Psalms 89:9
For all our days are spent; and in thy wrath we have fainted away. Our years shall be considered as a spider:
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quoniam omnes dies nostri defecerunt, et in ira tua defecimus. Anni nostri sicut aranea meditabuntur ;
- Septuagint (Swete)
- ὅτι πᾶσαι αἱ ἡμέραι ἡμῶν ἐξέλιπον, καὶ ἐν τῇ ὀργῇ σου ἐξελίπομεν· τὰ ἔτη ἡμῶν ὡς ἀράχνην ἐμελέτων.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 90:9
- כִּ֣י כָל יָ֭מֵינוּ פָּנ֣וּ בְעֶבְרָתֶ֑ךָ כִּלִּ֖ינוּ שָׁנֵ֣ינוּ כְמוֹ הֶֽגֶה
Haydock's commentary
As a spider. As frail and weak as a spider's web; and miserable withal, whilst, like a spider, we spend our bowels in weaving webs to catch flies. (Challoner)
Meditabuntur is here used in a passive sense. (Tirinus)
Hebrew, "we have spent our years like one speaking a word." (St. Jerome)
When he has done, the sound is no more: so their memory has perished with a sound, Psalm ix. 8. (Haydock)
Hebrew, Chaldean, &c., do not mention the spider: Yet it seems to have been originally in the text, as it is recognized by the Syriac, Septuagint, and the other Greek interpreters, and makes the sense more complete. (Calmet)
The transcribers might more easily omit than the Septuagint, &c., could insert this word. (Berthier)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter XVI. Gnostic Exposition of the Decalogue
Again, in diseases the seventh day is that of the crisis; and the fourteenth, in which nature struggles against the causes of the diseases. And a myriad such instances are adduced by Hermippus of Berytus, in his book On the Number Seven , regarding it as holy. And the blessed David delivers clearly to those who know the mystic account of seven and eight, praising thus: “Our years were exercised like a spider. The days of our years in them are seventy years; but if in strength, eighty years. And that will be to reign.” That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated, and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: “This is the book of the generation: also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth.” For the expression “when they were created” intimates an indefinite and dateless production. …
St Augustine The Enchiridion, Men, Being by Nature the Children of Wrath, Needed a Mediator. In What Sense God is Said to Be Angry
And so the human race was lying under a just condemnation, and all men were the children of wrath. Of which wrath it is written: “All our days are passed away in Thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told.” Of which wrath also Job says: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” Of which wrath also the Lord Jesus says: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” He does not say it will come, but it “abideth on him.” For every man is born with it; wherefore the apostle says: “We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Now, as men were lying under this wrath by reason of their original sin, and as this original sin was the more heavy and deadly in proportion to the number and magnitude of the actual sins which were added to it, there was need …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XC
9. “For all our days are failed, and in Thine anger we have failed” ( ver. 9 ). These words sufficiently prove that our subjection to death is a punishment. He speaks of our days failing, either because men fail in them from loving things that pass away, or because they are reduced to so small a number; which he asserts in the following lines: “our years are spent in thought like a spider.” “The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is more of them but labour and sorrow” ( ver. 10 ). These words appear to express the shortness and misery of this life: since those who have reached their seventieth year are styled old men. Up to eighty, however, they appear to have some strength; but if they live beyond this, their existence is laborious through multiplied sorrows. …