it is cut off quickly, and we fly away" - every moment is severed from the present and becomes the past, and we fly swiftly toward nonexistence. "Who knows the power of Your anger" - time is too short to attain awe within it, and "as Your awe is, so is Your wrath" - the greater a person is, the more exacting the demand made of him, like Moshe Rabbeinu and the sons of Aharon, just as a merchant subjects specifically the finest merchandise to testing. Out of this comes the plea, "So teach us to number our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom" - that the Holy One, blessed be He, teach us how to count our few days and bring wisdom into them, so they are not worn away and wasted. For every moment we have filled with Torah and mitzvos, instead of becoming mere history and being lost - we have transferred into eternity.