Psalm 90
17 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 39×4Ecclesiastes 12×2Job 22×2Psalms 78×2Deuteronomy 32×2Deuteronomy 33×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Book IV opens with the oldest psalm: 'A Prayer of Moses the man of God.' 'Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth… from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.' A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday. We are consumed in thine anger; our days pass away like a sigh: threescore years and ten. 'So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.' 'Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 90The history
This is the only psalm credited to Moses, and it opens the fourth section of the book — immediately after the third section ended with a crown thrown on the ground. The editors put the oldest voice in Israel right after the collapse of the monarchy. Before there was a king, there was this.
Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, return, ye children of men, is the sentence in the garden restated: dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Burial in that world put the body back into the ground or into a rock cut out of it, and the psalm is watching that literally happen, tent by tent, for forty years.
Threescore years and ten is an honest average for someone who reached old age, not a promise attached to anybody. Infant deaths were common, and the wilderness generation was under a specific sentence of forty years for refusing to enter the land. The psalm is doing arithmetic on a punishment.
The grass image is climate-specific. Winter rains raise green grass across the hills in a matter of days, and then the first hot dry wind off the eastern desert browns the whole slope in an afternoon. Everyone who sang this had watched a hillside change colour that fast.
What it meant to them
A homeless nation sang that God had been their dwelling place in all generations. It was the only permanent address they had, since they owned no land at all.
And the prayer at the end is not for more years but for the years to count: teach us to number our days, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us. People with a short future asked for work that would outlast them.
Sources cited
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 90. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.