My end means the end of the psalmist’s life; the measure of my days means the length of the psalmist’s life. All three lines of the verse are different ways of saying much the same thing (see Good News Translation). Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates “Lord show me how brief my life is, and that my end is inevitable; make me aware of how little time is still left.” As Anderson points out, the psalmist is really not asking for information as such (after all, the psalmist knows that life is brief); rather he is protesting the unfairness of it all. He is made to suffer, when he should be granted a measure of peace and well-being. In line a it is possible that the psalmist is asking how he will die, what will cause his death; but this does not seem very probable.

If verse 4 is taken in the sense of a protest, translators will in most cases have to make the protest clear. In English this may be done with the use of the auxiliary “should”; for example, “LORD, you should let me know when my life will end” or “LORD, why don’t you tell me when I will die?” In some languages the repetition of the same thought in three lines will be stylistically awkward and misleading, and so must be reduced. Bible en français courant uses a legal term in line c meaning a stay of proceedings or even of execution: “May I know the length of my reprieve.” Biblia Dios Habla Hoy contrasts the third line with the first two by making it an exclamation, “I want to know how short my life will be!”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .