Psalm 90

Psalms 90:1

“Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. We must consider the whole Psalm as written for the tribes in the desert, and then we shall see the primary meaning of each verse. Moses, in effect, says—wanderers though we be in the howling wilderness, yet we find a home in thee, even as our forefathers did when they came out of Ur of the Chaldees and dwelt in tents among the Canaanites. To the saints the Lord Jehovah, the self existent God, stands instead of mansion and rooftree; he shelters, comforts, protects, preserves, and cherishes all his own.”

Psalms 90:2

“Before the mountains were brought forth - The mountains and hills appear to have been everlasting; but as they were brought forth out of the womb of eternity, there was a time when they were not: but Thou hast been ab aeternitate a parte ante, ad aeternitatem a parte post; fram the eternity that is past, before time began; to the eternity that is after, when time shall have an end. This is the highest description of the eternity of God to which human language can reach.”

Psalms 90:2

“Before the mountains were brought forth. Before those elder giants had struggled forth from nature's womb, as her dread firstborn, the Lord was glorious and self sufficient. Mountains to him, though hoar with the snows of ages, are but new born babes, young things whose birth was but yesterday, mere novelties of an hour. Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world. Here too the allusion is to a birth. Earth was born but the other day, and her solid land was delivered from the flood but a short while ago.”

Psalms 90:3

“Thou turnest man to destruction - In contradistinction from his own unchangeableness and eternity. Man passes away; God continues ever the same. The word rendered “destruction” - דכא dakkâ' - means properly anything beaten or broken small or very fine, and hence, “dust.” The idea here is, that God causes man to return to dust; that is, the elements which compose the body return to their original condition, or seem to mingle with the earth. Gen 3:19: “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The word “man” here, of course, refers to man in general - all people.”

Psalms 90:3

“Thou turnest man to destruction, or "to dust." Man's body is resolved into its elements, and is as though it had been crushed and ground to powder. And sayest, Return, ye children of men, i.e., return even to the dust out of which ye were taken. The frailty of man is thus forcibly set forth; God creates him out of the dust, and back to dust he goes at the word of his Creator. God resolves and man dissolves. A word created and a word destroys.”

Psalms 90:4

“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past. A thousand years! This is a long stretch of time. How much may be crowded into it, —the rise and fall of empires, the glory and obliteration of dynasties, the beginning and the end of elaborate systems of human philosophy, and countless events, all important to household and individual, which elude the pens of historians.”

Psalms 90:4

“God will say, at the great day, to those whom he has turned to destruction, Return--Arise you dead. But it might be objected against the doctrine of the resurrection that it is a long time since it was expected and it has not yet come. Let that be no difficulty, for a thousand years, in God's sight, are but as one day.”

Psalms 90:5-6

“In the morning let it pass like grass, in the morning let it flower and pass away: in the evening let it fall, harden, and wither. O the mysteries of the Scriptures! In the morning let it pass like grass. Our Lord and Savior also speaks in the Gospel about the hay, which springs up in one day and withers in one day.”

Psalms 90:5

“Thou carriest them away as with a flood - The original here is a single verb with the suffix - זרמתם zerametâm. The verb - זרם zâram - means, to flow, to pour; then, to pour upon, to overwhelm, to wash away. The idea is, that they were swept off as if a torrent bore them from the earth, carrying them away without regard to order, rank, age, or condition. So death makes no discrimination.”

Psalms 90:5

Thou carriest them away as with a flood. As when a torrent rushes down the river bed and bears all before it, so does the Lord bear away by death the succeeding generations of men. As the hurricane sweeps the clouds from the sky, so time removes the children of men. They are as a sleep. Before God men must appear as unreal as the dreams of the night, the phantoms of sleep. Not only are our plans and devices like a sleep, but we ourselves are such. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of."

Psalms 90:6

“In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up. Blooming with abounding beauty till the meadows are all besprent with gems, the grass has a golden hour, even as man in his youth has a heyday of flowery glory. In the evening it is cut down, and withereth. The scythe ends the blossoming of the field flowers, and the dews at flight weep their fall. Here is the history of the grass—sown, grown, blown, mown, gone; and the history of man is not much more.”

Psalms 90:7

“In your anger we have failed. Because through our sins we have earned your anger, we have lost in Adam the immortality you had given, from whom sin has been handed down to us, as it were naturally, by hereditary right. And in your fury we have been troubled. Beautifully he said, troubled: for one who is troubled does not perish, but is shaken with terror, so that he may feel the power of him whom by sinning he had scorned, and may flee, humble and submissive, to repentance. And in your fury we have been troubled.”

Psalms 90:7

“For we are consumed by thine anger,.... Kimchi applies this to the Jews in captivity; but it is to be understood of the Israelites in the wilderness, who are here introduced by Moses as owning and acknowledging that they were wasting and consuming there, as it was threatened they should; and that as an effect of the divine anger and displeasure occasioned by their sins; see Num 14:”

Psalms 90:7

“This mortality is not accidental, neither was it inevitable in the original of our nature, but sin has provoked the Lord to anger, and therefore thus we die. For we are consumed by thine anger. This is the scythe which mows and the scorching heat which withers. This was specially the case in reference to the people in the wilderness, whose lives were cut short by justice on account of their waywardness; they failed, not by a natural decline, but through the blast of the well deserved judgments of God.”

Psalms 90:8

“You have set our iniquities in your sight. Nothing is hidden from you: that is, neither does night hide our sins, nor do shadows envelop them: all things shine bright before you. Our age in the illumination of your countenance. It stands better in the Hebrew: "Our faults in the illumination of your countenance." Whatever we do, whatever we think we are doing in secret, lies open in your eyes.”

Psalms 90:8

“Thou hast set our iniquities before thee. Hence these tears! Sin seen by God must work death; it is only by the covering blood of atonement that life comes to any of us. When God was overthrowing the tribes in the wilderness he had their iniquities before him, and therefore dealt with them in severity. He could not have their iniquities before him and not smite them. Our secret sins in the fight of thy countenance. There are no secrets before God; he unearths man's hidden things, and exposes them to the light.”

Psalms 90:8

“For their more secret departures from him: " Thou hast set our secret sins (those which go no further than the heart, and which are at the bottom of all the overt acts) in the light of thy countenance; that is, thou hast discovered these, and brought these also to the account, and made us to see them, who before overlooked them." Secret sins are known to God and shall be reckoned for.”

Psalms 90:9

“For all our days are passed away in thy wrath - Margin, “turned.” The Hebrew word - פנה pânâh - means to “turn;” then, to turn to or “from” anyone; and hence, to turn away as if to flee or depart. Here it means that our days seem to turn from us; to give the back to us; to be unwilling to remain with us; to leave us. This seems to be the fruit or result of the anger of God, as if he were unwilling that our days should attend us any longer.”

Psalms 90:9

“For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel; each halting place became a graveyard; they marked their march by the tombs they left behind them. Because of the penal sentence their days were dried up, and their lives wasted away. We spend our years as a tale that is told. Yea, not their days only, but their years flew by them like a thought, swift as a meditation, rapid and idle as a gossip's story.”

Psalms 90:9

“When they came out of Egypt there was not one feeble person among their tribes ( Ps. cv. 37 ); but now they were feeble. Their joyful prospect of a prosperous glorious life in Canaan was turned into the melancholy prospect of a tedious inglorious death in the wilderness; so that their whole life was now as impertinent a thing as ever any winter-tale was.”

Psalms 90:10

“Threescore years and ten - See the note on the title of this Psalm 90 (note). This Psalm could not have been written by Moses, because the term of human life was much more extended when he flourished than eighty years at the most. Even in David’s time many lived one hundred years, and the author of Ecclesiasticus, who lived after the captivity, fixed this term at one hundred years at the most (Sirach 18:9); but this was merely a general average, for even in our country we have many who exceed a hundred years.”

Psalms 90:10

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Moses himself lived longer than this, but his was the exception not the rule: in his day life had come to be very much the same in duration as it is with us. This is brevity itself compared with the men of the elder time; it is nothing when contrasted with eternity. Yet is life long enough for virtue and piety, and all too long for vice and blasphemy.”

Psalms 90:10

“Moses' life was an exception (De 34:7). it is . . . cut off--or, "driven," as is said of the quails in using the same word (Nu 11:31). In view of this certain and speedy end, life is full of sorrow.”

Psalms 90:11

“Who knoweth the power of thine anger? - Who can measure it, or take a correct estimate of it, as it is manifest in cutting down the race of people? If the removal of people by death is to be traced to thine anger - or is, in any proper sense, an expression of thy wrath - who can measure it, or understand it?”

Psalms 90:11

“Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Moses saw men dying all around him: he lived among funerals, and was overwhelmed at the terrible results of the divine displeasure. He felt that none could measure the might of the Lord's wrath. Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.”

Psalms 90:11

“Thy fear - According to the fear of thee; according to that fear which sinful men have of a just God. So - It bears full proportion to it, nay indeed doth far exceed it.”

Psalms 90:12

“Make your right hand thus known, and those fettered in heart in wisdom. Your right hand, with which you made the world, enlighten the world. "For the arm of the Lord, to whom has it been revealed?" Your right hand, with which you made man, let it itself take up and save the human body. And those fettered in heart in wisdom. It can be understood thus: those who before wandered freely, let them be fettered by your wisdom.”

Psalms 90:12

“So teach us to number our days - Let us deeply consider our own frailty, and the shortness and uncertainty of life, that we may live for eternity, acquaint ourselves with thee and be at peace; that we may die in thy favor and live and reign with thee eternally.”

Psalms 90:12

“So teach us to number our days. Instruct us to set store by time, mourning for that time past wherein we have wrought the will of the flesh, using diligently the time present, which is the accepted hour and the day of salvation, and reckoning the time which lieth in the future to be too uncertain to allow us safely to delay any gracious work or prayer. Numeration is a child's exercise in arithmetic, but in order to number their days aright the best of men need the Lord's teaching.”

Psalms 90:13

“Turn back, O Lord, how long? We have sinned much, you turn away your face, our sins are not worthy to be seen by your eyes, and therefore we pray: Turn back, O Lord, how long? Behold, now so many ages have flowed by: the prophets have always proclaimed to the nations that you would come, and still you have not come. And direct the sons of men. We who are crooked, may we be set straight by you. And direct the sons of men. Well did he say, direct the sons of men.”

Psalms 90:13

“Return, O Lord - Come back to thy people; show mercy by sparing them. It would seem probable from this that the psalm was composed in a time of pestilence, or raging sickness, which threatened to sweep all the people away - a supposition by no means improbable, as such times occurred in the days of Moses, and in the rebellions of the people when he was leading them to the promised land. How long? - How long shall this continue? How long shall thy wrath rage? How long shall the people still fall under thy hand?”

Psalms 90:13

Return, O Lord, how long? Come in mercy, to us again. Do not leave us to perish. Suffer not our lives to be both brief and bitter. Thou hast said to us, "Return, ye children of men", and now we humbly cry to thee, "Return, thou preserver of men." Thy presence alone can reconcile us to this transient existence; turn thou unto us. As sin drives God from us, so repentance cries to the Lord to return to us. When men are under chastisement they are allowed to expostulate, and ask "how long?"

Psalms 90:14

“And we have exulted and been delighted. After the joy of the resurrection of our Lord, by which we now believe both that we have been redeemed and that we shall rise again, for the remaining days of our life, rejoicing in this confidence, we exult, and with hymns and spiritual songs we render praise to God through Jesus Christ our Lord: to whom is glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

Psalms 90:14

“O satisfy us early with thy mercy. Since they must die, and die so soon, the psalmist pleads for speedy mercy upon himself and his brethren. Good men know how to turn the darkest trials into arguments at the throne of grace. He who has but the heart to pray need never be without pleas in prayer.”

Psalms 90:14-15

“They pray for the mercy of God; for they pretend not to plead any merit of their own. Have mercy upon us, O God! is a prayer we are all concerned to say Amen to. Let us pray for early mercy, the seasonable communications of divine mercy, that God's tender mercies may speedily prevent us, early in the morning of our days, when we are young and flourishing,”

Psalms 90:15

“Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us - Let the one correspond with the other. Let our occasions of joy be measured by the sorrows which have come upon us. As our sufferings have been great, so let our joys and triumphs be. And the years wherein we have seen evil - Affliction and sorrow. They have been continued through many wearisome years; so let the years of peace and joy be many also.”

Psalms 90:15-17

“TO understand this Psalm, you must observe its black border. Remember the sorrows of Moses, the man of God, who saw a whole generation die in the wilderness and was, himself, denied admission to the promised land. The man, Moses, was greatly afflicted. I might almost call him, as far as his life in the wilderness was concerned, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He dug the desert till it became a cemetery, for he lived amid 40 years of funerals.”

Psalms 90:15

“Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. None can gladden the heart as thou canst, O Lord, therefore as thou hast made us sad be pleased to make us glad. Fill the other scale. Proportion thy dispensations. Give us the lamb, since thou has sent us the bitter herbs. Make our days as long as our nights.”

Psalms 90:16

“Let thy work appear unto thy servants. See how he dwells upon that word servants. It is as far as the law can go, and Moses goes to the full length permitted him henceforth Jesus calls us not servants but friends, and if we are wise we shall make full use of our wider liberty. Moses asks for displays of divine power and providence conspicuously wrought, that all the people might be cheered thereby. They could find no solace in their own faulty works, but in the work of God they would find comfort. And thy glory unto their children.”

Psalms 90:16-17

"Let thy work appear, and in it thy glory will appear to us and those that shall come after us." In praying for God's grace God's glory must be our end; and we must therein have an eye to our children as well as to ourselves, that they also may experience God's glory appearing upon them, so as to change them into the same image, from glory to glory.

Psalms 90:17

“Thus, if Isaiah says, "The everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth"; and Susanna said, "O everlasting God";42 and Baruch wrote, "I will cry to the Everlasting in my days," and shortly after, "My hope is in the Everlasting, that he will have you, and joy is come to me from the holy One"; yet forasmuch as the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says, "Who being the radiance of his glory and the expression of his person";44 and David too in the ninetieth psalm, "And the brightness of the Lord be on us," and, "In your light shall we see light," who has so little sense as to doubt the eternity of the Son?”

Psalms 90:17

“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us - The word translated “beauty” - נעם nô‛am - means properly “pleasantness;” then, beauty, splendor; then grace or layout. The Septuagint renders it here, λαμπρότης lamprotēs, “splendor;” and so the Latin Vulgate.”

Psalms 90:17

“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Even upon us who must not see thy glory in the land of Canaan; it shall suffice us if in our characters the holiness of God is reflected, and if over all our camp the lovely excellences of our God shall cast a sacred beauty. Sanctification should be the daily object of our petitions. And establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”