For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers,.... For though they were in possession of the land of Canaan, yet they held it not in their own right, but as the Lord's,who said, the land is mine, Le 25:23, they were but tenants in it, and were not to abide long here; they belonged to another city and country; the consideration of which might tend to set them loose to worldly things, and the more easily to part with them for the service of God, and the honour of his name:our days on the earth are as a shadow; man's life is expressed by days, not months and years, being so short; and by days on earth, in distinction from the days of heaven, or eternity; and these said to be as a shadow, of a short continuance, empty, mutable, and uncertain, dark and obscure, quickly gone, like the shadow of the sun; and not only like that, or of a mountain, tree or wall; but, as the Targum, of a bird that is flying, which passes away at once:and [there is] none abiding; not long, much less always, being but sojourners as before; so Cato in Cicero is represented as saying,"I depart out of this life as from an inn, and not an house; for nature has given us an inn to sojourn, not a place to dwell in:''or "there is no hope or expectation" ; of living long, of recalling time, and of avoiding death.
De Senectute, c. 23.