תהלים, פרק צ׳, פסוק ט׳

Human life often feels like a fleeting experience, overshadowed by hardship and a sense of lost time. Rather than being filled with lasting good, our days seem to slip away and vanish into nothingness. This rapid decline is directly tied to God's anger, which causes our days to fade and come to an end [רש״י, מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Commentators differ on the exact nature of this divine wrath. Some view it as the harsh reality of exile and poverty, struggles that consume our time and rob us of the opportunity to gather spiritual merit and perform good deeds [אלשיך, מאירי]. Others see this anger as the universal decree of natural death brought upon humanity by the sin of the first man, a sweeping judgment that affects even those generations that did not commit the original sin themselves [מלבי״ם].

However, the loss of time is not solely imposed from above. We bear responsibility as well, as our own wrongdoings actively cause our years to be wasted and lost [רד״ק, מצודת דוד].

The fleeting nature of life is vividly compared to a spoken word. The primary approach among commentators is that just as speech has no physical substance and disappears the moment it leaves the mouth as if it never existed, our years pass by rapidly without leaving a permanent mark. Life in this sense is like a child writing on a board only to erase it instantly, or like the brief shadow cast by a flying bird [אבן עזרא, רד״ק, מאירי, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Building on this comparison, some explain that our years simply become empty stories—mere words about the past with no eternal spiritual value, since life's hardships kept us from using our time for meaningful actions [אלשיך]. Another perspective connects this idea of speech to God's spoken decree, which sets the natural boundary of human life at seventy years. Bound by this spoken limit, we are continuously swept along by the current of time toward non-existence [מלבי״ם].