Psalms 90:1

This psalm is entitled a prayer of Moses. Where, and in what volume, it was preserved from Moses's time till the collection of psalms was begun to be made, is uncertain; but, being divinely inspired, it was under a special protection: perhaps it was written in the book of Jasher, or the book of the wars of the Lord. Moses taught the people of Israel to pray, and put words into their mouths which they might make use of in turning to the Lord. Moses is here called the man of God, because he was a prophet, the father of prophets, and an eminent type of the great prophet. In these verses we are taught,

I. To give God the praise of his care concerning his people at all times, and concerning us in our days (Psa 90:1): Lord, thou hast been to us a habitation, or dwelling-place, a refuge or help, in all generations. Now that they had fallen under God's displeasure, and he threatened to abandon them, they plead his former kindnesses to their ancestors. Canaan was a land of pilgrimage to their fathers the patriarchs, who dwelt there in tabernacles; but then God was their habitation, and, wherever they went, they were at home, at rest, in him. Egypt had been a land of bondage to them for many years, but even then God was their refuge; and in him that poor oppressed people lived and were kept in being. Note, True believers are at home in God, and that is their comfort in reference to all the toils and tribulations they meet with in this world. In him we may repose and shelter ourselves as in our dwelling-place.

II. To give God the glory of his eternity (Psa 90:2): Before the mountains were brought forth, before he made the highest part of the dust of the world (as it is expressed, Pro 8:26), before the earth fell in travail, or, as we may read it, before thou hadst formed the earth and the world (that is, before the beginning of time) thou hadst a being; even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God, an eternal God, whose existence has neither its commencement nor its period with time, nor is measured by the successions and revolutions of it, but who art the same yesterday, today, and for ever, without beginning of days, or end of life, or change of time. Note, Against all the grievances that arise from our own mortality, and the mortality of our friends, we may take comfort from God's immortality. We are dying creatures, and all our comforts in the world are dying comforts, but God is an everliving God, and those shall find him so who have him for theirs.

III. To own God's absolute sovereign dominion over man, and his irresistible incontestable power to dispose of him as he pleases (Psa 90:3): Thou turnest man to destruction, with a word's speaking, when thou pleasest, to the destruction of the body, of the earthly house; and thou sayest, Return, you children of men. 1. When God is, by sickness or other afflictions, turning men to destruction, he does thereby call men to return unto him, that is, to repent of their sins and live a new life. This God speaketh once, yea, twice. "Return unto me, from whom you have revolted," Jer 4:1. 2. When God is threatening to turn men to destruction, to bring them to death, and they have received a sentence of death within themselves, sometimes he wonderfully restores them, and says, as the old translation reads it, Again thou sayest, Return to life and health again. For God kills and makes alive again, brings down to the grave and brings up. 3. When God turns men to destruction, it is according to the general sentence passed upon all, which is this, "Return, you children of men, one, as well as another, return to your first principles; let the body return to the earth as it was (dust to dust, Gen 3:19) and let the soul return to God who gave it," Ecc 12:7. 4. Though God turns all men to destruction, yet he will again say, Return, you children of men, at the general resurrection, when, though a man dies, yet he shall live again; and "then shalt thou call and I will answer (Job 14:14, Job 14:15); thou shalt bid me return, and I shall return." The body, the soul, shall both return and unite again.

IV. To acknowledge the infinite disproportion there is between God and men, Psa 90:4. Some of the patriarchs lived nearly a thousand years; Moses knew this very well, and had recorded it: but what is their long life to God's eternal life? "A thousand years, to us, are a long period, which we cannot expect to survive; or, if we could, it is what we could not retain the remembrance of; but it is, in thy sight, as yesterday, as one day, as that which is freshest in mind; nay, it is but as a watch of the night," which was but three hours. 1. A thousand years are nothing to God's eternity; they are less than a day, than an hour, to a thousand years. Betwixt a minute and a million of years there is some proportion, but betwixt time and eternity there is none. The long lives of the patriarchs were nothing to God, not so much as the life of a child (that is born and dies the same day) is to theirs. 2. All the events of a thousand years, whether past or to come, are as present to the Eternal Mind as what was done yesterday, or the last hour, is to us, and more so. 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. Nullum tempus occurrit regi - To the king all periods are alike. To this purport these words are quoted, Pe2 3:8.

V. To see the frailty of man, and his vanity even at his best estate (Psa 90:5, Psa 90:6): look upon all the children of men, and we shall see, 1. That their life is a dying life: Thou carriest them away as with a flood, that is, they are continually gliding down the stream of time into the ocean of eternity. The flood is continually flowing, and they are carried away with it; as soon as we are born we begin to die, and every day of our life carries us so much nearer death; or we are carried away violently and irresistibly, as with a flood of waters, as with an inundation, which sweeps away all before it; or as the old world was carried away with Noah's flood. Though God promised not so to drown the world again, yet death is a constant deluge. 2. That it is a dreaming life. Men are carried away as with a flood and yet they are as a sleep; they consider not their own frailty, nor are aware how near they approach to an awful eternity. Like men asleep, they imagine great things to themselves, till death wakes them, and puts an end to the pleasing dream. Time passes unobserved by us, as it does with men asleep; and, when it is over, it is as nothing. 3. That it is a short and transient life, like that of the grass which grows up and flourishes, in the morning looks green and pleasant, but in the evening the mower cuts it down, and it immediately withers, changes its colour, and loses all its beauty. Death will change us shortly, perhaps suddenly; and it is a great change that death will make with us in a little time. Man, in his prime, does but flourish as the grass, which is weak, and low, and tender, and exposed, and which, when the winter of old age comes, will wither of itself: but he may be mown down by disease or disaster, as the grass is, in the midst of summer. All flesh is as grass.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Psa 90:1 « A Prayer of Moses the man of God. » Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

A Prayer of Moses] Made by him, belike, when he saw the carcases of the people fall so fast in the wilderness; committed to writing for the instruction of those that were left alive, but sentenced to death, Num 14:26-38, and here fitly placed as an illustration of that which was said in the precedent psalm, Psa 89:48, "What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah."

Ver. 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place] In all our troubles and travels through this wilderness, and before, we have not been houseless and harbourless, for "Thou hast been our dwelling place," our habitacle of refuge, as some render it, Maon. habitaculum tutum. We use to say, A man’s house is his castle. The civil law saith, De domo sua nemo extrahi debet, aut in ius vocari, quia domus tutissimum cuique refugium atque receptaculum, No man ought to be drawn out of his house at the suit of another; because his house is his safest refuge and receptacle. He that dwelleth in God cannot be unhoused, because God is stronger than all; neither can any one take another out of his hands, Joh 10:29 Here, then, it is best for us to take up as in our mansion house, and to seek a supply of all our wants in God alone. It was a witty saying of that learned Picus Mirandula, God created the earth for beasts to inhabit, the sea for fishes, the air for fowls, the heaven for angels and stars. Man, therefore, hath no place to dwell and abide in but the Lord alone. See Eze 11:16 2Co 6:8-10.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psa_90:1-17

Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.

The prayer of Moses

The propriety of the title is confirmed by the psalms unique simplicity and grandeur; its appropriateness to his times and circumstances at the close of the error in the wilderness; its resemblance to the law in urging the connection between sin and death; its similarity of diction to the poetical portions of the Pentateuch (Exo_15:1-27; Deu_32:1-52; Deu_33:1-29), without the slightest trace of imitation or quotation; its marked unlikeness to the psalms of David, and still more to those of later date; and finally the proved impossibility of plausibly assigning it to any other age or author.

I. The great contrast (Psa_90:1-6). The poet says what God has been, but he implies what He still was, and would continue to be. His Divine being reaches from an unlimited past to an unlimited future. Far otherwise is it with mans days. He has no independent existence. The Being who made him turns him back to the dust from which he came (Gen_3:19), and when He say, Return, there is none to refuse obedience. He whose existence is timeless endures, but men soon perish. He swoops them away as with a driving storm which carries everything before it. Their life consequently is as unsubstantial as a dream.

II. Death is the wages of sin (Psa_90:7-12). The psalmist is a stranger to the fond notion that man is the victim of circumstances; that he deserves compassion rather than penalty. His brief life and swift death may seem mysterious, but they are not an accident. Like the flower he does not simply fade away, but is cut down. Various instrumental agencies may be employed to terminate mans existence, but the real cause is Gods wrath against sin. How must iniquity take on a dreadful hue when contrasted with the unsullied purity of heaven, the resplendent glory of the Holy One of Israel? This dark shadow extends over the whole of life, and not only its close. All our days bear the same stamp, and even when they stretch out into years, still they fly away as a thought, a comparison used by Homer and Theognis, yet without the underlying thought of Moses that the flight is retributive (verse10). The best comment on this sad confession is the statement of Goethe made near the close of his long life. Men have always regarded me as one especially favoured by fortune Yet after all it has been nothing but pains and toil. But besides this there is no permanence. An end does come, must come, even to the longest term of years. As the man of God looks over the record of the forty years error, he cries out, who knoweth, who regards and feels the force of Thine anger? Who has such a conception of it as befits a becoming reverence for God? The implication is that there is none. Hence the devout entreaty, So teach us, etc. Such is the power of sin, the seductive influence of a worldly mind, that we shall not know the link between Gods wrath and our own mortality unless we get instruction from above.

III. Prayer for the return of Gods favour (Psa_90:13-17). Here Moses returns to the starting point of the psalm. Whither should the contemplation of mortality as related to sin, and of Divine wrath against sin, cause us to turn but to God, our eternal home? The loss of His favour is, as usual, represented as His absence, and hence the entreaty for His return. The fervour of this request is well set forth by the abbreviated question, How long? i.e. How long wilt Thou retain Thine anger? Calvins letters show that this Domine quousque was his favourite ejaculation in his times of suffering and anxiety. The literal version of the other member of the couplet is, Let it repent thee concerning, i.e. so change Thy dealing with them as if Thou didst repent of afflicting them--a bold form of speech used by Moses elsewhere (Exo_32:12; Deu_32:36). The next verse asks to be sated, abundantly supplied, with the lovingkindness of Jehovah in the morning, i.e. early, speedily; and the object of this prayer is stated to be that the offerers may have reason to sing for joy and be glad during the whole remainder of their lives. But if this be true of the Old Testament, that an early experience of grace gladdens all ones subsequent course, much more must it be of the New Testament with its fuller light, better covenant and larger promises. The next couplet is an affecting reminder of past trials, which are here made to be the measure of future blessings. The desire is that former sorrows may be compensated by proportionate enjoyments in time to come. The weary sojourn in the desert, where each halting-place was a graveyard and their march was marked by the tombs they left behind them, they desire to forget in the enjoyment of a permanent home in a land flowing with milk and honey. The same request is renewed in asking for the manifestation of Gods work, that is, His gracious care for His chosen, the course of His providential dealings on their behalf. A beautiful and suggestive variation of this wish is given in the next clause where the term work is exchanged for majesty, intimating (Rom_9:23) that the glory of God shines conspicuously in His grace. This display of the sum of the Divine perfections is asked on behalf of the children of generations yet unborn, God being the God not only of His people, but of their seed and their seeds seed (Isa_59:2). The closing verse of the psalm comprehends both the Divine and the human side of the work given to Gods people. First, the psalmist prays for the beauty of Jehovah, that is, all that which renders Him an object of affection, His wondrous graciousness, to be revealed to them in the way of experience. But this, so far from superseding rather implies their own activity. Hence the next petition mentions the work of our hands, a favourite Mosaic phrase for all that we do or undertake, which God is requested to establish, i.e. to confirm and bring to a favourable issue. The repetition of the words is not merely a rhetorical beauty, but an expression of the importance, the necessity of such Divine aid. (T. W. Chambers, D.D.)

The psalm of the wanderings

Throughout this psalm two threads are twisted, the one sombre with gloom, the other bright with golden light. We will not dwell on the former. There is plenty of that already in the lives of most of us. Suffice it to say that to Moses the plaintive chords of sorrow appears to have been composed of three notes--the rapid flight of the ages, the anger of God incurred by sin, and the afflictions which beset human life. But opposite to these the aged lawgiver gives three thoughts, on which he rested his soul.

I. God. What great thoughts Moses had of God.

1. As Creator. To God he ascribes the birth of the mountains, which in their grandest aspects and in magnificent confusion were heaped in that Sinaitic peninsula. To God also he ascribes the moulding touch which shaped the universe of matter, and gave form to the earth. What though seas and rivers, glacier action and earthquake, were his graving tools, yet the maker and former of all things was God.

2. As eternal. He is not only God, El, the strong. He is Lord, Jehovah, the i am. And he labours hard to give us some true conception of His everlastingness. He speaks of the eighty years of human life as being, in comparison with it, short and soon; much in the same way as we should describe the duration of an insects life, which passes through all the stages of existence from youth to age, between dawn and sunset in comparison with the life of man. He recites the generations of mankind, and describes their passing in to God like guests into a hostelry, their life to His being brief and transitory as a night-sojourn when compared with the permanence of the building in which it is spent. He goes back through the long process of creation, and says that God comprehends it in the extent of his being as a very little thing.

3. But the thought that helps us most is the conception of God as the dwelling-place, the asylum, the home of the soul. Moses needed it, if ever a man did.

II. Gladness-making mercy. As Moses reviewed the desert pilgrimage it seemed one long line of transgression, each halting-place marked by its special graves, the monuments of some sad outbreak. He pined for gladness; he knew that there was gladness in the heart of the blessed God, enough to make him glad, and not him alone but all who were weary and heavy laden throughout the precincts of the camp; and having confessed their sins he now turned to God his exceeding joy and said, Make us glad. And his demand for gladness was not a small one. He asked that it might be according to the days in which they had been affiliated and the years in which they had seen evil. It was a great request, but not unreasonable, for days and years of sorrow often give us capacity for receiving blessing. Let us, too, ask Him to put gladness into our hearts. Let us believe that it will honour and please Him if we dare to lay claim to blessedness, such as He alone can give, and when He gives does so with full measure, pressed down, and running over. The plea must be made to His mercy. We have no claim on any other attribute of God. And beyond that we must ask Him to satisfy us. We have sought satisfaction in all beside: in health and flow of spirits, in success and friendship, in books and affairs; but we have found it nowhere, and we shall never find it unless in Himself.

III. Work, or co-operation between God and man. Moses complaint about the shortness of life indicates that he was no idler. The days were not long enough for all he had to do, and therefore life seemed to pass so quickly through his hands. Amid all that made him sad, he found solace in the thought that what he did would last. The leaves fall, but each, ere it finds a grave in the damp autumn soil, has done something to the tree that bore it, which will be a permanent gain for summers yet unborn. The preacher dies, but his words have furnished impulses to souls which have become part of their texture and will be part for ever. The workman finds a nameless grave beneath the shadow of the great unfinished minister, but the fabric rises still and will rise; his work will be part of it for ever, a joy and beauty for coming generations. But after all our work in itself is not sufficient to resist the disintegrating forces of time, which, more than all else, tries and tests its quality. And, therefore, we need to ask that Gods work may become manifest through ours. In my work let Thine appear; through my weak endeavours may that hand achieve which made the worlds and built cosmos out of chaos. Let Thy work appear. And in asking that Gods work may appear, we make a request which involves His glory. The one cannot appear without the other, so that in all coming time children and childrens children may behold it, and as that glory shines upon their faces it must transform and transfigure them so that the beauty of the Lord our God will be upon them. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.)

God our home

There was a tradition among the Jews, although these traditions are not altogether trustworthy, that Moses, the man of God, wrote this psalm or prayer. And it has always been felt that the psalm seemed to have some special connection with, or reference to, the experience and the impressions of the children of Israel in the days that they were doomed to wander up and down in the wilderness without being allowed to enter into the promised land. And there is much in the psalm that corroborates that view. It is the psalm of a generation of men who felt themselves to be wasting away under Gods wrath, consumed by His anger. They are spending their years as a tale that is told. The vanity and emptiness of life are pressed home upon them with great severity. At the same time, it is not a psalm of mere wailing and lamentation. There is the exercise of faith in it, not only in the first verse, but in the appeal to God to come and dwell with them as their case requires, and make them experience His mercy. Now, if we are to take this idea, and see.how far it will carry us through this psalm, we must remember this, that when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt they were very much exercised about the hope of a habitation. They were leaving one habitation--the land of Egypt. It was a house of bondage; still, a house is a house, even if it be a house of bondage, and it is wonderful how men often shrink from breaking up some accustomed state of things, not discerning well what is to replace it. But the objections of the Egyptian rulers and the hesitations of the people were mightily overcome, and by and by they found themselves on that famous march through the wilderness towards the land which God had sworn to give them for an inheritance. It was to be their habitation, and it was not only to be their habitation, but also Gods habitation. The value of it was that He was to dwell in it with them, watching over them; and accordingly at the Red Sea they sang: Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in. Many thoughts about this wonderful habitation, many expectations about what it should prove to be, must have been in their minds. By and by there fell out that rebellion upon the report of the spies, which carried away the people as will a flood. One or two stood out against it, but the general cry of the people was to go back to Egypt. They despaired of that promised land, of that goodly inheritance. I think it would be a mistake for us to take it for granted that all those who had joined in this defection, all those who were involved in this unbelieving revolt from God, wore even then mere carnal and unbelieving men. It may have been the case that some of them were men and women who had some good thing in them towards the Lord God of Israel. It is not such a rare thing, unfortunately, it is not such a surprising thing, to find persons Who have the root of the matter in them and are believers, carried away by a stream of defection and by a sentiment of unbelief, as if they could not stand against it. And certainly we may suppose, when we look to the ends that God has in chastening, which is not for our destruction but for our salvation, that among those who were visited by this great disappointment some were brought to faith by the very chastening which was inflicted upon them. That agrees with the ends which God has in chastening. We are told that the people mourned greatly. They strove, as it were, to reverse the sentence which could not be reversed; but I should be disposed to believe that there might be among them persons who either were or came to be men of desire and men of faith towards the Lord God of their fathers. But if we are to open our minds to an idea of that kind, then what a tremendous disappointment fell upon those who belonged to this class, and how difficult it must have been for them to know what to say or do. As to the mere unbelievers, they were disappointed, of course; but they would perhaps turn to the ordinary avocations of the camp in the wilderness, prepared to make the best of it until the end of their pilgrimage had come. But those who had any trust in God and any longing for the experience of Gods favour, how must it have been with them? All hope was over now of that habitation to which they had set out to go. No more dwelling with God in the land of which their fathers told them. Their children should go in; the very bones of Joseph should go in; but they were to be shut out. Indeed, one would say that they would turn to the duties that fell upon them in connection with daily life, unable to speak to any man the thoughts that were in them. It was so hard the feeling that all was over; and yet the deep longing in the heart protesting against its being all over. Yes, and yet, when we come to think of it, we may see how such souls were visited, and how they found their way to God through that experience. We may see how God brought good out of evil and light out of darkness. For still they were under Gods care; still the manna was supplied to them and still the waters ran to satisfy their thirst. Still in the midst of their tents one tent arose which was Gods tent, who was dwelling in the midst of them. He was providing for them, caring for them, and they could go to Him in His tabernacle with their vows and their free-will offerings; and no doubt in the month Abib they would draw together and remember that they were Gods firstborn whom He had brought out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and with a stretched-out arm. To those who had no care about God, all that would be nothing, but it might be a great deal to these who were ready to say with Jonah, I am cast out of Thy sight, yet I will look again towards Thy holy temple. For what did it come to, after all? That God was their dwelling-place even now. In His shadow they dwelt, His food they ate, His protection was extended to them, and if He chastened them, might they not remember that as a man chastenteth his own son, so the Lord God chasteneth them? And if they were enabled to get so far, if they were enabled to look upward out of that desolate condition of theirs and to claim a relation to God in which He was their dwelling-place, then they would not only be able to look upward, but to look forward too. I dare say it was one of the thoughts in their hearts, when they set their faces to go out of Egypt to that promised land, that when they came to die, as die they must, their tombs would be in that land on which God looked from the one years end to the other. That was over now; there was nothing for them now but to leave their bones lying anywhere, wherever they might drop in the wilderness. Yet even so, they might believe that Gods promise would hold and that Gods goodness would not fail, and that when the great days of the fulfilling should come, they also, wherever their nameless grave might be, should not be altogether forgotten or left out of the blessedness of His people. And if God was their dwelling-place, how natural that their prayer should take this course of appealing to God to make them feel their interest in Him, to make them feel Gods interest in them. The pledges that they had once looked to see fulfilled had been swept away, and they stood face to face with God, and if they were to live a life of faith in God they required help. O satisfy us early with Thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children. How that sentence on their lives expressed the vanity of their lives, they could make nothing of them; they would lead to no result. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. We also are passing through our pilgrimage to the land which God has set before us, and in the case of many of us our experiences are very different from those of which we have been thinking in connection with this psalm. But there are others of us whose experience prepares them to join in some of the reflections and especially in some of the prayers of this psalm. Perhaps there are some who cannot see the use of their lives. Their expectations in life have been crossed; sorrows have come where they hoped to have prosperous and progressive times. They have difficulty in understanding any Divine purpose in their lives, or any human purpose that a person could follow out with cheerfulness, with a sense of accomplishment and success. And they are apt to feel that God is not thinking about them. Such persons deserve the sympathy of all those who have not been so tried as they have been. Perhaps there have been circumstances in their lives, temptations and failures that lead them to feel that this failure of their lives, this want of an outlook and an upward prospect before them, has been duo to their own sin, and their own foolishness, which has perplexed their heart, and which has brought upon them the experiences which often do follow sin and folly--and it may be so. But it is true that you need a dwelling-place, and so also it is true that through these many experiences of yours you may be enabled to find your way to the faith that God is your dwelling-place; that He has not been forsaking you, but has been sweeping away treasures that were too lightly contemplated, and too lightly held, to make room for His coming in Himself into your lives, with a new manifestation of His grace, with a new sense of your own sin and unworthiness, and at the same time a new experience of His goodness. We have all homes, or have had homes, and what idea do we associate with the home, the dwelling-place to which we naturally belong? First of all the idea is of protection. A little child feels sure of protection in its own home, and it is right; there are people there who would die rather than let it come to harm. Then there is provision--wants met; forethought exercised that we may be provided for. Then there is a sense of peace, a sense of familiar surroundings, of being at home, at peace with all that is around you. There is also a sense of enjoyment, a sense of love and gladness that make a cheerful and happy place. We need this, and in a measure it comes to us in our own homes, but they may pass away. They are to teach us that we need the true home, and the Lord must be our dwelling-place, in whom is protection--He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep; in whom there is provision, Bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure. And then there is gladness. Some of us, perhaps, cannot realize true, simple, childlike gladness in connection with religious faith or experience, but that is not because there is any doubt about the gladness, but because we are not far enough on. And, therefore, if I speak to any who find a difficulty in the experiences of their life is recognizing the Divine care and goodness, I would say to you, Is your case worse than the case of those men and women of whom I have been speaking? And if this was the very way in which God taught them what He was and what He could be to them, and enable them to say, Lord, Thou art our dwelling-place, then should we not learn the same lesson; learn it when sorrows and perplexities and troubles come to us, to go to God for deliverance, and for a knowledge of what it is to yield ourselves to God, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. It is a sad business to think of those who are living in happy homes, in homes which have much happiness, and many elements of good about them, and yet have no outlook further; as if when by and by the materials of that earthly home fall away, they will pass out into eternity houseless and homeless. That will not do; we are very clearly told that if we are to find that blessedness we must seek it now. (R. Rainy, D.D.)

Man and his Maker

I. In the safe guardianship of God (Psa_90:1).

1. In other places God is represented as the dwelling-place of human souls (Isa_4:6; Deu_33:27; Psa_91:9). Human souls want a home, a place where they can rest in confidence, sheltered from the storm, protected from the burning rays, and shielded from every danger and every foe.

2. What a dwelling-place is God!

(1) How safe! The combined armies of hell cannot enter it; the strongest storm in the universe cannot affect it.

(2) How happy! In it there is everything to charm the imagination, gratify the love, delight the conscience, transport the whole soul in raptures of joy.

(3) How accessible. Its doors are open to all. Untold millions have entered it, and yet there is room.

(4) How enduring! The strongest castles rumble before the breath of time, and the material universe may be dissolved, but this dwelling-place will stand for ever.

II. In physical contrast to God (Psa_90:2-6). Here is the Eternal in antithesis with man the evanescent, the absolute in contrast with man the dependent.

1. Man is mortal. Dust we are and to dust we must return. But this event occurs not by accident, or disease or fate. No. Thou turnest man to destruction. There are no accidental deaths in the world.

2. Emblems of the brevity of human life.

(1) A watch. This, according to Hebrew chronology, was only one-third of the nocturnal season. Life is spoken of, not as a year or a month, but as a third part of a night, so brief it is.

(2) Sleep, Sleep ceases, says Luther, ere we can perceive it or mark it; before we are aware we have slept, sleep is gone. When the oldest man, as he is about passing away, looks back on his past life, the whole seems only as a vision of the night.

(3) Grass. What are men? Merchants, warriors, emperors, armies? Grass, nothing more. The wind passeth over them and they are gone. Oh, what is man to God? (Homilist.)

The gate to Gods acre

It is the oldest of stories, sung in this oldest of psalms; of human weakness, turning in dismay from the change and decay about it, to find refuge in the eternity of God. We are not suffered to waste time in the attempt to comprehend the abstract truth of Gods eternity. We are lifted for the moment, in order that we may descend; suffered to grasp a few of the treasures of the Divine glory, that we may carry them back to glorify our earthly life.

1. This splendid thought of the Divine eternity is made to touch the shifting and inconstant character of our earthly state, by the single word dwelling-place. I am a wanderer on earth, there is an eternal home for me; I am sick of confusion and change, there is eternal abiding in Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and only a change into the same image from glory to glory.

2. But a correct view of the eternity of God conveys warning as well as comfort. The more it is studied, the stronger is the contrast into which it throws the brevity and uncertainty of human life.

(1) The eternal power of God convicts us of helplessness. Notice the sharp contrast. From everlasting to everlasting, O God, Thy life is self-sustained--in Thine own power: mans life, that gift in which he so exults and on which he presumes to play such fantastic tricks before high heaven,--that which flowers out in his pride and high endeavour, in his ambitions, plans, and grand enterprises, is a thing so little in his power, that Thou turnest him even unto the finest dust with a word; and, with another word,--Return, ye children of men--callest others into being to fill his place.

(2) The eternal being of God is used to convict us of delusion. We measure life by false standards. The psalm brings us back to the true rule of measurement (Psa_90:4; Psa_90:12).

3. These suggestions are enforced by the figures which follow. Each of them sets forth a truth of its own.

(1) There is, first, the fact that man passes swiftly from life. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. Thou carriest men away from life, as a mountain torrent, rising in an hour, sweeps away the frail but that man has built.

(2) Take the next figure: and to the same thought of the swift passage of life, we have added that of its unsubstantial, unreal character, and of mans unconsciousness of its passage. They are as a sleep in the morning.

(3) Again, look at the third image: the grass which flourisheth in the morning and is cut down at evening. Here still is the old key-note--the quick passing of the life; but with a new thought, namely, how the beauty and strength and aspiration of life are disregarded in the swift flight of time. It is cut down. Why this strong expression, as if it were not left to wither of itself, but were destroyed by violence?

4. The question marks the transition to the next portion of the psalm, embraced in the next four verses. This matter of brief life and swift death is a mystery, is it also an accident? Then, as now, men were prone to say, Man is to be pitied: man is the victim of circumstances: man is not guilty, but unfortunate: man is not depraved, but fettered: man deserves not punishment, but compassion: sin is no ground for wrath, but for tolerance. True it is that the Bible is an evangel of love, and pardon, and compassion; true that like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him; but also true that the Bible, from beginning to end, blazes like Sinai with Gods hatred of sin, resounds with warnings of mans danger from sin, and sets forth as in letters of fire that man is responsible for sin, and liable to its penalties; true that history, and prophecy, and psalm, and gospel, and epistle are grouped round one definite purpose, to save him from the power, dominion, and consequences of sin. In view of these terrible facts, and of mens persistent blindness to the power of Gods anger then, as now, is it strange that Moses prayed, is there not good cause for us to pray, Teach us to number our days? Whither shall a sinful, short-lived man flee, but to a holy and eternal God? Thither turns the prayer of these last five verses, and turns with hope and confidence. Man is the subject of Gods wrath, but there is mercy with Him to satisfy him who flees from the wrath to come. Man is a pilgrim and a stranger, with no continuing city, but there is gladness and rejoicing in God for all his brief days. Mans beauty consumes as the moth, but the beauty of the Lord our God shall be upon him, and that beauty is immortal, untouched by time and change. Mans work is fragmentary, his plans often disconcerted, his grandest enterprises nipped in the bud by death, but Gods touch upon human work imparts to it the fixedness of eternity; and if He establish the work of our hands, it shall abide though the world pass away and the lust thereof. He will make good the sufferings of sin by the joys of Holiness. (M. R. Vincent, D.D.)

God a dwelling-place

I. The eternity of God.

1. The existence of God never had a beginning.

2. The existence of God will never have an end; it stretches into futurity further than our minds can follow it or angels trace it; it is an everlasting life, a deep and mysterious stream which never began, and will never cease, to flow.

II. In what relation this everlasting being stands to ourselves. We are reminded of the power by which He formed the earth and the worlds; we are reminded of the eternity in which He dwelt before there was a creature to know and adore Him; and for what end?--that a world of destitute sinners may be encouraged to consign themselves to His care and to trust in His love. He is our dwelling-place, our refuge, our habitation, our home.

1. A refuge from dangers.

2. The seat of our comforts.

3. The place of our abode.

III. What feelings the contemplation of God in this light ought to excite.

1. Grateful acknowledgment.

2. Satisfaction.

3. Humility.

4. Confidence.

5. To the careless and ungodly--terror.

Other enemies may be incensed against us, but while they are preparing to execute their purposes of wrath, their breath goeth forth; they die; and there is an end of their terror. But an avenging God never dies. The weapons of His indignation are as lasting as they are strong. (C. Bradley, M.A.)

The glorious habitation

I. Explanation.

1. The dwelling-place of man is the place where he can unbend himself, and feel himself at home, and speak familiarly. With God you can be always at home; you need be under no restraint. The Christian at once gives God the key of his heart, and lets Him turn everything over. The more God lives in the Christian, the better the Christian loves Him; the oftener God comes to see him, the better he loves his God. And God loves His people all the more when they are familiar with Him.

2. Mans home is the place where his affections are centred. Christian man, is God your habitation in that sense? Have you given your whole soul to God?

3. My next remark is concerning the lease of this dwelling-place. Sometimes, you know, people get turned out of their houses, or their houses tumble down about their ears. It is never so with ours; God is our dwelling-place throughout all generations. Christian, your house is indeed a venerable house, and you have long dwelt there. You dwelt there in the person of Christ long before you were brought into this sinful world; and it is to be your dwelling-place throughout all generations. You are never to ask for another house; you will always be contented with that one you have, you will never wish to change your habitation.

II. Improvement.

1. Self-examination. It is remarkable that almost the only scriptural writer who speaks of God as a dwelling-place is that most loving apostle, John. He gives us (1Jn_4:12) one means of knowing whether we are living in God: If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us. And again, further on, he says, And we have known and believed the love that God is to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. You may then tell whether you are a tenant of this great spiritual house by the love you have towards others. In the 13th verse is another sign: Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. Have you actually the Spirit of God within you? If so, you dwell in God. But the apostle gives another sign in the 15th verse: Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. The confession of our faith in the Saviour is another sign that we live in God. But there is one more sign whereby: we ought to examine ourselves, in the third chapter 24th verse: He that keepeth His commandments dwelleth in Him, and He in him. Obedience to the Commandments of God is a blessed sign of a dwelling in God. Some of you have a deal of religious talk, but not much religious walk; a large stock of outside piety, but not much real inward piety, which develops itself in your actions.

2. Congratulation to those who dwell in God. I congratulate you, Christians, first, that you have such a magnificent house to dwell in. You have not a palace that shall be as gorgeous as Solomons,--a mighty place as immense as the dwellings of the kings of Assyria, or Babylon; but you have a God that is more than mortal creatures can behold, you dwell in an immortal fabric, you dwell in the Godhead--something which is beyond all human skill. I congratulate you, moreover, that ye live in such a perfect house. There neer was a house on earth that could not be made a little better; but in God you have all you require. I congratulate you, moreover, that you live in a house that shall last for ever, a dwelling-place that shall not pass away; when all this universe shall have died out like a spark from an expiring brand, your house shall live and stand more imperishable than marble, self-existent as God, for it is God! Be happy then.

3. One word by way of warning. Do you know, poor soul, that you have not a house to live in? You have a house for your body but no house for your soul. Have you ever seen a poor girl at midnight sitting down on a doorstep crying? Somebody passes by, and says, Why do you sit here? I have no house, sir. I have no home. Where is your father? My fathers dead, sir. Where is your mother? I have no mother, sir. Have you no friends? No friends at all. Have you no house? No; I have none. I am houseless. And she shivers in the chill air, and gathers her poor ragged shawl around her, and cries again, I have no house--I have no home. Would you not pity her? Would you blame her for her tears? Ah! there are some of you that have houseless souls here this morning. It is something to have a houseless body; but to think of a houseless soul!(C. H. Spurgeon.)

God our home

There is pathos in the fact that the author of this psalm never had an earthly home in the truest sense. For the first fifty years of his life he was the foster son of an alien; for the next, a fugitive; and for the last, a wanderer in the wilderness. But God is the best home, after all. How one feels the blessing of a pleasant home after long travel. What should a home be?

I. A place of shelter. And God is that, from wrath, sin, sorrow.

II. A place of supply. There we go for our daily bread. And it is God who gives us that.

III. Of enjoyment. Those do not know God who have never found delight in Him.

IV. Rest.

V. Love. (M. B. Riddle, D. D.)

Jehovah our home

I. Man needs A home. Like the climbing plant, without the strongest stem to support it, the sensibilities of our frail but wonderful nature trail in the dust.

II. God reveals himself as humanitys home. The perfection of our home in God is seen in three particulars.

1. Physical adaptation. This world is fitted up for mans accommodation; fitted to engage energy and repay toil. It is not for the idlers comfort.

2. Intellect finds a home in God. Never talk of religious dulness. Our Father spreads out for the education of His children the grandly-illustrated page of nature, and the letter of His love.

3. Heart and soul--our moral being--find a home in God. In all generations. Religion, under every different form, and with every varied accompaniment: patriarchal simplicity, Mosaic picture, Christian manhood--has ever been the same, ever fitted to mans heart.

III. Our home in God is inviolable. Out of God, there is no resting-place for the jaded spirits of men.

IV. God our home: then it is eternal.

V. This home is to be reached through Christ. (Homilist.)

The abiding-place

I. How did Moses come to win this foil against his sense of the brevity of life? He sought to purge his vision of every film, and he trained his mind to detect a presence of God underneath the veils of nature and behind the masks of history, till the very earth around him was haunted ground. God was quite as invisible to him as to you or me, and yet, according to the apostle, he lived as seeing Him. God had become a dwelling-place to Moses, because thought and desire had made a well-worn path toward Him, and He was a refuge to which he continually resorted. Such realization of God cannot be extemporized. A solid and substantial fabric which shall afford thought and feeling, all the repose and solace of a home, can be ours only as we acquaint ourselves with God, and enter into such familiarity with Him that He shall grow to be as definite and real to us as any of the daily facts of our common world.

II. What it meant to Moses that God should appear as a dwelling-place. Through all the years of his earthly career he had never had a permanent home. He had been a pilgrim and sojourner on the earth, and learned the full meaning of the word homelessness. But, as one weary with long marches behold afar some stately mansion where love and welcome wait to greet him, so on the thought of Moses dawned the great vision of a quiet and enduring home, where his tired limbs and aching spirit should find balm and ease. His life had been driven hither and thither at the caprice of circumstances; in no sunny nook or sequestered vale of peace could he stay; goaded on, he had to leave behind him whatever engaged his interest, and where he fain would tarry. But from that gleaming dwelling-place yonder he should go out no more for ever. Instead of change there would be permanency; instead of the vicissitudes and fluctuations of fickle fortune there would be the constancy of unharassed tranquillity. You say, such a faith is an experience to be coveted. You sigh, and wish that it might be yours. But note that he had no monopoly of such a dwelling-place. He says that it is just as available, just as accessible, to us as to him. God is a Dwelling-place for His people in all generations. And, in spite of the murky vapours which hide our heavens, many a one since has found it true that it is possible to have in God all the security and rest of a dwelling-place. In all generations the great fact stands; it has never been annulled; its wide doors are sealed against the approach of none. We may conceive of the glorious attributes of our God as so many various chambers or retiring-rooms, places of security, of gratification, or of repose, to which it is our present privilege to resort. When disconcerted with the mysteries of life, we will rest in the omniscience of God, and remember that the all-knowing One cannot err. When our desires seem to fail, we will rest in His fidelity who will never break His word of promise. When life grows bitter, we will resort to Him, like the sobbing child that pillows its head on a mothers bosom, because He has sent us this message: As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort thee. As I close, I want to ask whether or not you, any of you, feel at home with God. I have read of some who remembered God and were troubled. If it is thus with you, He cannot be your Dwelling-place. You may have paid Him occasional visits at distant intervals, but he that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High abides under the shadow of the Almighty. (J. G. Van Slyke, D.D.)

House and home

(with Isa_57:15):--Here are two homes. In the one case, God is a home for the human heart. In the other, the heart becomes a home for God. This double doctrine has in it the very soul and marrow of real religion. The most complete description of man the sinner is that he is without God. The most complete description of man the saved is that he is in God, he dwells in God and God in him. I once beard a negro bid good-bye to the missionary who had found a way into his heart for Jesus and himself too. You lib here, said he, putting his hand upon his heart. You lib right in my heart. You came to me, an you say, I love you, John, I open the door and you come right in, an I say, youse welcome to all Ise got. You say, John, do this; John, dont do that; an you love poor John; till my heart warm through and through. Massa, good-bye; but you lib here all same till I die. Verily the man of God was in Johns heart. Jesus wants to come into the contrite heart! To you He says, Come down; for to-day I must abide in thy house! But when God dwells in us by His Spirit, and makes our heart His home, He becomes our dwelling-place and our home. It is not possible to retain in perpetuity any earthly home, but this home, the heart of God, can never fail through all the years. These walls can never crumble; this roof-tree can never decay; these foundations can never fail. From everlasting to everlasting He is God. Neither is there any eviction possible; nor any room for alarm at the approach of hostile foot or invading arm. The Lord is my fortress, my strong tower. A safe stronghold our God is still! That was the thunderous victor-song of Luther and his fellows, and all the armies of Pope and devil could not dislodge them. The Christians dwelling-place is a safe home! For the eternal God is his refuge, and around him are the everlasting arms. Only cross the threshold, and you shall go out no more for ever. The Lord our dwelling-place. That speaks to us of shelter. When the cold winds blow, and the tempest beats, and the storm of rain or snow goes driving through the streets, how sweet to cross the threshold and gain the shelter of our home. We can hear the hurly-burly outside--the noise of the rain against the window-pane; the moaning of the blast; but none of these things move us--we are safe at home. Our dwelling-place. How the word tells us of comfort; of content; of rest and home delights. By the ingle and the hearth we are able to forget the tedious toil and moil of the day. The toil-worn limb, the tired hand, the weary foot, the aching head, the jaded brain find at home a welcome quiet, a refreshing rest, a comforting repose. To dwell in God is to win that refreshment and obtain that rest. And does not the word speak to us also of supplies? Our dwelling-place, God. Food lies on His table; the finest of bread; honey in the combs; wines well refined, fatlings of the flock; all this and more tells the story of the bountiful provision, the sumptuous fare provided for every one who dwells in God, housed and homed in the loving heart of Jesus Christ. (J. J. Wray.)

God as a dwelling-place

Perhaps the noblest form of dwelling-place, and the one most akin to Moses meaning, is that of human friendship. As little children, when taken among strangers, we looked all around for mother, and if only she were there we rushed to her, and hid in her, covering our face, but feeling safe, and able presently to look out on the guests as from a window in a house on a crowd. Or, in later life, it has been our lot to be misrepresented and misunderstood by all except by one man of noblest fashion. And it has seemed as if we were almost indifferent to all beside, so long as He is pleased and satisfied. Let the cruel winds of slander come, we have cried, and reproach, and hate; He understands and appreciates me; judged by His standard, I am true; tested by His opinion, I am right against a world in arms, I am content to abide in His approval and be at peace. Or, in other circumstances still, you have learnt to love, with all your heart and soul, so that your existence seems almost to have passed into that of another, and to be safe, restful, almost careless of all else, so long as that house stands unsmitten by the tempest which whirls around. All these are dwelling-places to which souls betake themselves, destined, alas! all of them, to perish, except that human love which, in so far as it is threaded with the Divine, partakes of the nature of God Himself, and is eternal. But none of them can give to the soul such blessed rest as to be able to say to God, Thou, O Lord, art my rock, and my fortress, my shield, and my high tower. It was thus that the apostles made their dwelling-place in the nature of their Lord. Their life was hid with Christ in God. So our blessed Lord lived in God His Father. Just as a child looks out on a mob in the streets from the security of the strong castellated dwelling, where it sits on its fathers knee, so did Jesus look out on the malice and hatred of men from His rest in the very heart of God. This is the true life, which, thank God! is within the reach of us all. Put God between yourself and men with their strife, or sorrow with its fret and care, chafing like the perpetual wash of the wave which retreats only to return. Ask what God says of you measure yourself only by His standards. Seek only His well-done. Dwell deep in God. And because thou shelf have made the Lord, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. As the cathedral of Cologne rears itself in incomparable majesty beyond the trailer houses around, offering a permanence which storms and time cannot impair, so does God rear Himself as our all-sufficient dwelling-place amid the passage of creation, of generations, and of centuries. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.)

God--the Home of the soul of man

Heinrich Heine, a Jew by birth, not by conviction, professed Christianity in 1825. This profession, however, was merely formal, a necessary preliminary to his practising as a lawyer in Germany. Compelled to leave Germany, he lived in Paris, where he was one of the most brilliant figures in the brilliant society of his day. During many years his wittiest gibes were directed against religion; irreverence was rife in the world around him, and he never hesitated to give it sparkling utterance. But towards the end of his life came a change. A few years before death he wrote, Yes! I have returned to God like the prodigal son, after my long swineherdship . . . Is it misery that sends me home? Perhaps a less miserable reason. A heavenly homesickness overtook me. Still later: I die believing in God one and eternal, Creator of the world. I implore His mercy upon my immortal soul.

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

A Prayer of Moses the man of God. Many attempts have been made to prove that Moses did not write this Psalm, but we remain unmoved in the conviction that he did so. The condition of Israel in the wilderness is so preeminently illustrative of each verse, and the turns, expressions, and words are so similar to many in the Pentateuch, that the difficulties suggested are, to our mind, light as air in comparison with the internal evidence in favour of its Mosaic origin. Moses was mighty in word as well as deed, and this Psalm we believe to be one of his weighty utterances, worthy to stand side by side with his glorious oration recorded in Deuteronomy. Moses was peculiarly a man of God and God's man; chosen of God, inspired of God, honoured of God, and faithful to God in all his house, he well deserved the name which is here given him. The Psalm is called a prayer, for the closing petitions enter into its essence, and the preceding verses are a meditation preparatory to the supplication. Men of God are sure to be men of prayer. This was not the only prayer of Moses, indeed it is but a specimen of the manner in which the seer of Horeb was leant to commune with heaven, and intercede for the good of Israel. This is the oldest of the Psalms, and stands between two books of Psalms as a composition unique in its grandeur, and alone in its sublime antiquity. Many generations of mourners have listened to this Psalm when standing around the open grave, and have been consoled thereby, even when they have not perceived its special application to Israel in the wilderness and have failed to remember the far higher ground upon which believers now stand.

—Moses sings of the frailty of man, and the shortness of life, contrasting therewith the eternity of God, and founding thereon earnest appeals for compassion. The only division which will be useful separates the contemplation Ps 90:1-11 from the prayer Ps 90:12-17 : there is indeed no need to make even this break, for the unity is well preserved throughout.

Ver. 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. Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the saints dwell in their God, and have always done so in all ages. Not in the tabernacle or the temple do we dwell, but in God himself; and this we have always done since there was a church in the world. We have not shifted our abode. Kings' palaces have vanished beneath the crumbling hand of time—they have been burned with fire and buried beneath mountains of ruins, but the imperial race of heaven has never lost its regal habitation. Go to the Palatine and see how the Caesars are forgotten of the halls which echoed to their despotic mandates, and resounded with the plaudits of the nations over which they ruled, and then look upward and see in the ever living Jehovah the divine home of the faithful, untouched by so much as the finger of decay. Where dwelt our fathers a hundred generations since, there dwell we still. It is of New Testament saints that the Holy Ghost has said, "He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in God and God in him!" It was a divine mouth which said, "Abide in me", and then added, "he that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit." It is most sweet to speak with the Lord as Moses did, saying, "Lord, thou art our dwelling place", and it is wise to draw from the Lord's eternal condescension reasons for expecting present and future mercies, as the Psalmist did in the next Psalm wherein he describes the safety of those who dwell in God.

Title. The correctness of the title which ascribes the Psalm to Moses is confirmed by its unique simplicity and grandeur; its appropriateness to his times and circumstances; its resemblance to the Law in urging the connection between sin and death; its similarity of diction to the poetical portions of the Pentateuch, without the slightest trace of imitation or quotation; its marked unlikeness to the Psalms of David, and still more to those of later date; and finally, the proved impossibility of plausibly assigning it to any other age or author. —J.A. Alexander.

Title. A prayer of Moses. Moses may be considered as the first composer of sacred hymns. —Samuel Burder.

Title. The Psalm is described in the title as a prayer. This description shows, as Amyraldus saw, that the kernel of the Psalm in the second part, and that the design of the first is to prepare the way for the second, and lay down a basis on which it may rest. —E.W. Hengstenberg.

Title. A prayer of Moses. Moses was an old and much tried man, but age and experience had taught him that, amidst the perpetual changes which are taking place in the universe, one thing at least remains immutable, even the faithfulness of him who is "from everlasting to everlasting God." How far back into the past may the patriarch have been looking when he spake these words? The burning bush, the fiery furnace of Egypt, the Red Sea, Pharaoh with his chariots of war, and the weary march of Israel through the wilderness, were all before him; and in all of them he had experienced that "God is the Rock, his work perfect, all his ways judgment" (De 32:4). But Moses was looking beyond these scenes of his personal history when he said, "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations." (De 32:7), and we may be sure that he was also looking beyond them when he indited the song, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Yes; he was casting in his mind how God had been the refuge of Jacob and Isaac, of Abraham, Noah, and all the patriarchs. Moses could take a retrospect of above a thousand years, which had all confirmed the truth. I can do no more. At this point of time I can look back to the days of Moses and Joshua and David, and descending thence to the days of the Son of God upon earth, and of Paul and Peter, and all the saints of the Church down to the present hour; and what a thousand years avouched to Moses, three thousand now avouch to me: the Lord is the dwelling place of those that trust in him from generation to generation. Yes; and to him who was the refuge of a Moses and an Abraham, I too in the day of trouble can lift my hands. Delightful thought! That great Being who, during the lapse of three thousand years, amidst the countless changes of the universe, has to this day remained unchanged, is MY God. —Augustus F. Theluck, in "Hours of Christian Devotion", 1870.

Whole Psalm. Although some difficulties have been started, there seems no reason to doubt that this Psalm is the composition of Moses. From the remotest period his name has been attached to it, and almost every Biblical scholar, from Jerome down to Hengstenberg, has agreed to accept it as a prayer of that "man of God" whose name it has always carried. If so, it is one of the oldest poems in the world. Compared with it Homer and Pindar are (so to speak) modern, and even King David is of recent date. That is to say, compared with this ancient hymn the other Psalms are as much more modern as Tennyson and Longfellow are more modern than Chaucer. In either case there are nearly five centuries between. —James Hamilton.

Whole Psalm. The 90th Psalm might be cited as perhaps the most sublime of human compositions—the deepest in feeling—the loftiest in theologic conception—the most magnificent in its imagery. True is it in its report of human life—as troubled, transitory, and sinful. True in its conception of the Eternal—the Sovereign and the Judge; and yet the refuge and hope of men, who, notwithstanding, the most severe trials of their faith, lose not their confidence in him; but who, in the firmness of faith, pray for, as if they were predicting, a near at hand season of refreshment. Wrapped, one might say, in mystery, until the distant day of revelation should come, there is here conveyed the doctrine of Immortality; for in the very complaint of the brevity of the life of man, and of the sadness of these, his few years of trouble, and their brevity, and their gloom, there is brought into contrast the Divine immutability; and yet it is in terms of a submissive piety: the thought of a life eternal is here in embryo. No taint is there in this Psalm of the pride and petulance —the half uttered blasphemy—the malign disputing or arraignment of the justice or goodness of God, which have so often shed a venomous colour upon the language of those who have writhed in anguish, personal or relative. There are few probably among those who have passed through times of bitter and distracting woe, or who have stood —the helpless spectators of the miseries of others, that have not fallen into moods of mind violently in contrast with the devout and hopeful melancholy which breathes throughout this ode. Rightly attributed to the Hebrew Lawgiver or not, it bespeaks its remote antiquity, not merely by the majestic simplicity of its style, but negatively, by the entire avoidance of those sophisticated turns of thought which belong to a late—a lost age in a people's intellectual and moral history. This Psalm, undoubtedly, is centuries older than the moralizing of that time when the Jewish mind had listened to what it could never bring into a true assimilation with its own mind—the abstractions of the Greek Philosophy.

With this one Psalm only in view—if it were required of us to say, in brief, what we mean by the phrase—"The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry" —we find our answer well condensed in this sample. This magnificent composition gives evidence, not merely as to the mental qualities of the writer, but as to the tastes and habits of the writer's contemporaries, his hearers, and his readers; on these several points—first, the free and customary command of a poetic diction, and its facile imagery, so that whatever the poetic soul would utter, the poet's material is near at hand for his use. There is then that depth of feeling—mournful, reflective, and yet hopeful and trustful, apart from which poetry can win for itself no higher esteem than what we bestow upon other decorative arts, which minister to the demands of luxurious sloth. There is, moreover, as we might say, underlying this poem, from the first line to the last, the substance of philosophic thought, apart from which, expressed or understood, poetry is frivolous, and is not in harmony with the seriousness of human life: this Psalm is of a sort which Plato would have written, or Sophocles—if only the one or the other of these minds had possessed a heaven descended Theology. —Isaac Taylor.

Ver. 1. Lord. Observe the change of the divine names in this Psalm. Moses begins with the declaration of the Majesty of the Lord (Adonai) but when he arrives at Ps 90:13, he opens his prayer with the Name of grace and covenanted mercy to Israel—JEHOVAH; and he sums up all in Ps 90:17, with a supplication for the manifestation of the beauty Men of "the Lord our God" (JEHOVAH, ELOHIM). —Christopher Wordsworth.

Ver. 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place. Many seem to beg God's help in prayer, but are not protected by him: they seek it only in a storm, and when all other means and refuges fail them. But a Christian must maintain constant communication with God; must dwell in God, not run to him now and then. —Thomas Manton.

Ver. 1. This exordium breathes life, and pertains to a certain hope of the resurrection and of eternal life. Since he calls God, who is eternal, our habitation, or to speak more clearly, our place of refuge, to whom fleeing we may be in safety. For if God is our dwelling place, and God is life, and we dwellers in him, it necessarily follows, that we are in life, and shall live for ever... For who will call God the dwelling place of the dead? Who shall regard him as a sepulchre? He is life; and therefore they also live to whom he is a dwelling place. After this fashion Moses, in the very introduction, before he lets loose his horrible thunderings and lightnings, fortifies the trembling, that they may firmly hold God to be the living dwelling place of the living, of those that pray to him, and put their trust in him.

It is a remarkable expression, the like of which is nowhere in Sacred Scripture, that God is a dwelling place. Scripture in other places says the very opposite, it calls men temples of God, in whom God dwells; "the temple of God is holy", says Paul, "which temple ye are." Moses inverts this, and affirms, we are inhabitants and masters in this house. For the Hebrew word Nwem properly signifies a dwelling place, as when the Scripture says, "In Zion is his dwelling place", where this word (Maon) is used. But because a house is for the purpose of safety, it results, that this word has the meaning of a refuge or place of refuge. But Moses wishes to speak with such great care that he may shew that all our hopes have been placed most securely in God, and that they who are about to pray to this God may be assured that they are not afflicted in this work in vain, nor die, since they have God as a place of refuge, and the divine Majesty as a dwelling place, in which they may rest secure for ever. Almost in the same strain Paul speaks, when he says to the Colossians, "Your life is hid with Christ in God." For it is a much clearer and more luminous expression to say, Believers dwell in God, than that God dwells in them. He dwelt also visibly in Zion, but the place is changed. But because he (the believer), is in God, it is manifest, that he cannot be moved nor transferred, for God is a habitation of a kind that cannot perish. Moses therefore wished to exhibit the most certain life, when he said, God is our dwelling place, not the earth, not heaven, not paradise, but simply God himself. If after this manner you take this Psalm it will become sweet, and seem in all respects most useful. When a monk, it often happened to me when I read this Psalm, that I was compelled to lay the book out of my hand. But I knew not that these terrors were not addressed to an awakened mind. I knew not that Moses was speaking to a most obdurate and proud multitude, which neither understood nor cared for the anger of God, nor were humbled by their calamities, or even in prospect of death. —Martin Luther.

Ver. 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place, etc. In this first part the prophet acknowledgeth that God in all times, and in all ages hath had a special care of his saints and servants, to provide for them all things necessary for this life; for under the name of "dwelling place", or mansion house, the prophet understandeth all helps and comforts necessary for this life, both for maintenance and protection. For the use of such houses was wont to be not only to defend men from the injury of the weather, and to keep safely, within the walls and under the roof all other things necessary for this life, and to be a place of abode, wherein men might the more commodiously provide for all other things necessary, and walk in some calling profitable to their neighbour and to the glory of God; but also to protect them from the violence of brute beasts and rage of enemies. Now the prophet herein seems to note a special and more immediate providence of God: (for of all kind of people they seemed to be most forsaken and forlorn); that whereas the rest of the world seemed to have their habitations and mansions rooted in the earth, and so to dwell upon the earth; to live in cities and walled towns in all wealth and state; God's people were as it were without house and home. Abraham was called out of his own country, from his father's house, where no doubt he had goodly buildings, and large revenues, and was commanded by God to live as a foreigner in a strange country, amongst savage people, that he knew not; and to abide in tents, booths, and cabins, having little hope to live a settled and comfortable life in any place. In like manner lived his posterity, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve patriarchs, wandering from place to place in the land of Canaan; from thence translated into the land of Egypt, there living at courtesy, and as it were tenants at will, and in such slavery and bondage, that it had been better for them to have been without house and home. After this for forty years together (at which time this Psalm was penned) they wandered up and down in a desolate wilderness, removing from place to place, and wandering, as it were in a maze. So that of all the people of the earth, God's own people had hitherto lived as pilgrims and banished persons, without house or home; and therefore the prophet here professes that God himself more immediately by his extraordinary providence, for many ages together had protected them, and been as it were a mansion house unto them; that is, the more they were deprived of these ordinary comforts of this life, the more was God present with them, supplying by his extraordinary and immediate providence what they wanted in regard of ordinary means. The due consideration of this point may minister matter of great joy and comfort to such children of God as are thoroughly humbled with the consideration of man's mortality in general, or of theirs whom they rely and depend upon in special. —William Bradshaw, 1621.

Ver. 1. Our dwelling place. God created the earth for beasts to inhabit, the sea for fishes, the air for fowls, and heaven for angels and stars, so that man hath no place to dwell and abide in but God alone. —Giovanni della Mirandola Pico, 1463-1494.

Ver. 1-2. —The comfort of the believer against the miseries of this short life is taken from the decree of their election, and the eternal covenant of redemption settled in the purpose and counsel of the blessed Trinity for their behoof, wherein it was agreed before the world was, that the Word to be incarnate, should be the Saviour of the elect: for here the asserting of the eternity of God is with relation to his own chosen people; for Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations, and thou art God from everlasting to everlasting, is in substance thus much: —Thou art from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God in purpose and affection toward us thy people, and so thou art our God from everlasting, in regard of thy eternal purpose of love, electing us, and in regard of thy appointing redemption for us by the Redeemer. —David Dickson.

Ver. 1-2. If man be ephemeral, God is eternal. —James Hamilton.

Ver. 1-6.

O Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly,

And so hast always been, from age to age;

Before the hills did intercept the eye,

Or that the frame was up of earthly stage,

One God thou wert, and art, and still shall be;

The line of time, it doth not measure thee.

Both death and life obey thy holy lore,

And visit in their turns as they are sent;

A thousand years with thee they are no more

Than yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent:

Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep,

And goes and comes, unawares to them that sleep.

Thou carriest man away as with a tide:

Then down swim all his thoughts that mounted high;

Much like a mocking dream, that will not bide,

But flies before the sight of waking eye;

Or as the grass, that cannot term obtain,

To see the summer come about again.

At morning, fair it musters on the ground;

At even it is cut down and laid along:

And though it shared were and favour found,

The weather would perform the mower's wrong:

Thus hast thou hanged our life on brittle pins,

To let us know it will not bear our sins. —Francis Bacon.

Ver. 1. The near and dear relation between God and his people, so that they mutually dwell in each other.

Ver. 1. The abode of the church the same in all ages; her relation to God never changes.

Ver. 1.

1. The soul is at home in God. (a) Originally. Its birth place—its native air—home of its thoughts, will, conscience, affections, desires. (b) Experimentally. When it returns here it feels itself at home: "Return unto thy rest", etc. (c) Eternally. The soul, once returned to this home, never leaves it: "it shall go no more out for ever."

2. The soul is not at home elsewhere. "Our dwelling place", etc. (a) For all men. (b) At all times. He is ever the same, and the wants of the soul substantially are over the same. —G.R.

Psalms 90:2*

Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Psa 90:1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place, &c. — Although we and our fathers, for some generations, have had no fixed habitation, but have been strangers in a land that was not ours, and afflicted four hundred years; (see Gen 15:13;) and although we now are, and have been for some time, and must still continue, in a vast, howling wilderness, dwelling in tents, and wandering from place to place; yet thou, Lord, hast been instead of a dwelling-place to us, by thy watchful and gracious providence over us in all places and exigencies. This is said by way of preface to the Psalm, to intimate that the following miseries, which came upon them, were not to be imputed to God, but to themselves.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Book 4

The Pss. in this book, as in that which follows, are mostly of comparatively late date, and suitable for use in the worship of the sanctuary.

The two books seem to have been conjoined at one time, and to have formed the third great division of the Psalter. In the 17 Pss. of Book 4 several smaller groups or collections are to be distinguished. Psalms 93, 95-100 are called the 'theocratic' Pss., because they celebrate God as King, finding in the restoration of Israel from Babylon the evidence of His rule over the world. These Pss. are probably to be dated soon after that event, when it was still the one thought in men's minds. Psalms 90, 91, 94, 102 probably belong to the exile, as their language suggests such a time of national humiliation and sorrow. Psalms 103, 104 go together, and are probably by one author, who belonged to the period of the return. Psalms 105, 106 form a pair of about the same date. The whole book is 'Jehovistic' in its use of the divine name.

The Pss. of the fourth book may be classified thus, the divisions necessarily overlapping one another: (a) Penitential Psalms 90, 91, 94, 102; (b) Pss. of Thanksgiving, 92, 93, 95-100, 103-106; (c) National Psalms , 94, 97, 99, 102, 105, 106; (d) Historical Psalms , 105, 106; (e) a Gnomic Psalms , 101.

Most of the Pss. in this book are anonymous, but Psalms 101, 103 are ascribed by their titles to David. LXX, however, also gives as Davidic Psalms 91, 93-99, 101, 103, 104.

There are definite references to the Temple worship in several of these Pss., indicating that the sacred bunding was restored to permit of the sacrifices being offered and public worship performed. The musical service was rendered with instrumental accompaniments (Psa_98:5-6); the people were called upon to join in praise (Psa_95:1; Psa_96:1; Psa_98:1, Psa_98:4) and kneel in prayer (Psa_95:6); offerings were to be made in the courts of he Temple (Psa_96:8).

The Messianic hope appears in this book in the form of an expectation of Jehovah's coming in judgment. This was strengthened, if not wholly suggested, by the restoration from captivity, in which the pious Israelites saw the beginning of that coming. The people were led to look for a still greater day when their enemies would be finally overthrown, and the faith of those, who had trusted in God would be completely justified (see Psalms 96-98).

The title of this Ps. (A Prayer of Moses the man of God) ascribes it to Moses, but several considerations have been pointed out which suggest a later date for its composition. The average length of life in the time of Moses is supposed to have been greater than that mentioned in Psa_90:10 (Deu_34:7; Jos_24:29). Israel's national life seems not to be just beginning, but to have lasted already for many generations (Psa_90:1). The recent past has been a time of calamity rather than of deliverance (Psa_90:15). The Ps. contains resemblances to the book of Deuteronomy, which is now generally regarded as much later than the time of Moses, and these resemblances may have suggested the title. At the same time, there is much in the Ps. Which is consistent with the title, and some scholars still maintain its Mosaic authorship. If not written by Moses it may most probably be assigned to the exile. The Ps. contrasts the eternity of God with the transience of human life (Psa_90:1-6), traces the brevity and troublousness of man's existence to God's displeasure with sin (Psa_90:7-12), and ends with a prayer for God's forgiveness and favour (Psa_90:13-17). It is appropriately used in the Burial Service.

1. See Deu_32:7.

2. Mountains] see Deu_33:15.

3. Return] to dust (Gen_3:19).

4. A watch in the night] of which the sleeper is unconscious. There were three night-watches among the Israelites (Lam_2:19; Jdg_7:19; 1Sa_11:11).

5. They are as a sleep] or, 'they fall asleep' in death.

9. Spend] RV 'bring to an end.'

As a tale that is told] RM 'as a sigh,' a breath.

10. Their strength] RV 'their pride.'

11b. RV 'and thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto thee? 'Who understands Thine anger against sin so as to give Thee fitting and holy reverence?

12. Apply.. wisdom] RV 'get us an heart of wisdom': see Deu_5:29; Deu_32:29.

13. Repent] see Deu_32:36.

14. Early] RV 'in the morning.'

15. According to] i.e. in proportion to.

17. The work of our hands] The phrase occurs in Deuteronomy seven times.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

INTRODUCTION

Superscription.—“A prayer of Moses the man of God.” “The Psalm is described in the title,” says Hengstenberg, “as a prayer. This description shows, as Amyraldus saw, that the kernel of the Psalm is the second part, and that the design of the first is to prepare the way for the second, and lay down a basis on which it may rest. For תְּפִלָּה denotes only prayer in the proper sense, supplicatory prayer.” On תְּפּלָּה as used hero Fuerst says: “תְפִלָּה is a peculiar kind of song in the Psalter.” Its primary meaning he gives as prayer. And on its use in Psa_72:20, he says: “The first two books of the Psalter are termed in the subscription תְּפִלִּוֹת probably because they contain supplications for the most part.” Certainly the word prayer better represents the character of this Psalm than the word Psalm, or hymn.

“Of Moses.” “The correctness of the title which ascribes the Psalm to Moses,” says Professor Alexander, “is confirmed by its unique simplicity and grandeur; its appropriateness to his trials and circumstances; its resemblance to the law in urging the connection between sin and death; its similarity of diction to the poetical portions of the Pentateuch, without the slightest trace of imitation or quotation; its marked unlikeness to the Psalms of David, and still more to those of later date; and finally, the proved impossibility of plausibly assigning it to any other age or author.” And Amyraldus says: “But as this ode is most ancient. so it bears strong marks of the genius and character of antiquity. It is grave, full of majesty and authority, adorned with various comparisons, splendid with figures, but these rare and little used, and for the understanding of which there is needed extraordinary attention of mind.” The late Dr. James Hamilton points out that “it is one of the oldest poems in the world. Compared with it Homer and Pindar are, so to speak, modern, and even King David is of recent date. That is to say, compared with this ancient hymn the other Psalms are as much more modern as Tennyson and Longfellow are more modern than Chaucer. In either case there are nearly five centuries between.”

“The man of God.” Moses is thus described also in Deu_33:1; Jos_14:6; and Ezr_3:2. The term is very appropriately applied to him because of his singularly noble character, his distinguished rank, and the great part which he played in carrying out the purposes of God concerning our race. “Moses was faithful in all his house, as a servant.” Luther points out that the words “the man of God” give additional weight to the Psalm. He says: “As one who has such a duty assigned to him by God, so that we should believe in him and in his instructions no less than in God Himself.”

Occasion. It is impossible to decide upon what occasion the Psalm was composed; but the probability is, that it was written towards the close of the forty years wandering in the wilderness. “It was written,” says F. W. Robertson, “evidently in the wilderness, after years of apparently fruitless wandering; its tone is that of deep sadness—retrospective; its images are borrowed from the circumstances of the pilgrimage—the mountain flood, the grass, the night watch of an army on the march.”

Divisions. The Psalm consists of a Meditation (Psa_90:1-11), and a Prayer (Psa_90:12-17).

HUMAN FRAILTY AND DIVINE GREATNESS

(Psa_90:1-6)

In these verses, the Psalmist brings before us—

I. The greatness of God. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even front everlasting to everlasting Thou art God.”

1. He existed before the world. The word “earth” is used by the Psalmist to denote our world as distinguished from the heavens; and the word “world” signifies an inhabited fruitful land, or a land fitted for habitation. The “mountains” are mentioned first, because of all created things they appear most ancient, stable, and enduring. Upon all the generations that have ever trod this planet, with all their anxieties and cares, all their strifes and commotions, the old hills have cast their calm and silent shadows. They seem as though they had ever been where they are and as they are, and that they would for ever continue so. They are most impressive symbols of the unchangeable and the eternal. In the poetic diction of the Bible they are spoken of as eternal. Jacob spake of “the everlasting hills.” And Moses, “of the ancient mountains, and of the lasting hills.” And Habakkuk, of “the everlasting mountains, and the perpetual hills.” Yet they had a beginning. There was a time when they were not. However ancient the earth may be, it has not been from everlasting. The world is not eternal. God existed before the mountains were brought forth, before the world was created.

2. He created the world. He is said by the Psalmist to have “formed the earth and the world.” As God’s existence before the world proclaims the fact that it is not eternal, so His creation of the world proclaims the fact that it is not the product of chance. The sublime mountains were not upreared, the smiling valleys were not laid by any “fortuitous concourse of atoms.” “God created the heaven and the earth.” “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”

3. He is eternal. “From everlasting to everlasting Thou art, O God.” To understand eternity is difficult; to explain it is more difficult; to comprehend it is impossible to all except the Eternal. We are acquainted with creatures which have a beginning, live for a few hours, or days, or months, or years, and then cease to be. We are also acquainted with creatures who have been called into existence and will never pass out of existence. Such are we, and probably such are the angels. A little while ago, and we were not. Now we are called into being, and shall continue to be for ever. Our bodies shall change and pass away, our memory shall cease from amongst men upon the earth. But we shall never cease to be. To everlasting Thou art, O man! But God has never had a beginning, and will never have an end.

(1) He is without beginning. “From everlasting.” “Time,” says Charnock, “began with the foundation of the world; but God, being before time, could have no beginning in time. Before the beginning of the creation and the beginning of time there could be nothing but eternity; nothing but what was uncreated,—that is, nothing but what was without beginning. To be in time is to have a beginning; to be before all time is never to have a beginning, but always to be; for, as between the Creator and creatures there is no medium, so between time and eternity there is no medium. It is as easily deduced that He that was before all creatures is eternal, as He that made all creatures is God. If He had a beginning, He must have it from another, or from Himself; if from another, that from whom He received His being would be better than He,—so more a God than He. He cannot be God that is not supreme; he cannot be supreme that owes his being to the power of another. He would not be said only to have immortality as He is (1Ti_6:16), if He had it dependent upon another; nor could He have a beginning from Himself; if He had given beginning to Himself, then He was once nothing; there was a time when He was not. If He was not, how could He be the cause of Himself?” He is without beginning of days. He is “from everlasting.”

(2) He is without end. “To everlasting.” “The reason that anything decays is either its own native weakness, or a superior power of something contrary to it. There is no weakness in the nature of God that can introduce any corruption, because He is infinitely simple without any mixture, nor can He be overpowered by anything else. A weaker cannot hurt Him, and a stronger than He there cannot be; nor can He be outwitted or circumvented, because of His infinite wisdom. As He received His being from none, so He cannot be deprived of it by any: as He doth necessarily exist, so He doth necessarily always exist.” He is the SELF-EXISTENT—the “I AM.” “The Father,” said Christ, “hath life in Himself.” The idea of omnipotence is associated with His eternity in the mind of the Psalmist,—His omnipotence to guard His people. Luther says, “If we look at it” (His eternity) “in a right way, it includes all the properties of the Godhead. For, inasmuch as He is eternal, it follows that He is immortal, omnipotent, blessed, and wise.” And Schleiermacher: “The eternity of God is to be understood only as the omnipotent eternity, as that in God which conditionates time itself, as well as all that is temporal.” How incomprehensibly great is God! When imagination has done her utmost to picture His eternity, it has failed in the attempt. We may add ages to ages, and multiply them by the leaves of the forest in “the leafy month of June,” and multiply them again by the blades of grass upon the face of the earth, and again by the grains of sand upon the seashore, and again by the particles of dust on the earth, and we shall be as far as ever from the measurement of the ages of eternity. “Great God, how infinite art Thou!”

II. The frailty of man. In the verses in which the Psalmist sets this forth there are three things which call for notice—

1. The extreme brevity of man’s life upon earth. This is variously represented. How short is human life in the sight of God! “A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” A day when it is past and gone appears to us but a very short time. To God a thousand years are as brief as one past day is to us. Nay, to Him a thousand years are as brief as a watch in the night is to us. The Jews divided the night into watches, each watch representing the time during which a sentinel remained on duty. Among the ancient Hebrews there were three such watches; the first, or “the beginning of the watches” (Lam_2:19); the second, or “the middle watch” (Jdg_7:19); and the third, or “the morning watch” (Exo_14:24). These would last respectively from sunset to 10 p.m., from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., and from 2 a.m. to sunrise. A thousand years appear to God as brief as a night watch to the Israelites. Man lives not a thousand years: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.” How short, then, must man’s life upon earth appear to God! To man a life of seventy years, especially when it is in prospect, appears very long. To God, who sees all things clearly and truly, man’s life, even if it should stretch to a thousand years, would appear brief as a night watch does to us. The Psalmist also speaks of human life as “carried away as with a flood.” We have seen the river swollen with heavy rain rushing rapidly and irresistibly onward to the ocean. So the human family is carried away. Generation after generation is hurried from time into the vast ocean of eternity as by an impetuous and roaring torrent. “The man of God” goes on to say that human life is like “a sleep in the morning.” Barnes suggests that the words “in the morning” should be attached to the middle clause of the verse, and expounds the clause thus—“They are as sleep appears to us in the morning, when we wake from it—rapid, unreal, full of empty dreams.” Martin Luther says: “We know that sleep is such a thing that it ceases ere we can perceive it or mark it; for, before we are aware that we have slept, sleep is gone and ended. Wherefore truly our life is nothing else than a sleep and a dream, for before we are rightly conscious of being alive, we cease to live.” There is much of unreality in human life upon earth.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made of,

And our little life is rounded by a sleep.”

Moses also compares our life to the “grass.” The last clause in the fifth verse is rendered in the margin—“like grass which is changed.” Hengstenberg translates, “It vanishes like grass.” Barnes—“Like grass, it passeth away.” The sixth verse Hengstenberg renders—“In the morning he blooms and—perishes; in the evening he is cut down and withers.” The idea is clear: like the grass or flower which in the morning is green or blossoming in beauty, and in the evening is cut down and withered by the sun, is man’s life upon earth. “As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth; for the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.” How frail is human life, and how uncertain! Every day many go forth in the morning in apparent health and vigour, and before night they are cut down by disease or accident. And even at its longest our life cannot be compared to the cedar or even to the oak, but to the frail grass of the field.

2. The mournful end of man’s life upon earth. “Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men.” Perowne: “Thou turnest frail man to dust.” There is without doubt a reference here to the curse pronounced upon our race, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The human body must return to dust, however noble or beautiful it may be. Kings and the meanest of their subjects, millionaires and paupers, the learned and the ignorant, the beautiful and the deformed, the saint and the sinner, must all alike, as regards their bodies, return to the earth. Let the remembrance of the fact humble us. Let those who are proud of their stateliness or beauty remember that in a little time they will have no pre-eminence over the most deformed and repulsive-looking of their fellow-mortals. Let the rich, who look down with contempt and scorn upon the poor, remember that, though after death their bodies may be carried with pomp and laid in some splendid mausoleum, yet in this respect they have no advantage over those who are buried in a parish coffin and a pauper’s grave—the bodies of all alike must return to dust.

3. The great sovereign of man’s life upon earth. The Psalmist regards human life as entirely under the control of God. “THOU turnest man to destruction,” &c. “THOU carriest them away,” &c. It is not disease or chance that removes men from this world. Man returns to the dust not because of the decree of fate, or the operation of some inevitable or irresistible law, but because God wills it. He has the keys of death and hades. Man’s “days are determined, the number of his months are with Thee, Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.” “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.” In the Lord’s “hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.” “Thou changest man’s countenance and sendest him away.” The time, the place, and the circumstances of our death are all determined by God. He is the great sovereign of our life upon earth.

III. The relation between the great God and frail man. “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.” When Moses penned this Psalm the Israelites were homeless wanderers. Indeed, up to this time they never could be said to have had any settled home. Their father Abraham after his call from his own country lived a wandering life, a stranger in a strange land. Isaac and Jacob also had no settled dwelling-place, but dwelt in tents, and confessed that they were “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Then the people “went down into Egypt to sojourn there,” and it was not long before their lives were made miserable by the oppressions of the Egyptians. And after their emancipation from Egypt there followed their long, tedious, homeless, and apparently fruitless wandering in the wilderness. It was probably this unsettled, homeless condition that led them to estimate highly the worth of a habitation, and which suggested the employment of the figure in the first verse. In their defenceless, homeless state God Himself had been their home and defence. By His providence He had preserved them in existence as a people, had supplied their wants, and protected them from harm. Homeless wanderers they were, yet they found their home in God. “Here we have no continuing city.” By many and earnest voices God is calling to us—“Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest.” We crave a dwelling-place, a lasting home, a permanent rest for the soul; but we cannot find it here. Here fairest things soonest fade, brightest prospects soon are lost in darkness, the most exquisite pleasures are speedily succeeded by the most painful trials. The home of the soul is not here. The heart seeks rest and home in the love of dear relatives and friends; but these may fail us in our time of need, or may be summoned from us by death. The best and truest of relatives or friends cannot meet all the soul’s cravings for protection, and rest, and home. The home of the soul is not in the creature. The home of the soul is in God.

1. We are weak, and rest in His omnipotence. The difficulties and dangers which we encounter on our pilgrimage overmatch us, but by the strength of the Lord we are enabled to surmount them. The soul that finds its home in Him is inviolably secure.

2. We are short-lived and rest in His eternity. “We are but of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on the earth are as a shadow.”

“Like clouds that rake the mountain summits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand;”

so generation follows generation “into the land of the great departed.” We are hastening after the great multitude who have passed from earth for ever. Nothing rests here. Here nothing abides. Change, decay, death are stamped upon all earthly things. Yet we crave the permanent and the immutable. Oh, for some rock amid this surging sea! Oh, for some thing or being in which these restless, craving hearts may find satisfaction and repose! God is that Being. “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations,” &c. He lives through all generations. He is the Sovereign of all generations. He is the same through all generations. Here we find rest. Our permanent home is in Him. He is supremely, unchangeably, eternally great and good. In Him let us confide. The generations that have passed away have gone at His bidding. He is the God of our life. Our age, our time of residence here, our departure from here, are all regulated by Him. And when we pass hence He is still our home, our refuge, and our rest. Then we need not mourn the brevity of life or the changes of time. We rest in the eternal and unchangeable God.

THE HOME OF THE SOUL

(Psa_90:1)

I. The soul of man needs a home. I argue this from—

1. Our sense of weariness and longing for rest. The heart often aches in loneliness, droops by reason of exhaustion, and yearns unspeakably for repose. Like worn and weary pilgrims we long for rest.

2. Our sense of peril and longing for protection. Like Israel in the wilderness we are exposed to danger, and need some strong defence. We crave the shelter and the security of a home.

3. Our shrinking from death and longing for immortality. The soul recoils from the idea of going forth from this life unclothed and alone into the unknown. What is there beyond the mystery which we call death? Is there anything? If there is, what is it that is there? The mere thought of ceasing to be is painful. We long deeply for immortality. In the awful loneliness and dread mystery of death where shall we find a refuge and a home?

II. The soul of man may find a home in God. He has been the dwelling-place of His people in all generations.

1. In Him alone can the soul find the rest it craves. We want rest from the accusations of conscience and the burden of guilt. He alone can pardon. The rest of satisfied affections; the rest of harmony and progress of being; rest from the dread of death;—He alone can impart this full and blessed rest.

2. In Him alone can the soul find the security it craves. He is our only sure defence against spiritual perils; and in the sorrows and trials of life He is the only adequate support. Storms are sure to fall; He only can shelter us from their fury. He can even bring strength and joy to us out of our griefs and trials. His power, wisdom, and love are the pledge of our security.

3. In Him alone can the soul find the permanence it craves. “He only hath immortality.” The continuance in being and blessedness for which we long He, and He alone, can impart. “A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.” He gives “eternal life.” At His “right hand there are pleasures for ever more.” “So shall we ever be with the Lord.”

We enter this home through Christ. By Him we rise into fellowship and union with God. “No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”

GOD’S ABSOLUTE CONTROL OVER MAN’S LIFE

(Psa_90:3)

We pass away at the command of God. Not chance, not disease, not accident, not war, but “Thou turnest man to destruction!” “Thou carriest them away as with a flood!” We are a family whose members are separated and summoned away only by the word and hand of the great Lord of the house. We regard this great power of God over us as—

I. A reason for acknowledging Him. As His power over us is irresistible and righteous, we should bow to His will. It is madness to resist Him. “Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?” “He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against Him, and prospered?” His rule is a fact. He is moving onward to the most complete and universal supremacy. Let us loyally acknowledge Him as our King and our God. Let us move in the line of His purposes.

II. A reason for seeking His favour. His power over us being so absolute it is surely our interest to seek friendship with Him. He is condescending and gracious, He is kind and merciful; we may obtain His favour. He calls us to friendship with Himself. Through Christ we may attain unto assured confidence in His favour and friendship,—may know Him not simply as the absolute Sovereign of our life, but also as our supreme Friend.

III. A consolation in bereavement. It is consolatory to know that our loved ones who have passed from us were not the victims of chance. Their departure was in all respects ordered by a God of infinite wisdom and kindness. They left us by the appointment of His will, which is ever good. He doeth all things well.

IV. An encouragement to labour. Do not fear to attempt great things in life. Let not the dread of death unnerve your spirit and paralyse your arm. You are immortal till your work is done. Until your education in these sublunary scenes is completed, your life is invulnerable against the shafts of death.

V. An antidote against the fear of death. If through Christ we are brought into friendship with God, when the body returns to dust, the spirit will pass into the immediate presence of God. To the good man death is the voice of the Father summoning His child home to Himself. Why should we fear such a voice or such a summons?

CONCLUSION. Let us be thankful that our times are in His hand. Let us tread the path of life with trustful and fearless hearts, for we are safe in the hands of the eternal God.

HUMAN FRAILTY THE RESULT OF HUMAN SIN

(Psa_90:7-11)

In this section of the Psalm Moses represents the brevity of the life of the Israelites in the wilderness as the result of the Divine anger with them by reason of their sin. Their apparently fruitless lives and their death in the wilderness were the punishment of their sin. By reason of some heinous or aggravated offence many were suddenly cut off by God. See Num_11:31-35; Num_16:41-50; Num_21:4-6. Moreover all those, from twenty years old and upward, who went forth from Egypt were cut down in the wilderness because of their unbelieving hearts and murmuring tongues, save Caleb and Joshua. There they were doomed to wander till the unbelieving generation had passed away. Little or nothing is recorded of them from the second year of their departure from Egypt until the fortieth year. The only end of their wanderings during those years seems to have been the consumption of the faithless generation. Well does Mr. Spurgeon say: “Moses saw men dying all around him; he lived among funerals, and was overwhelmed at the terrible results of the Divine displeasure.” The Psalm has “a solemn and affecting interest, as a penitential confession of the sins which had entailed such melancholy consequences on the Hebrew nation; and as a humble deprecation of God’s wrath; and as a funeral dirge upon those whose death had been pre-announced by the awful voice of God.” So far all is clear. Concerning those of whom Moses wrote it is literally true that their frailty was the result of their sin. They perished in the wilderness because of their unbelief and ingratitude and rebellion. But is it true of mankind as a whole that human frailty is the result of human sin? Is death the penalty of sin? Some passages of the Holy Word say, Yes. The evidence of geology and other sciences says, No. We firmly believe that both are correct. In what way, then, and to what extent, is death the penalty of sin? This is the subject suggested by this portion of the Psalm, and upon which we shall offer some suggestions.

“What is death?” “Death,” says one, “is simply another name for discontinuance.” “Death,” says another, “is the dissolution of the body.” But the word is used to express quite distinct and different things. In the Bible the word has at least three uses; indeed it has more, but let us look at these. It is used to denote physical dissolution. (See Gen_21:16; Gen_27:7; Gen_27:10; Deu_33:1; and many others.) It is used to denote the moral condition of unrenewed men. (See Joh_5:24; Eph_2:1; 1Jn_3:14; et al.) It is also used to denote the future punishment of the wicked. (See Rev_2:11; Rev_20:14; Rev_21:8.) No one will dispute that many of the passages which speak of death as the penalty of sin speak of spiritual death, not of physical dissolution. Thus: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” cannot fairly be applied to our first parents in regard to corporeal death; for, according to the record in Genesis, Adam lived for centuries after his disobedience, and “begat sons and daughters.” And if the words of St. Paul to the Romans, “The wages of sin is death,” be applied to physical dissolution, then saint and sinner pay the penalty alike, nay, in some cases, the physical dissolution of the saint may be more painful than that of thousands of most hardened and corrupt sinners. Still there are passages of scripture in which corporeal death seems to be represented as the result of sin. In the punishment pronounced upon Adam for his disobedience, it is said, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” St. Paul, in writing to the Romans, says, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” But here we may not limit the meaning of death to physical dissolution. It signifies, says Alford, “primarily, but not only, physical death: as ἁμαρτία, so θάνατος, is general, including the lesser in the greater, i.e., spiritual and eternal death.” (See also Stuart’s commentary in loco.) In no instance, we believe, where the word death is used to express the penalty of sin should its meaning be limited to the dissolution of the body. For the dissolution of the body is natural, and would have taken place even if man had not sinned. We conclude thus—

1. Because of the testimony of geology. “We are confronted,” says Mr. Froude, “with evidence that death has reigned through all creation from the earliest period, of which the stratified rocks preserve the record.” The world had been familiar with death for ages before the creation of man.

2. Because of the nature of the physical constitution of man. “Birth, growth, and arriving at maturity, as completely imply decay and death as the source of a river implies the termination of it, or as spring and summer imply corn-fields and reaping. Hence, whatever the vigour and the powers of repair that may pertain to any given structure, whatever resistance it may offer to the shocks of ages, Time, sooner or later, dissolves it; careful, however, to renew whatever it takes away, and to convert, invariably, every end into a new beginning. There is not a grave in the whole circuit of nature that is not at the same moment a cradle.”

3. Because of the limited accommodation which the world affords as a home for man. “The command given both to animals and man, to ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ implies the removal of successive races by death; otherwise the world would long since have been overstocked; plants, for their part, are described as created ‘yielding seed,’ which carries with it the same inevitable consequence. The produce of so minute a creature as a fly would, if unchecked, soon darken the air, and render whole regions desolate; the number of seeds ripened by a single poppy, were they all to grow and be fruitful in their turn, would in a few years suffice to clothe a continent.”

4. Because the material body is a hindrance to man’s complete spiritual freedom and perfection. The human body as it is in this world seems to us to imprison and impede the soul’s action and growth. We have faculties which cannot be fully developed here and under our present conditions. “We that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened,” &c. (See 2Co_5:1-4.)

For these and other reasons which may be adduced, we hold that in itself the dissolution of the body is not the result of sin. How, then, are we to regard death as the penalty of sin? In what way is human frailty the result of human sin? We reply: in the sufferings with which death is associated.

I. Death is associated with physical sufferings, and these are the result of sin. It is true that there are some who die without any physical suffering. But in the great majority of instances the death of man is a thing of strange and severe suffering. The diseases of which men die are most of them very painful, and death itself is a mysterious and probably a painful thing. But the sufferings are the result of sin. If man had not sinned, death would probably have resembled sinking into an easy and gentle slumber, and have been as sweet as sleep is to the weary; it would have been that euthanasia to all men which Augustus Cæsar used so passionately to desire, and which is predicated of the Christian in a well-known and beautiful hymn—

“How blest the righteous when he dies!

When sinks a weary soul to rest,

How mildly beam the closing eyes,

How gently heaves the expiring breast!

So fades a summer cloud away,

So sinks the gale when storms are o’er,

So gently shuts the eye of day,

So dies a wave along the shore!”

—Barbauld.

Had it not been for sin, the probability is that no one would have died from disease; dissolution would have been entirely freed from physical sufferings, and would have been as “a gentle wafting to immortal life.”

II. Death is associated with mental sufferings, and these are the result of sin. These sufferings arise from—

1. The dread of death. In the Epistle to the Hebrews Christ is represented as dying to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” We are travellers in “the valley of the shadow of death.” That shadow projects itself over life’s fairest scenes. And the dread of death seizes us sometimes even in our brightest hours.

(1) This dread arises partly from the mystery of death. Who knows what strange anguish of body there may be in death? What mental sufferings utterly unknown to us may await us in dying? In the separation of the soul from the body may there not be an awful sorrow? Millions have passed through this experience; but not one has returned to tell us of the mysteries through which they passed. And those that were raised from death by our Lord uttered no word as to its nature. They removed none of the mystery. Each man must solve the mystery for himself. This mystery is distressing. But had it not been for sin it would probably not have existed. Man would probably have had a clear knowledge of the nature and meaning of the transition. And even if the mystery had existed it would certainly not have been distressing, for man would have had such firm and large faith in God as would have enabled him to rise above anxiety and fear.

(2) This dread is partly the dread of non-existence. Man shrinks from extinction. The thought of passing into utter nothingness, of not being, is full of pain to him. But is there life after death? Is not death the end of man? What is there but darkness, oblivion, nothingness, beyond this present and manifest life? Who has not sympathised with the afflicted patriarch in his meditations and questionings? “There is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,” &c. (Job_14:7-14). Is there anything after death but “a long, unconscious, never-ending sleep”?

“When shall spring visit the mouldering urn?

Oh, when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?”

But this dread of non-existence is one of the results of sin. Had man not sinned he would have known that death was but transition; nay, that it was the birth of his spirit into a higher state of being.

(3) This dread is partly the dread of a miserable existence. The consciousness of guilt leads man to dread a future of misery and endless woe. The guilty conscience arrays God in aspects of terror, and pictures a future of terrible suffering as the punishment of sin. But had man not sinned, the future would have been to him bright, beautiful, and inviting, rich in enjoyment and rich in promise.

2. The sorrows of bereavement. In the case of those who are called to die, the greatest anguish which they suffer frequently arises from having to leave those whom they love as their own soul. Inconceivable must be the anguish of the loving mother when summoned away from her tender, helpless babe. And who can conceive the deep and silent grief of the kind husband and father who is leaving his wife and children, widowed and orphaned, to fight life’s battle without the aid of his strong arm, or wise head, or loving heart? The sorrow of the bereaved is also very great. Tennyson has given utterance to the feeling of thousands of bereaved mourners:

“For this alone on Death I wreak

The wrath that garners in my heart;

He put our lives so far apart,

We cannot hear each other speak.”

Oh, the hearts that are almost breaking in loneliness and unutterable distress because of the bereavements of death! But all this distress is the result of sin. If man had not sinned the dying mother would confidently leave her cherished babe, and the dying husband and father his wife and children, to the wise and loving and all-sufficient care of the Heavenly Father. If man had not sinned we should not mourn the departure of our loved ones. With clear perceptions of the spiritual universe, we should see that the separation was more apparent than real, we should know that they are in the enjoyment of a higher, fuller life, a life of blessedness, and that we should soon join them in their high spheres and Divine services. Oh, it is sin that makes bereavement painful! “The sting of death is sin.” Take away sin, and though death remain, its repulsiveness and painfulness would be entirely gone. Sin has made dissolution physically painful; sin has shortened men’s lives by diseases and crimes; sin has robed death in mystery; sin has made man to shrink from death lest it should lead to non-existence or miserable existence; sin has caused all the anguish of bereavements, all and everything that is painful in death is the result of sin.

CONCLUSION.

1. Brothers, let us hate sin. Let us have nothing to do with sin except to resist it, oppose it, save men from it.

2. Let us be thankful for the Gospel. Christ is the conqueror of death. He has taken away its sting. He is the Saviour from sin. Those who believe on Him shall become holy and heavenly. To them death is no longer a foe, but the kind messenger of the loving Father.

SIN ESTIMATED BY THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN

(Psa_90:8)

The appearance of objects, and the ideas which we form of them, are very much affected by the situation in which they are placed with respect to us, and by the light in which they are seen.… No two persons will form precisely the same idea of any object, unless they view it in the same light, or are placed with respect to it in the same situation.… God sees all objects just as they are; but we see them through a deceitful medium, which ignorance, prejudice, and self-love place between them and us. Apply these remarks to the case before us. “Thou hast set our iniquities,” &c. That is, our iniquities or open transgressions, and our secret sins, the sins of our hearts, are placed, as it were, full before God’s face; and He sees them in the pure, clear, all-disclosing light of His own holiness and glory. Now, if we would see our sins as they appear to Him, that is, as they really are; if we would see their number, blackness, and criminality, and the malignity and desert of every sin, we must place ourselves as nearly as possible in His situation, and look at sin as it were through His eyes. Recollect, that the God in whose presence you are, is the Being who forbids sin, the Being, of whose eternal law sin is the transgression, and against whom every sin is committed. Keeping this in mind, let us—

1. Bring forward what the Psalmist, in our text, calls our iniquities, that is, our more gross and open sins, and see how they appear in the light of God’s countenance. Have any of you been guilty of impious, profane, passionate, or indecent, corrupting language? How does such language sound in heaven? in the ears of angels, in the ears of that God, who gave us our tongues for noble purposes?… Is this fit language for God to hear? Let every one inquire whether he has ever violated the third commandment, by using the name of God in a profane or irreverent manner. If he has, let him bring forward his transgressions of this kind, and see how they appear in the light of God’s presence.… Have any of you been guilty of uttering what is untrue? If so, bring forward all the falsehoods, all the deceitful expressions, which you have ever uttered, and see how they appear in the presence of the God of truth; of that God, who has declared, that He abhors a lying tongue, and that all liars shall have their portion in the burning lake. Oh, what is it to stand convicted of falsehood before such a God as this! After the above manner treat the sins of perjury, Sabbath-breaking, adultery, fraud, injustice or dishonesty, and intemperance.

While attending to the preceding remarks, probably many of my hearers may have felt as if they were not personally concerned in them, as if they were guilty of none of those gross iniquities. I would indeed hope that of some of them, at least, none of you are guilty. But these are by no means the only iniquities of which God takes notice; for our text further informs us, that He has set our secret sins, the sins of our hearts, in the light of His countenance. Let us then—

II. Bring our hearts into heaven, and there, laying them open to view, see how they will appear in that world of unclouded light and unsullied purity.

What a disclosure is made, when, with the dissecting knife of a spiritual anatomist, we lay open the human heart, with all its dark recesses and intricate windings, and expose the lurking abominations, which it conceals, not to the light of day, but to the light of heaven! Even in this sinful world, the spectacle which such a disclosure would exhibit could not be borne. The man whose heart should thus be laid open to public view would be banished from society; nay, he would himself fly from it, overwhelmed with shame and confusion. Of this every man is sensible, and therefore conceals his heart from all eyes with jealous care.… And if the heart laid open to view would appear thus black in this dark, sinful world, who can describe, or conceive of the blackness which it must exhibit, when surrounded by the dazzling whiteness of heaven, and seen in the light of God’s presence, the light of His holiness and love? How do proud, self-exalting thoughts appear, when viewed in the presence of Him, before whom all the nations of the earth are less than nothing, and vanity? Speak of self-will, impatience, discontent; angry, envious, revengeful feelings; and wanton, impure thoughts. If all the evil thoughts and wrong feelings which have passed in countless numbers through either of our hearts were poured out in heaven, angels would stand aghast at the sight, &c. To the omniscient God alone would the sight not be surprising. He alone knows what is in the heart of man; and what He knows of it He has described in brief but terribly expressive terms. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” &c.

III. Let us take a similar view of our sins of omission. Our sins of omission are by far the most numerous, and by no means the least criminal offences of which we are guilty. Speak of God’s perfections, His glory, His goodness to us, and of our obligations to Him. Does He not deserve to be loved, and feared, and served with all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength? Yet from Him we have all withheld our affections and services. Our whole lives present one unbroken series of duties neglected, of favours not acknowledged. And, oh, how do they appear when we review them in the light of God’s countenance!…

While God’s law requires us to love Him with all the heart, it also requires us to love our neighbour as ourselves. And this general command virtually includes a great number of subordinate precepts, precepts which prescribe the duties of the various relations that subsist between us and our fellow creatures. How far have we obeyed these precepts?… Oh, how much more might we have done, than we actually have done, to promote the temporal and eternal happiness of all with whom we are connected!

Nor do our sins of omission end here. There is another Being whom we are under infinite obligations to love, and praise, and serve with supreme affection. This Being is the Lord Jesus Christ, considered as our Redeemer and Saviour, who has bought us with His blood. We are required to feel that we are not our own, but His; to prefer Him to every earthly object, to rely upon Him with implicit confidence, to live, not to ourselves, but to Him, and to honour Him even as we honour the Father. Every moment, then, in which we neglected to obey these commands, we were guilty of a new sin of omission.… How grossly have we failed in performing this part of our duty! How must the manner in which we have treated the beloved Son appear in the sight of God!

A day is approaching in which you will be constrained to see your sins as they appear in the light of God’s countenance. When that day arrives, His eternal Son, the appointed Judge, will be seen coming in the clouds of heaven, &c.… Be persuaded now to come to the light, that your deeds may be reproved, and set in order before you; exercise such feelings respecting them, and so judge yourselves, that you may not be condemned of the Lord on that day.—E. Payson, D.D. Abridged.

LIFE AN EXCLAMATION

(Psa_90:9)

“We spend our years as a tale that is told.”

The word translated “tale” occurs twice: in Job_37:2, “Hear attentively the noise of His voice, and the sound that goeth out of His mouth;” and Eze_2:10, “And there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.” In the first passage the reference is to the thunder, which is the voice, the utterance, the grand soliloquy of God. In the second passage the word describes the broken accents of grief, the abrupt and incomplete exclamation of deep and overwhelming sorrow. So when life is described in the text, the meaning is that it is a brief and broken exclamation, a hurried voice, a short and startling sound which is soon lost in the silence of eternity.

I. The main idea of the text is the transientness of life: it has the brevity of a cry. And does not this accord with fact? The utterances may be of different lengths, but life is always short. Some lives have only one word, some several, yet is each an exclamation. Some have the completeness of finished sentences; some fail in the midst; some have only a beginning, rather intimate that there is something to be said than say it. Then is life short, indeed, when man dies, not because he has exhausted a force so much as because he has met with an obstruction. And yet how often is this the case! The days are “cut off:” “the sun goes down while it is yet day:” “the flower fadeth.” Why did they live at all? What was the reason of their being?

And then, also, is life short when, though its voice fails not at the commencement of its utterance, it is broken off in the midst, and gives no complete expression to the deep meaning with which it is charged. And yet how often is it as an unfinished cry! How often do men pass away before they have half revealed the significance of their being!

But the brevity assigned to life in the text belongs to all life, and not to any lives in particular. It is brevity which marks it as a whole, marks it in its longest term.…

Things are long and short in comparison. The sense of duration is not absolute. The insect that lives but a day has, or might have, the feelings with which we regard seventy years.… And what those transient creatures are to us, that should we be to others proportionably longer-lived than we. Suppose a being to live two millions of years, he would look down on our existence of seventy years with the same feelings as those with which we regard the creature of a day. It is only eternity that is really long—absolutely long. Compared with that, all time is short. Whatever can cease is as nothing to that which never ceases; it is simply impossible to compare them.… Life may seem long while it is going on, &c. But what is life when put against interminable years!

We may appropriate both terms, the transient and the endless. We may connect together the life that is but as a broken exclamation, and the life that is as an everlasting voice. I said we may connect them together, but the solemn truth is, that they are connected together independently of our act or thought. That besides which life is vanity will take its character from life. Eternity makes life nothing, and yet everything; sinks it to utter insignificance, and yet invests it with inconceivable importance. Consider the two as contrasted, and life vanishes in the presence of eternity. Consider the two as related, and life partakes of the augustness and awfulness of eternity.

II. If life is transient as a cry, it is a cry full of meaning. The importance of utterances does not depend on their length; it is not how long it takes to express a thing, but the nature of the thing expressed, which decides the greatness of the expression. A few words may reveal a world of meaning.… It is the fulness of the heart which seeks relief in cries, and that which makes them short makes them significant. Then do fewest words suffice when many words are felt to be too few. Life is a cry, but what does it not reveal? The broken speech of our earthly days is the voice of souls. It shows what we are as souls; our principles, habits, &c.… And, showing what we are, it shows also what we shall be, what we shall be for ever. And it does more than show what we shall be, it helps to make us it.

This is the view of life I wish you to take.… Regarded alone, we may despise it; we may be angry with it; we may say, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” we may give way to despondency and depression; but, regarded along with what it indicates and prepares for, it will excite us to holy diligence, gird up our loins for hope and service. Thus regarded, its very vanity will only make it more precious, and we shall tremble to neglect the brief period which is the seedtime of eternity …

I ask you, whose life is so evanescent, yet so significant, what are you saying? what is the meaning of that living word which issues forth, consciously or unconsciously, from your hearts? Many different cries proceed from our common nature. Life in some is a cry of wonder, an expression of amazement at this mysterious universe, and their own mysterious being. Life in some is a cry of pain, … grief from physical suffering, grief from adversities of lot, grief from social pressure on the heart’s affections. Life in some is a cry of joy, the rapid, incoherent speech of ecstatic feeling. I do not ask which of these your life is, nor does it much signify in relation to the most important of all matters. Be it the expression of wonder, pain, or joy, it may be sad or glorious; it may be the wonder of a believing or a sceptical spirit; it may be the pain of a patient or angry spirit; it may be the joy of a spirit whose portion is the world, or whose portion is the Lord. But I do ask you, what is the temper and the form of your life? With many, it is but an oath; a revelation of enmity against God and godliness; a forgetfulness of all that should be remembered, a neglect of all that should be cared for, a dislike of all that should be loved, a disobedience of all that should be submitted to. But there are many with whom life is a prayer; its exclamations are like ejaculatory supplications; the pouring out of the heart in adoration, petition, praise; the expression of dependence, desire, devotion, &c.

Let me ask you, what are you and what are you likely to be in that eternity which is so speedily to succeed the days which are as a shadow?… Life must be sinful if your heart be not renewed by the Holy Ghost; must be wretched if you be not reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Time, which is so short, is the season for conversion, salvation; and without these, when it is passed, you will find yourselves in an eternity for which no preparation has been made. Everlasting life dates from regeneration, not from death; we cannot have the life immortal if we be not born again. Dying in sin, your destiny must be destruction; without God now, you will be without God for ever. Oh! if you have not yet yielded your soul to the Gospel, … let me entreat you to awaken to the transient nature of this probationary period. This evanescent life is big with the fortunes of eternity, and you are deciding what they shall be. Be wise, repent, accept the atonement, go in the way of life, &c.—A. J. Morris. Abridged.

HUMAN FRAILTY AN INCENTIVE TO SEEK THE DIVINE BLESSING

(Psa_90:12-17)

The Psalmist passes from meditation to supplication. Having meditated upon the eternity of God and the transientness and misery of man’s life upon earth, and traced man’s sufferings to his sins, he here proceeds to implore the blessings of the eternal and unchangeable God upon His frail creature—man. He asks from God—

I. Help in forming a correct estimate of life. “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

It would have been reasonable to have concluded, that since man’s life is so short and sad he would form a true estimate of it. Yet this he does not. “All men count all men mortal but themselves.” Though life is so uncertain, yet every man acts as though he had a certain future guaranteed unto him. Though life is so brief, yet each man acts as though he had a long earthly future before him. A correct estimate of life must include two things—

1. That it is brief. “Behold, Thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before Thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” (See remarks on “the extreme brevity of man’s life upon earth,” Psa_90:1-6.)

2. That it is preparatory. This world is a great school, and our life in it is educational. We are here to prepare characters for eternity; primarily and pre-eminently, but not exclusively, our own; and to help others in the formation and development of noble characters. What a vast and important work of preparation for eternity has to be done in this brief life! How much have we to do in and for ourselves! In us there are angry passions to be quelled, evil habits whose power must be broken, besetting sins to be conquered. And we have so much to acquire: our deficiencies and imperfections are so numerous, our moral power is so feeble, our spiritual aspirations are so irregular and weak. Verily, our preparation for eternity is advanced only a little way. We have much to do before our spiritual education will be anything like complete. Then we have much to do for others. The parent has many plans which he wants to see carried out concerning his children. The Christian minister feels that in the exposition and application of Divine truth, and in the oversight of the souls committed to his charge, he has a vast and unspeakably important work yet to do. Every man who takes an interest in his fellow-man must feel that he has much to do in helping to remove the ignorance and sin and suffering of men, by helping them to acquire knowledge, and by leading them to the Saviour from sin and the Healer of suffering. When life is thus estimated men will “apply their hearts unto wisdom.”

“’Tis not for man to trifle! Life is brief,

And sin is here.

Our age is but the falling of a leaf,

A dropping tear.

We have no time to sport away the hours,

All must be earnest in a world like ours.

“Not many lives, but only one have we—

One, only one;

How sacred should that one life ever be—

That narrow span!

Day after day filled up with blessed toil,

Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil.”

—Bonar.

The Psalmist supplicates—

II. The mercy of God in life. He prays that God would exercise His mercy towards them—

1. In the removal of His anger. “Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants.” The Israelites in the wilderness were visited with some severe expressions of the wrath of God by reason of their sin. Their long, and mournful, and apparently fruitless wanderings in the wilderness were a punishment from God because of sin. For a long time they had been bearing the heavy judgments of the Lord; so they cry unto Him, “How long?” How long shall Thy wrath lie heavily upon us? The petition of this verse is very similar to a petition in a former prayer of Moses: “Turn from Thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against Thy people.” “According to the usual phraseology of Scripture,” says Calvin, “God is said to repent, when, after dissipating sadness, and giving again occasions for joy, He appears as if He had changed.” Yet really there is no change in God. Repentance is impossible to Him. But when man turns to Him in repentance, He turns to man in mercy. When He withdraws His anger it is not because a change has taken place in Him; but because man has changed, and taken a different position in relation to His law and government. So Moses prays that God would turn in mercy to them, and bring His judgments upon them to an end.

2. In the communication of satisfaction to them. “O satisfy us early with Thy mercy.” Literally, “Satisfy us in the morning with Thy mercy.” In the Scripture suffering and distress are frequently set forth by the emblem of night. Morning is an emblem of salvation and joy. (Comp. Job_11:17; Psa_30:5.) If God in mercy appeared to the Israelites, that appearance would be to them as the dawn of a joyous morning. They pray for satisfaction in the mercy of God. Under the displeasure of God there can be no satisfaction. If any soul is satisfied out of God, that soul is dead. In His favour is life. Only in God can the human soul, with its unutterable yearnings, its quenchless aspirations, and its profound cravings, find satisfaction and repose.

3. In granting gladness to them. In the petitions for gladness three things demand our attention.

(1) They seek gladness as a result of mercy. “Satisfy us early with Thy mercy; That we may rejoice and be glad.” The night of their mourning would end, and the day of their joy would dawn, when God satisfied them with His mercy. From the conscious possession of God’s favour the deepest, highest, purest, divinest joy springs.

(2) They seek gladness as a life-long experience. “All our days.” Much of sin, gloom, and suffering had been in their past life; they desire that in all their future life there may be the Divine mercy and holy joy. It is the privilege of the child of God “to rejoice evermore.” “Your joy no man taketh from you.”

(3) They seek gladness in proportion to their afflictions. “Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.” It is a principle of God’s providential dealings that light and darkness, happiness and distress, in human life shall bear some proportion to each other. “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other.” He balances the varying experiences of our lives. The Israelites in the wilderness had many days of His displeasure; they entreat as many days of His favour. They had passed through years of mournful wandering; they pray for a corresponding number of years of peace and joy. The Psalmist entreats—

III. The manifestation of God’s power and grace in life. “Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” Here is a prayer—

1. That God would work manifestly on their behalf. “Show to Thy servants Thy doing,” is really a prayer for the interposition of God on their behalf; that He would display His great power in introducing them to prosperity. Moses knew how mighty in working Jehovah is, and so he prays that He would work for them and for their salvation.

2. That God would grant unto them of His grace. “Show Thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” God’s glory consists of His goodness. When Moses prayed, “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory,” the Lord answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before thee.” He is “glorious in holiness,” glorious in grace. It is probable that they prayed that God’s glory may be manifested to their children, because God had promised to lead their children into the land into which by reason of sin they entered not. That the glory of Divine grace and strength may be displayed to their children, even though themselves may not see it, they earnestly desire. It has been well pointed out “that this prayer was answered. Though the first generation fell in the wilderness, yet the labours of Moses and his companions were blessed to the second. These were the most devoted to God of any generation that Israel ever saw. It was of them that the Lord said, ‘I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a laud that was not sown. Israel was holiness unto the Lord, and the first fruits of His increase.’ It was then that Balaam could not curse, but, though desirous of the wages of unrighteousness, was compelled to forego them, and his curse was turned into a blessing.” “And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us” is also a petition for the favour of God; that the beauty of the Divine character may be revealed in them, and be revealed by them to others. If the grace of God dwell richly in us, it will radiate from us in lives of spiritual beauty and power. The Psalmist prays for—

IV. The establishment of human work in life. “Establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.”

This petition, in its relation to Moses, has a very touching significance. He was to die without seeing the result of the great work of his life. The millions whom he led from Egyptian slavery remained slaves in spirit throughout life; and, because they were slaves and not men, they were not permitted to enter the promised land. Moses himself may see it, but must not enter therein. To a superficial observer his work must have appeared useless, and his life a failure of most magnificent faculties. But his life was no failure; his work was not in vain. That which he had commenced was carried forward to glorious completion. Dr. James Hamilton has truly remarked, that “for forty years it had been the business of Moses to bring Israel into a right state politically, morally, religiously; that had been his work. And yet, in so far as it was to have any success or enduringness, it must be God’s work. ‘The work of our hands’ do Thou establish; and this God does when, in answer to prayer, He adopts the work of His servants, and makes it His own ‘work,’ His own ‘glory,’ His own ‘beauty.’ ” Human efforts in a good cause, when they are made earnestly and in humble dependence upon the blessing of God for success, cannot be in vain. God will establish them.

CONCLUSION.—“If man be ephemeral, God is eternal.” And through Christ man may dwell in God, and be made a partaker of His character and blessedness. In ourselves we are insignificant, vain, worthless—bewildering and mournful enigmas; but in God we rise into harmony, holiness, power, usefulness; life grows deep in significance, brilliant in prospect, and divine in destiny. Through our Lord Jesus Christ let every man seek to become one with God.

AN ALL-IMPORTANT NUMERATION

(Psa_90:12)

I. The Teacher. The eternal Lord God.

1. He thoroughly understands the subject. “Our days,” their number, their importance, &c., He knoweth perfectly.

2. He is thoroughly acquainted with the pupils. Our circumstances, temperament, aptitude or inaptitude as learners, He knoweth right well.

3. He has great influence over the pupils. He can influence our understanding, direct our judgment, work conviction in us.

II. The pupils. Frail men. Strange that we should need teaching on this subject. The remarkable frailty and the unspeakable importance of human life is constantly proclaimed by—

1. The voice of history. All the generations of the past have gone “the way to dusty death.”

2. The scenes and circumstances of life. Crowded cemeteries, funeral processions, bereaved families.

3. Our own experience. Infirmities, pains, diseases, announce our frailty. Yet we need that God should teach us in this matter. This need indicates disorder in our moral judgment, disinclination to receive the fact of our frailty, &c.

III. The lesson. “To number our days.” “It is to take the measure of our days as compared with the work to be performed, with the provision to be laid up for eternity, with the preparation to be made for death, with the precaution to be taken against judgment. It is to estimate human life by the purposes to which it should be applied, by the eternity to which it must conduct, and in which it shall at last be absorbed.” He numbers his days well who—

1. Mourns the time past which hat been misspent.

2. Diligently uses time present.

3. Trusts the time future entirely to God.

IV. The end. “That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” This wisdom is not speculative, but practical; not intellectual, but moral.

1. True religion is wisdom.

2. True religion requires application of heart.

3. The remembrance of life’s transientness is calculated to promote this application.

“Therefore, “So teach us to number our days,” &c.

(See a fine sermon on this verse, by F. W. Robertson. Sermons, vol. iv.)

THE MERCY OF GOD SOLICITED

(Psa_90:14)

On these words the following observations may be founded:—

I. All men have sinned against God, and therefore need mercy.

II. The consideration that life is short and uncertain, has a remarkable tendency to impress this important truth upon the mind.

III. It is the duty of every one to implore the mercy of God by fervent prayer.

IV. The mercy of God is the only satisfying portion.

V. We ought not only to desire that this mercy may be granted, but should pray that it may be imparted “early.”

VI. The possessor of God’s mercy is qualified to rejoice and be glad all his days—“The Young Minister’s Companion.”

THE THREE PETITIONS

(Psa_90:16-17)

Here are three petitions. Let us look at them in their logical order of thought, rather than their poetic expression.

I. The first petition asks for some visible results from the work attempted. “Let Thy work appear.” Is not this a most natural and lawful petition? The worker longs to see some fruit of his work, some positive testimony that he has not toiled in vain. Do not most men ardently desire this, no matter what the nature of their work? The statesman wishes it, the merchant, the farmer, the teacher, and why not the Christian? But the Christian is sometimes tempted to carry his desire too far. God may, therefore, think fit to withhold from his sight no small portion of the actual result, lest the servant forget whose the work really is, and what is his true relation to it. He so deals with us that our patience may take root and grow. He disappoints our desire for visible results to draw us nearer to Himself, to deepen our trust, &c. He helps us to understand what we are so slow to learn, that, from the very character of our work, we never can see in this world more than a few conspicuous ears. Yet “the work of our hands”—all of it—will hereafter “appear,” not a grain of it lost, not a single product of that grain hidden or obscured. We may, therefore, still continue to offer the petition to the Lord of the harvest, for some visible results of our sowing; but do not let us be discouraged if, for reasons best known to Him, our prayer is not answered here and now.

II. The second petition asks for the stability of the work. And is not this as natural as the desire that the work should “appear”? No one wishes that the thing upon which he has bestowed his deepest thought, his severest and most conscientious labour, should be scattered and lost. It depends, humanly speaking, upon the character of the work, how long it will endure. It is so in material works.… Good honest work, even if it be not of the highest type, is the only durable work. But what work can compare in value with “turning men to righteousness?” Many Christian workers, however, tremble for the future of their work. Losing faith in the power of its living energy, they have, as they thought, “established” it, lest it should die out and be no more seen; with what results a hundred damaging facts patent to our eyes declare. The work, in its root of life, is not man’s but God’s; hence the appropriateness of the second petition, “Establish Thou the work of our hands,” &c. The repetition of the prayer is for the sake of emphasis. He began the good work; He alone can make it constant and firm. “Establish Thou it,” set it up, as a throne is set up, as a city is founded, as an altar is reared, &c.

III. The third petition asks for the succession and expansion of the work, for its widest possible influence. The beauty and glory have come upon us Thy servants. Let them also descend upon our children. This is the parent’s wish and continual prayer. We pray “that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth,” &c. The sons of Christians are the hope of the Church. The children of Christians are the best workers in the Church to-day; in the home, in the school, in the sanctuary, in the mission-field.

But the petition is for our descendants, near or remote; for all who shall follow us in that grand and never-broken procession through the ages of living men. Nothing less than this expresses the fulness of the prayer, “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done as in heaven so in earth.”

Two cautions we shall all do well to heed—

1. Prayer without work is mockery.

2. Work without prayer is vain.—J. Jackson Goadby. Abridged from “The Evangelical Magazine.”

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE PSALTER

FOURTH BOOK

Psalms 90

_______________

Psalms 90

A Prayer of Moses the Man of God

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.

2     Before the mountains were brought forth,

Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,

Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

3     Thou turnest man to destruction;

And sayest, Return, ye children of men.

4     For a thousand years in thy sight

Are but as yesterday when it is past,

And as a watch in the night.

5     Thou carriest them away as with a flood: they are as a sleep:

In the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

6     In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;

In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

7     For we are consumed by thine anger,

And by thy wrath are we troubled.

8     Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

9     For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:

We spend our years as a tale that is told.

10     The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

Yet is their strength labor and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

11     Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

12     So teach us to number our days,

That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

13     Return, O Lord, how long?

And let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

14     O satisfy us early with thy mercy;

That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

15     Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

And the years wherein we have seen evil.

16     Let thy work appear unto thy servants,

And thy glory unto their children.

17     And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

And establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Contents and Composition.—The oft-repeated assertion that this Psalm consists of two parts loosely connected, and that the supplicatory portion, strictly considered, is not introduced until the beginning of the so-called second part, is altogether without foundation. The truth is that the Psalm bears a supplicatory character in its very first word, which invokes God as the Lord. It presents also in Psa_90:12 a real petition prepared by its contrast in Psa_90:11, namely, a prayer that the contemplation of mankind before described may bring forth its good fruit in the heart; and to this the prayer in Psa_90:13 ff. for renewed manifestations of Divine favor is attached. Both petitions have the same foundation, the confession to the eternal and only God, who forms the unchanging place of refuge for the ever-changing race of mankind, who, in their perishableness, have to suffer the judgments of God’s wrath for their sins. They are divided into two classes: those who allow these judgments to fall unmarked, and those who, terrified by them, are brought to reflection and urged to a saving search after God, truly fearing Him, and impressed with a sense of the true meaning of life. These serious reflections are presented in their necessary relations to one another with solemn emphasis, and in language which has a striking similarity to expressions occurring in the Pentateuch, and especially in the Book of Deuteronomy. It is certainly true that that period of national distress would naturally evoke reflections upon the evanescence of human life, and the universal sinfulness of man, so closely related thereto. This would especially be in accordance with the religious conception of the world in the Hebrew mind (Olsh., Hupfeld). But if we are justified in seeking a definite historical occasion for the origin of the Psalm, the last years of the long wandering through the desert, and especially an allusion to the Divine sentence of death in Num_14:28 ff. are probably indicated here. This supposition has an altogether different ground of support from the assumption of a composition during the exile (Köster, Maurer), which has absolutely nothing in the Psalm to indicate it, or in the age of the Maccabees (Rudinger, Hitzig). The poem contains something affecting and solemn, penetrating into the depths of the Divine nature, and in thought and language appears throughout marked by originality and innate power (Ewald), is worthy also of the position and character of Moses (Grotius), and corresponds to the situation of the people before alluded to (Hupfeld). We may therefore regard as entitled to no consideration, the doubt felt as to the Mosaic authorship, on the ground that we do not know what foundation the collector had for his belief. We can readily suppose that this ancient Psalm, this poem of eternity (Herder), was preserved in an older collection of writings (Del.), comp. Jos_10:13; 2Sa_1:18. For the supposition that the superscription came from the hand of the author, does not agree with the title of honor: “man of God.” This designation was applied to Moses only by others, (Deu_33:1; Jos_14:6); and it does not describe his official position, as “servant of Jehovah” does, but it puts honor upon his personal relation to God as His prophet. It is self-evidently not a musical title, but a descriptive term, which, by the prominence given to this relation, expresses, on the one hand, a near acquaintance with God, and, on the other, the credibility and authority attested thereby.

[Hengstenberg: “The objection that Psa_90:10, where the length of human life is limited to seventy, or, at most, eighty years, stands opposed to Deu_34:7, according to which Moses reached the age of one hundred and twenty, is disposed of by the fact that Moses, throughout the Psalm, does not speak in his own name, but in that of the people. It is obvious from Deu_14:22-23 that among the Israelites at that time the exceptions to the general rule as to the duration of human life, were much fewer than at ordinary times. The assumption that the Psalm could not have been composed by Moses, because it resembles the other Psalms in language and general poetical structure, is an a priori assertion, which may be met by another, that it is antecedently probable that Moses, ‘the fountain from which all the prophets have drawn divine wisdom,’ gave at first the tone no less for Prophecy, Deu_32:33, than for Psalm poetry.”—J. F. M.]

Psa_90:1-2. Dwelling-place.—Instead of מָעֹון some codices read מָעֹוז which, however, does not alter the idea of the verse. The former word does not directly furnish the idea of a refuge (Sept.), but that of a dwelling, (Deu_26:15; Psa_26:8; Psa_68:6), sometimes including the accessory idea (Amo_3:4; Nah_2:12) of a place of refuge, (Psa_71:2; Psa_91:9), applied to God after Deu_33:27. The præterite, הָיִיתָ does not admit of being translated: thou art. It is, therefore, not the future (Hengst.) that is the object of contemplation, but former experiences. The origin of the mountains, which are often adduced as the most expressive symbol of the most enduring of earthly things, (Gen_49:26; Deu_33:15; Psa_72:3; Hab_3:6; Pro_8:26), is set forth as a birth, in that less restricted sense, in which (Gen_2:4) the תּוֹלְדוֹת of the heavens and of the earth are used to designate the unfolding of the process of the creative work. The figure is an exceedingly natural one to describe the emergence of the mountains from the water, as, in another application, to represent the breaking forth of the sea as from the womb of a mother (Job_38:8). If, in the following stich, we point תְּחוֹלַל (Olsh., Böttcher, Hitzig), in order to gain the passive sense (Sept., Chald., Luther, and others), we have the same figure to describe the evolution of the terrestrial globe and inhabited land, without placing God in the background as the Parent and Begetter (Hupf.). For this would have been a mode of representation impossible to the Old Testament consciousness, and can be explained neither by Deu_32:18, where this form of expression is applied to the relation of God to the establishment of the Israelitish nation, (comp. Jer_2:27), nor by the poetical form of the inquiry (Job_38:28) after the father of the rain and begetter of the dew, not to mention the words employed in Psa_2:7, which have a Messianic interpretation. For the same reason we must assume that the punctuators, when they gave the active form תְּחוֹלֵל, did not have in view the 2 masc. (Isaaki, Kimchi, Calvin, Geier, Rosenm., De Wette, Del., Hupfeld), but the 3 fem. (Syriac, Stier, and others), with a reference to Gen_1:11 f. 24. [Alexander follows the active meaning in common with the great majority of critics. Perowne prefers the passive sense, and the corresponding change of reading. The E. V. in the translation: formed, expresses the true idea of the Hebrew, but shrinks unnecessarily from the literal rendering: begotten.—J. F. M.] The אֵל at the end of Psa_90:2 is not an address (Hengst.), but is the predicate. The object is not to show the eternal existence of God, but to testify to the Divinity of the eternal and almighty Lord. The Sept. has wrongly read אַל, and connected it with what follows.

Psa_90:3-4. Dust.—[E. V.: destruction. The Hebrew רָפא means: crushed particles. “Thou makest man return to dust.”—J. F. M.] That there is an allusion here to Gen_3:19 is rendered probable by the reference made to sin in Psa_90:7 ff. Yet it does not follow from this that we must render in the next sentence: turn back! or: pass away again! for the sake of obtaining the same idea. It is not forbidden by the parallelism (Hupfeld) to interpret this clause as referring to the constant changes among men as they come and return at the command of the eternal God, (Luther, Geier, Tholuck, Del.). There is no reference to the resurrection (the old Lutheran theologians), or to the passing of the spirit to God (Stier). The arithmetical treatment of Psa_90:4 and 2Pe_3:8, has resulted in the assumption that the world will last 6000 years, and that the millenial kingdom will then be established, corresponding to the work of creation and its Sabbath, (see the Rabbinical interpretations in Breithaupt on Isaaki). This is in direct contradiction to the meaning of the passage, which describes in an affecting and striking manner the evanescence of the changing generations of men, when measured by the standard of eternity and by the eye of God. Our seventy or eighty years shrink into a moment (Psa_30:6). Time was not yet reckoned by hours, but the night was divided into three watches, (Exo_14:24; Jdg_7:19), and the day began with the evening twilight: therefore, “the day of yesterday as it passes by” is most significantly mentioned. The rendering: when it is past (most of the ancients), which is moreover tautological, is grammatically inadmissible. It is improbable that the thousand years are the subject of the verb (Hupfeld).

Psa_90:5-7. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. It is uncertain whether an allusion to the Divine judgment of the flood is intended (Calvin, Hengst.). At all events it is not a swiftly flowing stream that is meant, but a heavy and devastating tempest of rain (Psa_77:18). But we must not overlook the use of the præterite, followed by the imperfect in a future sense. The meaning is: let the action mentioned be performed, and they fall into a state of unconsciousness, into a sleep, that is, the sleep of death (Köster, Delitzsch). This sequence of thought shows that it is not the years (Aben Ezra) which are said to be carried away. The words שָׁנִים and שֵׁנָה stand too far apart to afford a play on the words (Rosenm.). The common interpretation understands first the rapid and afterwards the unobserved passage of human life to be described. But it disregards the change of verbal forms, and, with many of its supporters, superadds the idea of sleeping fancies or a dream to the idea of sleep, which is entirely unwarranted. Nor is there any occasion for transposing the words at the beginning of the second stich to the end of the first (Böttcher, Hupfeld), since the idea of waking has no place in the passage. In Psa_90:6 it is not said that mankind in the beginning of history, or man in his youth, as in the morning of life (Kimchi and others), blooms or fades away like grass. What is said is, that when one generation is swept away during the night, another blooms forth in the morning, which, in its turn again, withers away in the evening (Delitzsch). For the primary idea of חלף is not at all that of passing away or perishing (Sept., Vulgate, Luther, and others), but that of passing over from one place or condition into another, especially when something new presses after and occupies the place of the old. Applied to plants, therefore, it certainly does not mean: to sprout (Chald., Syriac), but: to have new sprouts. Instead of: it fades away (Ewald, Olsh., Hitzig, Hupfeld), we cannot, it is true, accept the passive sense of the similar and proper word: it is cut down (most), but the impersonal construction: some one cuts it down (Delitzsch). The term מְלִילָה, applied to ears of corn cut down or plucked off, and Job_24:24, are especially favorable to this view, besides the consideration that death is not spoken of as a process of nature, but as the Divine punishment of sin. Hitzig gives an explanation which is quite peculiar. He understands the verse to represent figuratively the discharge of the semen (Eze_23:20), then follows the sleep in the womb of the mother, and then the awakening to the morning of life. [In Psa_90:7 the E. V. would be improved by rendering in the second clause: “terrified away,” instead of “troubled.”—J. F. M.]

Psa_90:9-12. A whisper. [E. V.: a tale that is told.] The word הֶנֶה does not denote idle chattering (Luther), or thought, in allusion to its rapidity, (Clericus, Rosenm., De Wette, Hupfeld), or breath, as vanishing quickly (Chald.), or speech, in its rapidity (Jerome, Hitzig), but a low, subdued sound, whether murmuring, Job_37:2, or groaning, Eze_2:10 (Hengst., Del.). The poetical plural שָׁנוֹת’ in Psa_90:10, occurs also in Deu_32:7. It is doubtful whether גְכוּרֹת applies to a full measure of strength or of years. The first interpretation suits better the meaning of the words elsewhere, the latter its Talmudical application. [In Psa_90:11 the second member should be rendered: and thy wrath according to thy fear, that is, in the measure which the true fear of God would imply.—J. F. M.] In Psa_90:12כֵּן refers to “understand,” not to “number,” (compare 1Sa_23:17). It is not a theoretical but a practical knowledge, to obtain which the help of God is implored. “That we may bring in a heart of wisdom”—that is, that we may bear it away as a prize, and bring it in, like the harvest into the granary, 2Sa_9:10; Hag_1:6 (Hupfeld, Del.). Other explanations are the following: bring wisdom into the heart (Kimchi, and others); bring a wise heart as an offering to God (Geier, Knapp, Stier, Ewald, Olshausen, Hitzig).

Psa_90:13-17. Return, that is, from anger, as in Exo_32:12. The word elsewhere usually means: turn back. The inquiry which follows suits either rendering. Psa_90:13 b. recalls Deu_32:36. The Psalmist’s prayer that he may be satisfied with mercy in the morning, denotes not what would be enjoyed soon, but the breaking of a new day of mercy as contrasted with the former night of affliction. The plural form יְמוֹת (Psa_90:15) is found only besides in Deu_32:7, together with שְׁנוֹת, which occurs elsewhere also.—The humbling of Israel was the design of the journey through the desert (Deu_8:2 f.). The term פֹעַל (Psa_90:16), applied to Jehovah’s administration of mercy for the salvation of His people, is found also in Deu_32:4; and the expression: “work of the hands,” frequently in Deuteronomy, as descriptive of human achievements generally. There is no reference implied to implements of husbandry (Hitzig), much less to the appliances of manufacture. The sup plication is offered that the work of God’s people, who confess themselves to be the servants of the Lord, may be established, with the expectation that what is described in Psa_90:16 a will be displayed before them. [There is no more beautiful and expressive word than נֹעַם, in Psa_90:17 a, signifying primarily what is sweet, pleasant, or delightful; and all language fails to express the wealth of meaning it bears, when chosen by Moses, “the man of God,” and the friend of God, to picture forth those attributes which in Him were the source of delight. It is not merely “beauty” in its widest sense, or “glory,” or “goodness,” but a union of them all.—J. F. M.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The Eternal is not merely distinguished from the world of the Becoming by His Divine nature; He also declares and vindicates His Divinity in its glory, independent, as it is, of the whole world. His people, therefore, not only know Him as the Lord reigning over the whole world from eternity to eternity, in unchangeable exaltation; they pray to Him also as the Lord their God. This they do both because He has testified of Himself, and because they have acknowledged His glory. By virtue of this relation to God, they are not contented with the perpetual recollection of all that God has ever been and displayed to them. They find in Him also their lodging place and secure retreat, which never changes with the flight of time or any mutation of events, but is presented as unchangeably the same to all generations of men, as they follow one another in close succession. Believers have therefore in God no temporary, mutable, or transient place of refuge, as the wild beasts have their coverts and places of security, or the wanderer his tent. God offers Himself to His people as their dwelling-place for ever and ever.

2. The experience which the Church has had of this blessing serves as an efficient counterpoise to the depressing evidences of the fact that her own members have to suffer from the shortness and miseries of human life, and that they feel these troubles so much the more keenly, as they recognize their cause to be the wrath of God on account of human sin, whose manifestations in their own lives they have always to bewail, and whose guilt they can as little hide as they can the severity of God’s anger. For the light by which we learn of God, the world, and ourselves is one and the same. “Although Moses, in the discharge of his office, slays by exhibiting sin in connection with its punishment, yet in naming this Psalm a prayer, he tells us that there is an antidote to death. And in this he excels in two particulars all profane writers. He dwells upon the extent and power of death, and yet, along with its terrors, makes the hope of consolation to be felt, so that those who are terrified and humbled are not utterly brought to despair.” (Luther).

3. When the perception of this relation is no mere theoretical knowledge, and is more than a compulsory acknowledgment produced by the pressure of need, when it is a deliberate moral conviction answering to the fear of God (Deu_29:9; Job_28:8), then it affords not merely the only correct standard for estimating all these things, but teaches us also to pray for the saving use of it in the midst of the dangers, sorrows, and temptations which encompass men here. It raises also the humbled soul from complaining over the vanity of the world, the distresses of life, and the blindness of mankind, to an earnest and trusting search after the favor of God, and thus places it upon the true path of safety, by which it shall escape all the misery of the present life. “As Moses elsewhere keeps within the teachings of the Law, so does he here. For he preaches death, sin, and condemnation, in order to terrify the presumptuous, who are secure in their sins, and set before them their guilt and iniquity, without falsely coloring anything or concealing anything. He endeavors especially to teach men to fear God, so that when they are in dread of God’s anger and of death, they may humble themselves before Him, and become fit recipients of His mercy.” (Luther.)

4. In order to be awakened to true penitence, we must keep ever before our minds the truth that, even in sins that are discovered and lamented, there is, on account of the ruin of our nature, something which is still hidden and concealed, which, however, is not excused or counted undeserving of punishment, because it escapes our own observation and that of other men. There are many who give themselves up to this delusion to their ruin. They fail to understand the relation of sin and death, and therefore, also, fail to understand the teachings of events in the world. And since they begin to have less dread of the wrath of God, the knowledge of God, generally, becomes obscure to them. It becomes difficult for them to bring themselves under the range of His purposes of salvation, and they seek less earnestly for His mercy. “Moses, therefore, well calls sin a concealed thing, whose extent no mind can comprehend. For like God’s wrath, like death, sin also is incomprehensible and infinite.” (Luther).

5. But when, to the acknowledgment that sin extends much further than it can be recognized, there is united this other, that God’s countenance casts light even upon what is hidden from our natural sight, then the fear, anguish, gloom, and care thence arising, can be overcome only by renewed experience of the Divine mercy. In the exhibitions of that mercy the glory as well as the goodness of the Lord are displayed to His people. And prayer for both must go hand in hand. “Although horses, cows and other animals die as well as man, yet their death does not manifest the wrath of God, but only transient pain. But in man’s death there is anguish and wrath, for he was created to be conformed to the image of God.” (Luther.)

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The prayers of the Church must ascend to God, if the help of the Eternal is to descend to it.—The shorter life is, the more pressing is the obligation to spend it as for eternity.—The dominion of death over the world, (1), how it manifests itself, (2), whence it arises, (3), how it is overcome.—The blindness of mankind in their judgments with reference to God, the world, and their own worth.—Seeking refuge in God under the pressure of His just anger, why it is difficult and bow it is facilitated.—The fear of God, a good antidote to the fear of death, the cares of life, and the pangs of conscience.—Moses a guide to Christ, by preaching the punitive justice of God upon all the world, and the appearing of His glory over His people.—Though we cannot scan the world with the eye of God, yet, if we fear Him, we can learn to understand it by His light.—Wouldst thou in thy brief life obtain abiding joy? Turn in time to the eternal God, and yield thyself to the mercy which He ever proves Himself ready to bestow.—The life of all of us upon earth is fleeting, but it need not be unprofitable.—Death is the wages of sin, but the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.—Let him who would not sink with the dissolving world, nor be borne away with fleeting time, nor be destroyed with sinners, hasten to take up his abode with God, as long as the goodness or the Lord continues to prepare the way.—It must be considered a great mercy, that the Eternal reveals Himself in time, as the Lord whom we serve, as the Judge whom we fear, as the God in whom we are to trust.—The attacks of sin are more frequent, the roots of sin more deeply concealed, the consequences of sin more dreadful, than many know or admit, but God’s grace is mightier than sin, and God’s love greater than our hearts: therefore the world is rightly judged, and the righteous saved.—How we in the midst of death, may, in God, lay hold on life.

Luther: The higher grass grows, the nearer is it to the scythe and fork.—Starke: Prayer is the true armor against sin and death; for it is directed to God, and He is not a God of the dead, but of the living.—My time and hour may come when God wills. I prescribe not to Him measure or end.—Every evening should be to us a reminder of our end, our bed an emblem of our coffin, and sleep a prelude to the quiet rest until the resurrection.—Men convey to the tomb one dead body after another, and yet will not be persuaded to destroy the sting of death by faith in Christ, and free themselves from the wrath of God.—True joy is drawn from the enjoyment of God’s favor, and is therefore holy and pure. But all that joy is impure which men receive from earthly things outside of the state of grace.-He whom suffering and affliction have brought to repentance, receives a right to seek again from God consolation and joy.

Selnecker: Exalt not thyself, and be not proud in thy honors, for all men are in the hand of Him who has made them.—Menzel: Use of the teaching of God’s omnipotence and infinite might, (1), as serving to promote the true knowledge of God, (2), as contributing to the unfailing consolation of His people, (3), as a warning to the wicked.—Arndt: No man dies by chance, but according to God’s counsel, order, and providence.-Frisch: The more sins increase, the more life declines; hence comes our frailty.—God’s mercy is better than life itself.—Roos: Wherein does that wisdom consist, which is to be drawn from the numbering or reckoning up of the days which we have lived, and which, presumably, still remain? Is it not in this lesson, that by repentance and faith we should aspire after eternal life?—Stier: Moses as the man of God recognizes in the wrath of God the cause of the death of man; he looks forth with longing into the morning of mercy after the long night; and implores strengthening for himself and all the servants of the Lord, to persevere and continue the work of their hands.—Richter (Hausbibel): The knowledge of sin is the only key that solves the mystery of death.—Umbreit: Men have ever before their eyes the fear of death, but God, the sins of men.—Guenther: We fly away; whither?—Taube: In the punishment we can discern the extent of the sin, and yet to the sinner sin is immeasurable.—From a true conviction with regard to death, flows the true worldly wisdom.—Deichert: It is only when we are firmly established in God’s favor, that a new year can be a happy one to us. For then (1) the thought of the swift flight of our days may indeed move us, but cannot make us yield; (2) the thought of our great guilt may indeed depress us, but cannot make us despair; (3) the thought of the troubles and trials of life may indeed dispose us to deep solemnity, but it cannot rob us of the comforting reflection, that the Lord with His help will stand by our side.—L. Harms: Nothing preaches so powerfully on sin, as death does.—Thy God is the Almighty, and that Almighty God is Love.

[Matt. Henry: Man, in his prime, doth but flourish as the grass, which is weak and low and tender and exposed, and which, when the winter of old age comes, will perish of itself; but he may be worn down by disease or disaster, as the grass is, in the midst of summer. All flesh is grass.—To be religious is to be wise.—We are so unworthy of Divine assistance, and yet so insufficient to bring anything to pass without it, that we have need to be earnest for it, and so repeat the request: Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.—Bp Horne: The time of our pilgrimage upon earth is a time of sorrow; these are the days “wherein God hath afflicted us,” but He will hereafter “make us glad according to them.” In proportion to our sufferings, if we rightly bear those sufferings, will be our reward. Then shall our joy be increased and receive an additional relish from our former sorrow; then shall we bless the days and the years which exercised our faith and perfected our patience; and then shall we bless God, who chastised us for a season, that He might bless us forever.—Barnes: How kind and merciful is the arrangement by which man is ordinarily removed from the world before the time of “trouble and sorrow” comes!—Perowne: God’s work is first to appear, His majesty is to be revealed: then man’s work, which is God’s work carried out by human instruments, may look for His blessing.—J. F. M.].

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psalm 90

THE Fourth Book, according to the ancient traditional division of the Psalter, opens with the oldest Psalm in the collection. Or rather the author of the present arrangement, who was probably no other than Ezra, placed this sublime composition by itself, between the two great divisions of the book, containing respectively the Earlier and Later Psalms. See the Preface, p. 6. It may therefore be regarded as the heart or centre of the whole collection, and indeed as the model upon which even David, "the sweet psalmist of Israel" (2Sa 23:1), formed that glorious body of psalmodic literature or hymnology, which, with its later but inspired and authoritative imitations, constitutes the present Book of Psalms. The date of the composition, though uncertain because not recorded, may with most probability be fixed near the close of the Error in the Wilderness, when the dying out of the older generation on account of their transgressions, and the threatened exclusion of Moses himself from the Promised Land, were exactly suited to produce such views of man's mortality and sinfulness as are here presented, but without destroying the anticipation of a bright futurity, such as really ensued upon the death of Moses, and is prospectively dis closed in the conclusion of this psalm. Its great theme is the frailty and brevity of human life, considered as the consequence of sin, and as a motive to repentance and obedience. He first contrasts the eternity of God with the mortality of man, Psa 90:1-6, which is then described as the effect of the divine wrath on account of sin, Psa 90:7-11, and made the ground of a prayer, with which the psalm concludes, for the speedy restoration of the divine favour, Psa 90:12-17.

1. (Psa 90:1) A Prayer. By Moses, the Man of God. Lord, a home hast thou been to us, in generation and generation. The psalm is called a prayer, because the petition at the close (Psa 90:12-17) contains the essence of the composition, to which the rest is merely preparatory. For another case precisely similar, see above, on Psa 86:1. The correctness of the title, which ascribes the psalm to Moses, is confirmed by its unique simplicity and grandeur; its appropriateness to his times and circumstances, as already stated; its resemblance to the law in urging the connection between sin and death; its similarity of diction to the poetical portions of the Pentateuch, without the slightest trace of imitation or quotation; its marked unlikeness to the psalms of David, and still more to those of later date; and finally, the proved impossibility of plausibly assigning it to any other age or author. The arguments against its authenticity have commonly been framed by a preposterous inversion of the evidence, converting into proofs of later date the very points of similarity which prove that this was the original and model psalm, the primeval basis upon which even David reared a noble superstructure of his own. The title Man of God is given to Moses, in Deu 33:1, Jos 14:6, Ezr 3:2. and is often applied to later prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha. See 1Sa 2:27, 1Ki 17:18; 1Ki 17:24; 1Ki 20:28, 2Ki 1:13; 2Ki 4:9; 2Ki 4:21; 2Ki 4:27; 2Ki 4:42. It is here significant, implying that Moses wrote the psalm in this capacity. See above, on Psa 18:1; Psa 36:1, where David is in like manner called the Servant of Jehovah, a title given to Moses himself in the account of his death, Deu 34:5, as David, on the other hand, is called the Man of God, 2Ch 8:14. Instead of hast been some read art; but though the preterite of other verbs may be used to express general truths, the present of the substantive verb is so commonly suppressed, that its form, when inserted, must have some significance. The truth seems to be, that the verse expresses only what God had been, but implies what he still was and still would be. A home, a fixed or settled dwelling, even while they wandered in the desert. The same noun is used by Moses, Deu 26:15, and a kindred form, Deu 33:27. In generation and generation, in all successive generations. See above, on Psa 10:6; Psa 33:11; Psa 45:17; Psa 49:11; Psa 61:6.

Joseph Addison Alexander, The Psalms Translated and Explained (1850) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

IV. THE NUMBERS SECTION: BOOK FOUR: Psalm 90-106

The Ninetieth Psalm begins the fourth book of Psalms, corresponding in different ways with the book of Numbers. It opens with the only Psalm written by Moses in the wilderness when the people were dying on account of unbelief, and is followed by a Psalm which shows the second Man, the Lord as the head of a new creation. In this book are found numerous millennial Psalms, showing us prophetically when under Christ, in the day when all things are put under His feet, the wilderness experiences of His people end, glory comes to Israel, the nations and all the earth. Psa 90:1-17; Psa 91:1-16; Psa 92:1-15; Psa 93:1-5

Psalm 90

Man’s Condition of Sin and Death

1. The Eternal One (Psa 90:1-2)

2. Frailty and Death because of Sin (Psa 90:3-10)

3. The Prayer: Return Jehovah! How long? (Psa 90:11-17)

This Psalm of Moses shows what man is as a sinner, picturing his nothingness, the misery and frailty of his life, and death. The race dies, but does not become extinct, for He says, “Return ye children of men. They are carried away as with a flood, they are as a sleep-like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.” And time to the Eternal One is as nothing, for a thousand years are to Him as nothing. (See 2Pe 3:8.) It is true, every statement as to frailty, uncertainty and death, of the entire race. But even in this Psalm of the first man with sin and death, we must see the prophetic aspect. If Psa 90:7-8 are true of those who died in the wilderness, they are also true of God’s earthly people in the time of their trouble. “For we are consumed by Thine anger and by Thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance.” Hence their plea to return. The prayer with which this Psalm of death closes becomes illuminated when we look at it dispensationally. “Return, O LORD, how long? And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants. O satisfy us early with Thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.--Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants and Thy glory unto their children.” It is the expression of hope uttered by His earthly saints.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psa 90:1

This is, beyond fair doubt, the oldest Psalm in the whole Psalter. It is the work, not of David, but, as the inscription tells us in the Bible version, of Moses. Especially like Moses is the union of melancholy and fervour which meets us here—the fervour of the intrepid servant of God dashed by the melancholy which followed on his great disappointments. In this verse he is the spokesman and representative of all that is good and great in the past annals of mankind. He is speaking for the living; he is speaking also for the dead. The spiritual experience which these words represent is continually deeper and wider; and they are repeated at this moment by more souls in heaven and earth than ever before—souls which have found in them the motto and the secret of life, whether in struggle or in victory—"Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another."

I. "Our refuge." In the Bible version more accurately it is "our dwelling-place." God is the home of the soul of man. The soul finds in the presence of God a protection against the enemies which threaten it with ruin in the rough life of the outer world. In this sense David cries, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength." Besides this idea of protection from evils without, the word suggests a place where care is thrown aside, where the affections expand themselves freely and fully, where loving looks, and kindly words, and gentle deeds are the order of the day. When God is said to be the refuge or the home of man, it is meant that God gives to man his best and tenderest welcome, that God alone is the Being in whom man finds perfect repose and satisfaction for all the faculties and sympathies of his nature.

II. Contrast this idea of the relation between God and the man’s soul with the three fundamental relations in which we men stand to Him as our Maker, our Preserver, and the end or object of our existence. Here in this word "refuge" or "home" we have another and a much more tender relation of God to the human soul. He who bade us be, He who keeps us in being, He towards whom our whole being should tend, is also our true and lasting resting-place. He is the one Being within whose life we can find and make a lasting home.

III. "Lord, Thou hast been our refuge." This is the spirit of the very noblest occupation in which we can engage; it is the spirit of prayer. This acknowledgment underlies all the forms which the soul’s intercourse with God is wont to take. Prayer is always, in its widest sense, an act by which the soul of man, here amid these changing scenes of time, seeks its true home and resting-place in seeking God. And as such it always ennobles men, not less now than in the earliest days of man’s history. Our gilded civilisation is no sort of protection against the widespread misery around us, "the changes and chances of this mortal life," which are the lot of us all. The realities of life force us to look beyond it, to cry, with Moses, "Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another."

H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 920.

References: Psa 90:1.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 46; M. B. Riddle, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 324.

Psa 90:1-2

Scripture certainly emphasises in many places the frail and fleeting aspect of life; the thought of man’s mortality runs as a wail through many a psalm, and touches with pathos the heart of the prophet in his brightest visions. But then there is always in Scripture another side of the picture; and this is the higher, and in the sense of Scripture the truer, side. The good is the original, the substantive of which evil is the inversion. The good is being; the evil is but negation of being.

I. This Psalm, so venerable in its materials that it has been attributed to Moses, is in the main a psalm of mortality; and yet its primary thought is not mortality, but eternity. It opens with the note of eternal being. The idea of the eternal stands as a great light in front of the darkness. Man is mortal, but God is; and God is the Eternal, the home, the dwelling-place, of all generations. This is the grand peculiarity of Hebrew and of Christian thought, that God is first, man only second; that the eternal Being is the true Being, the present visible or transitory being only the derivative being, appearing and then vanishing away, according to the direction of the other.

II. But there is more in this brief word than the general assertion of eternal being, and of a great primary power directing, controlling, all nature and all life. The character of this Being is further so far defined. It is represented not only that God is, but that He is personal. The idea of God is everywhere noted by the personal pronouns "I;" "Thou;" "I am that I am;" "I am the Lord, and there is none else." The word "personality" simply means that God is moral; that He is a character as well as an energy; that He is a Being full of affection, and care, and thoughtful and deliberate love. He is not only Creator: He is Father. The assurance is that we have a supreme Heart above us, responsive to our hearts; that there is a spiritual home encompassing us, a life that changes not with the varying pulses of our thought and feeling.

J. Tulloch, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. i., p. 297.

References: Psa 90:1, Psa 90:2.—A. M. Fairbairn, The City of God, p. 35. Psa 90:1-12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 59. Psa 90:2.—A. Mursell, Old Testament Outlines, p. 131.

Psa 90:3

Two of the greatest lessons which Christ came to teach us were the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Look at man in himself, look at man as he makes himself by yielding to and aiding in the fraud and malice of the devil, and hardly any language can be too bitter to describe his baseness and his degradation. But look at man in the light of revelation; look at him under the triple, overarching rainbow of faith, hope, and love; look at him ransomed and ennobled into filial relationship with God, and you will see at once where men have learnt their high faith in their own being and the dignity of God’s image upon them, and who it is that has taught them to speak in such noble accents about themselves. To lose faith in man is to lose faith in God, who made him; to lose faith in man’s nature is to lose faith in your own. Notice some rules by which we may hold fast our faith in all human nature, and so help, it may be, to ameliorate the race.

I. Let us believe, or try to believe, that there is a good side in every man.

II. Let us sometimes turn away altogether from the thoughts of bad men to the galaxy of heavens wherein shine the clustered constellations of saintly lives. Read the lives and actions of these children of light.

III. Above all, as the best of all rules, think constantly of Christ, and fix your eye on Him. The only measure of a perfect man is the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

IV. The most sure way to justify our faith and hope in human nature is to justify it in ourselves. We can do this; we can do all things through Christ, that strengthens us.

F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 321.

References: Psa 90:3, Psa 90:4.—Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln’s Inn Sermons, p. 1. Psa 90:4.—A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 11.

Psa 90:7-17

I. In this passage we find: (1) an exercise of penitential faith or believing repentance; (2) an exercise of believing appropriation and assurance.

II. The three petitions in Psa 90:16 and Psa 90:17 point to work or entering into work as being the peaceable fruit of righteousness. (1) The Lord’s work comes first. These praying men of God, penitent and believing, ask Him to give them and their children a sight of that and an insight into its glory. (2) The second petition is a prayer for personal holiness. It represents that holiness as being intimately connected on the one hand with the Lord’s causing His work and His glory in it to appear unto us, and on the other hand with our being enabled so to work ourselves as to warrant our asking God to establish the work of our hands. (3) In virtue of the Divine blessing, the work of these men acquires a character of stability, permanence, endurance, contrasting strangely with the vanity of their wilderness state.

R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness, p. 209.

Reference: Psa 90:8.—C. Short, Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 150.

Psa 90:9

No part of the ancient Scriptures is less obsolete than this Psalm. It is a picture still true to nature. Human life, viewed generally, has not since brightened up into a scene of joy and triumph. The text seems to express both a necessary fact and a censure. The rapid consumption of our years, their speedy passing away, is inevitable. But they may be spent also in a trifling manner, to little valuable purpose, which would complete the disconsolate reflection on them by the addition of guilt and censure.

I. The instruction supplied by all our years has been to little purpose if we are not become fully aware of one plain fact: that which was expressed in our Lord’s sentence, "Without Me ye can do nothing;" in other words, that it is only through the medium of God that we can effectually attempt any of the most important things, because we have a nature that is unadapted to them, repugnant to them, revolts from them. Therefore, if during the past year we failed in the essential point of imploring the Divine Spirit to animate us, well might we fail in the rest.

II. Sentiments of a grateful kind should be among the first to arise in every one’s meditation on the past year. If we have no right estimate and feeling for the past mercies of God, how are we to receive present and future ones with a right feeling? For future duty we shall want to have motives. Think, if all the force that should be motive could be drawn, in the form of gratitude, from one year’s mercies of God and, as it were, converged to a point, what a potent motive that would be! We have to look back over the year to collect this force.

III. Another consideration is that our last year has added to an irrevocable account. It has passed into the record of heaven, into the memory of God.

IV. Our year has been parallel to that of those persons who have made the noblest use of it. Why were the day, the week, the month, of less value in our hands than in theirs?

V. Another reflection may be on our further experience of mortal life and the world. We have seen it, tried it, judged it, thus much longer. Our interest upon it is contracted to so much narrower a breadth. At first we held to life by each year of the whole allotment; but each year withdrawn cut that tie, like the cutting in succession of each of the spreading roots of a tree. There should in spirit and feeling be a degree of detachment in proportion.

VI. The year departed may admonish us of the strange deceptiveness, the stealthiness, of the flight of time. Each period and portion of time should be entered on with emphatically imploring our God to save us from spending it in vain.

J. Foster, Lectures, 1st series, p. 292.

References: Psa 90:9.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 354; A. Raleigh, From Dawn to the Perfect Day, p. 379; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons in Country Churches, 1st series, p. 299.

Psa 90:10

It is a paradox, and yet, like many other paradoxes, a truism also, to say that death generally alters, sometimes reverses, the whole estimate of a life. It will scarcely be doubted that in such cases the second judgment, if not absolutely just, is the more just in comparison. The true judgment is the ultimate, not the intermediate. This is a difference real and practical for us the living. If the presence or absence of certain qualities or principles is to make a life good or evil, honourable or of ill report, in the retrospect of it from the graveside or from the judgment-seat, what ought it to be now? How shall we so live now as to be pronounced then to have lived the right life? Take, out of a multitude, three characteristics.

I. Disinterestedness. When the criterion of this Psalm is applied to any life, we shall see at once that it must be fatal to a selfish life. Disinterestedness is the first condition of the everlasting man. He sees himself one link, a very insignificant link, in a chain which binds together two eternities. He cannot fall down and worship the link. He must be true, he must be righteous, or he breaks the chain. For the chain is let down from the throne of God, and it fastens together—unintelligible else the union—God the Creator and God the Judge.

II. The second condition of an immortal life is that it is religious. In general it is the religious man who survives death. I believe that when death is once past, even earth is just. I believe that earth itself does homage only to dead saints. When ambition is in the dust, history appreciates virtue, applauds faith. The life that is to live after death, whether on earth or in heaven, must be a religious, a Christian, life.

III. The life which earth shall immortalize is a life not of power so much, but of love. We are all by nature worshippers, idolaters, bondmen, of power. It is not power, not wit, not genius, still less success of office or honour, it is love, which makes a man immortal. For his love’s sake, for his tenderness, for his sympathy, you will forgive him many a fault and many a shortcoming; you will retain his memory long as life lasts for that one word, that one line, that one look, which told you that he understood you, that he felt for you, that he was your friend.

C. J. Vaughan, Words of Hope, p. 206.

Psa 90:11

I. When I consider the difficulties which lie in the way of our measuring the anger of God, I conclude that it is chiefly His steady and orderly goodness which has thrust His displeasure out of sight. So far as one can see from the present arrangements of the world, it is God’s way to withdraw for the most part from our view the sterner features of His character, while He puts forward and emphasises everywhere His gracious and fruitful goodness. (1) The mere power or strength of God is itself rather concealed than thrust upon us. It hides itself behind the order within which He is pleased to exert it. (2) The extent to which God’s strength might come to be at the service of His anger, and be used by Him to destroy, is still more closely veiled from us by the uniform beneficence of His creation. Only occasionally does nature suggest wrath. Her deliberate arrangements are all inspired by goodness. (3) The experience which we have had of God in our own lives is to the same effect; our bitter days we count upon our fingers, our happier ones by years. Judgment is God’s strange work; but His tender mercies are over all His works.

II. By what line shall we fathom the unknown severity of Jehovah? Seeing that God intends His latent wrath to remain as yet concealed from us and hath Himself been at pains to conceal it, by what means shall we search it out? The writer of this Psalm puts into our hand a standard of comparison which, though insufficient, is at least approximative. The wrath of God, he says, is "according to His fear;" to His fearfulness, that is, or His fitness for inspiring in the bosoms of men an awful and sacred dread. Whatever suggests to our minds the enormous strength of God as against our weakness, suggests how terrific His wrath may be if He will. (1) Susceptible souls are sometimes under favourable conditions wrought to fear by the mere vastness, or mystery, or loneliness of God’s material works. According to this fear of Him, so is His wrath. (2) The mass of men are too unimaginative or too stupid to be much moved by the mere sublimity of God’s everyday creation. They need occasional outbursts of unwonted violence to prick their hearts to fear Him. In their coward hearts terror suggests judgment; and according to His fear, so is to them His wrath. (3) In order to estimate the capacity of wrath in the Almighty, we need to know more than His strength, more than His material terribleness. One event in history expresses to the full the moral terribleness of God. The Passion of Jesus Christ is the crown of all terrible things, and the supreme measure not only of God’s mercy, but quite as really of God’s severity. According to His fearfulness, so is His wrath.

J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons, p. 205.

Reference: Psa 90:11.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2593.

Psa 90:12

The great mistake, perhaps, that people make when they reflect on the probable time they shall live in the body, is to think of their life on earth as the only life they have. We should not number our days in any such fashion as this. Time is to be regarded and prized not for the harvests that we reap, but for the seed-sowing that it enables us to do. Earthly life is not a unit; it is only a minute fraction of a unit. For the unit of being is so large that it has in it all opportunity, all occasion, all achievements, and all duration. The way to look at this life is to look at it as an opportunity to get started along the line of desirable progress, as a time to get rooted for a measureless growth, as a time to get initiated into the holy mysteries of existence and become familiar with some of its primary and essential commandments and virtues.

I. The way, therefore, to number our days is not to so number them that they seem to include the result of our lives, but to so number them that they seem to include simply the beginning of our lives. They and all they bring are only stepping-stones which lead us up to the threshold of a nobler life, nobler in its opportunities, occasions, and the character of its joy. We shall then see what life is worth and what it is not worth. We shall see what it should lead to and what we cannot afford to have it lead to. And seeing this, we shall apply our hearts unto wisdom.

II. Wisdom is a great word, because the idea it symbolises is great. Wisdom represents that finer power, that higher characteristic of mind, which suggests the proper application of facts, the right use of knowledge, the correct direction of our faculties. He whose heart is applied to wisdom has put himself in such a position that he can think divinely—think as God would think in his place.

III. Your greatest responsibility is yourself. The gravest charge you have to keep is the charge of your own soul. Life weaves us into the fabric of society. We are knitted and knotted with other lives. But death unthreads us from our connections. In the last day you will be responsible for yourself. Search, then, and see how you stand. The blunders of life do not kill. Let us remember that. Past follies do not forfeit future opportunity. God is always eager to give a man or woman one more chance. Heaven is never hopeless, never despairs touching man’s ability to recover himself if he is down.

W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, p. 157.

Psa 90:12

(with 2Ki 20:11)

The Bible is God’s dial, by which we have to measure life.

I. The dial must be so placed as to receive the rays of the sun. Every line will then come into use.

II. The dial of Ahaz was a public instrument intended for all the people of Jerusalem. The Bible is for all.

III. Clouds would sometimes obscure the sun, and then the dial of Ahaz was in shadow. Clouds sometimes come between the mind and God’s book, but the Sun of righteousness never sets, and there is a silver lining in the darkest cloud of the Christian’s experience.

IV. The sun went backwards, and not forwards, on the dial of Ahaz, as a sign to King Hezekiah that he would get well again. With God all things are possible.

J. H. Wilson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 24.

References: Psa 90:12.—J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 4th series, p. 2; E. J. Hardy, Faint, yet Pursuing, p. 159; R. Lee, Sermons, p. 268; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xv., p. 24; D. Burns, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 68; Short Sermons for Family Reading, p. 329. Psa 90:14.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 513; C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 66; J. H. Wilson, The Gospel and its Fruits (C.S.), p. 75; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 125. Psa 90:15-17.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1701.

Psa 90:16

This Psalm has a threefold interest: of subject, of authorship, and of association. It touches the most solemn, most momentous, most affecting point in the life of man. Its author is "Moses the man of God." It has been heard by us when standing in the presence of death.

I. The words of the text are in substance the prayer of Moses in Exodus, "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory." They find their echo in Philip’s prayer on the night of the Passion, "Lord, show us the Father." They are the cry of a soul feeling its want of Him in whom, known or unknown, averse or loving, it must live, and move, and have its being.

II. "Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants." "The Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Ill were it for the universe if the working hand were to rest one moment. God works everywhere and in all things, but man sees it not; it needs a separate work of God, as the text implies, to show His work. And therefore Moses prays this prayer for his people.

III. "And their children Thy glory." The glory spoken of is the self-manifestation of God. The far-reaching eye, the self-forgetting love, of the man who saw, but must not enter, the land of rest and of inheritance, looked onward into Israel’s future, and while he prayed for the generation that was, thought also of the children that were yet unborn. "Show their children Thy glory," is a petition after the very heart of God, who takes it into the deepest and safest treasure-house of His own promises, and brings it forth thence in boundless blessing, when the lips which framed it have been silent for ages in death.

C. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 46.

Reference: Psa 90:16.—J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalms, p. 208.

Psa 90:16-17

I. The prayer of the Psalmist is not the prayer of the wearied, disappointed prophet, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life," but the prayer of one who looks forward, of one who would fain build what will be continued by them that come after. "Show Thy servants Thy work, and their children Thy glory." Amid all that is fleeting and perishable, make us to know what Thou doest; and for our children we can ask no richer gift. The work of God is the glory of God.

II. The "work" of God and the "glory" of God are shown to us when we care to know that neither we nor our fellows are left alone in the world without a heavenly Friend and heavenly guidance, when we bring ourselves to believe, and to rejoice in the belief, that God Himself is acting on all these human hearts, urging them to turn to Him, and to love Him, and to seek the good of others by aiding others also to love Him more.

III. Then the concluding utterance follows naturally. Once let us believe in our hearts that God is working in the world, and then it becomes an axiom that we too, in our humble measure, have a work to do, a work lofty and ennobling because it is done for Him and with Him, because we are in truth admitted to very co-operation with God.

H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, 1st series, p. 424.

References: Psa 90:16, Psa 90:17.—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 241; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 51.

Psa 90:17

I. What is the beauty of God? The excellence of His character. The meaning of all beauty is to image the holiness and excellence of God. The perception of beauty has been given us not, as some suppose, for enjoyment merely, but to bind us to the infinite, to make it more difficult for man to lose himself in time and sense, and to woo him to a heavenly perfection. The beauty of God is His love, mercy, patience, faithfulness. The justice of God, too, which may well appear to sinful man only terrible, has truly a grand beauty. Viewed from a higher point, the terrible in God is the beautiful, for it is seen to be a form of love. Once in the history of this sinful world infinite beauty appeared. Once God contracted Himself into the limits of our nature and walked the earth. Divine loveliness spoke and acted among us, shone through the eyes and lived in the actions and sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a perception of the beauty of God, a delight in it, a desire after it, which distinguish the spiritual man from others. They may feel that God is great and right; he feels that God is beautiful. A sense of the Divine beauty gives an elevation to all life, and clothes it with a certain infinite halo of gladness. Nothing can greatly afflict a soul that has a steady vision of the Divine beauty. Such a soul rises freely above temptation, heaven has entered into it, and it finds it easy to keep the road to heaven.

II. The beauty of God as reflected in man. The true beauty of God in man is not to be estimated at a glance. One must take in the whole range of human nature. He must certainly not forget the relations to God, and to the future, and to men as spiritual beings. There is something sad about all mere natural beauty. Its forgetting of ’God is melancholy. Its blindness to the future and to all the height, and depth, and breadth of being is melancholy. There is always a suggestion of joy and hope about spiritual beauty. It speaks of a wide horizon. It is the beauty of a day in spring, having a hold of the future, while struggling with east winds and rain, looking on to summer, and not back upon it, as do the fairest autumn days. (1) Benevolence is the essential element of beauty. It is love that is lovely. (2) Strength is the natural and genuine root of love; and if there be anything fair to look upon that is not associated with this, but is rather a tender, delicate grace, inseparable from feebleness of principle or purpose, it must be somewhat of the nature of a sickly flush. (3) Unity is an element of beauty. Our nature must grow into unity by the power of a central life. (4) But unity must never be so understood as to seem in conflict with freedom. The beautiful is free, expansive, flowing. We are emancipated by the sight of God. The thought of eternity and infinitude takes away our limitation. (5) Joy is an element of beauty. The joy we get by looking to Christ is healing and softening. It is a joy from beholding beauty of the loftiest and tenderest kind, and must be productive of beauty. (6) Repose is not less an element of beauty. How powerfully this element of calm strikes us in the life of our Lord. Those who inherit His peace cannot but inherit something of His beauty. (7) Naturalness and unconsciousness must be added as necessary to all the elements of beauty. The beauty of life is life. We do not make beauty. It grows. We must not seek it directly, else we shall certainly miss it.

J. Leckie, Sermons Preached at Ibrox, p. 288.

References: Psa 90:17.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 273; A. P. Peabody, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 355.

Psalm 90

This Psalm sets out with the definite statement of a theologic doctrine: the doctrine of the eternity of God.

I. This splendid thought of the Divine eternity is made to touch the shifting and inconstant character of our earthly state by the single word "dwelling-place." Here God’s eternity opens itself to our needs.

II. A correct view of the eternity of God conveys warning as well as comfort. (1) The eternal power of God convicts us of helplessness. (2) The eternal being of God convicts us of delusions. "Teach us to number our days," etc.

III. In Psa 90:7-10 man is represented not as unfortunate, but as guilty, not as the victim of accident, but as the subject of punishment.

IV. The last five verses bring us back to the starting-point of the Psalm. Whither shall a sinful, short-lived man flee but to a holy and eternal God? Thither turns the prayer of these last five verses, and turns with hope and confidence. Man is the subject of God’s wrath, but there is mercy with Him to satisfy him who flees from the wrath to come.

M. R. Vincent, Gates into the Psalm Country p. 199.

References: Psalm 90—A. B. Bruce, Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 361; F. Tholuck, Hours of Devotion, p. 483.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Psalms 90

THE sad and stately music of this great psalm befits the dirge of a world. How artificial and poor, beside its restrained emotion and majestic simplicity, do even the most deeply felt strains of other poets on the same themes sound! It preaches mans mortality in immortal words. In its awestruck yet trustful gaze on Gods eternal being, in its lofty sadness, in its archaic directness, in its grand images so clearly cut and so briefly expressed, in its emphatic recognition of sin as the occasion of death, and in its clinging to the eternal God who can fill fleeting days with ringing gladness, the psalm utters once for all the deepest thoughts of devout men. Like the God whom it hymns it has been "for generation after generation" an asylum.

The question of its authorship has a literary interest, but little more. The arguments against the Mosaic authorship, apart from those derived from the as yet unsettled questions in regard to the Pentateuch, are weak. The favourite one, adduced by Cheyne after Hupfeld and others, is that the duration of human life was greater, according to the history, in Moses time than seventy years; but the prolonged lives of certain conspicuous persons in that period do not warrant a conclusion as to the average length of life; and the generation that fell in the wilderness can clearly not have lived beyond the psalmists limit. The characteristic Mosaic tone in regarding death as the wages of sin, the massive simplicity and the entire absence of dependence on other parts of the Psalter which separate this psalm from almost all the others of the fourth part, are strongly favourable to the correctness of the superscription. Further, the section Psa_90:7-12 is distinctly historical, and is best understood as referring not to mankind in general, but to Israel; and no period is so likely to have suggested such a strain of thought as that when the penalty of sin was laid upon the people, and they were condemned to find graves in the wilderness. But however the question of authorship may be settled, the psalm is "not of an age, but for all time."

It falls into three parts, of which the two former contain six verses each, while the last has but five. In the first section (Psa_90:1-6), the transitoriness of men is set over against the eternity of God; in the second, (Psa_90:7-12) that transitoriness is traced to its reason, namely sin; and in the third (Psa_90:13-17), prayer that God would visit His servants is built upon both His eternity and their fleeting days. The short Psa_90:1 blends both the thoughts which are expanded in the following verses, while in it the singer breathes awed contemplation of the eternal God as the dwelling place or asylum of generations that follow each other, swift and unremembered, as the waves that break on some lonely shore. God is invoked as "Lord," the sovereign ruler, the name which connotes His elevation and authority. But, though lofty, He is not inaccessible. As some ancestral home shelters generation after generation of a family, and in its solid strength stands unmoved, while one after another of its somewhile tenants is borne forth to his grave, and the descendants sit in the halls where centuries before their ancestors sat.

God is the home of all who find any real home amidst the fluctuating nothings of this shadowy world. The contrast of His eternity and our transiency is not bitter, though it may hush us into wisdom, if we begin with the trust that He is the abiding abode of short-lived man. For this use of dwelling place compare Deu_33:27.

What God has been to successive generations results from what He is in Himself before all generations. So Psa_90:2 soars to the contemplation of His absolute eternity, stretching boundless on either side of "this bank and shoal of time"-"From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God"; and in that name is proclaimed His self-derived strength, which, being eternal, is neither derived from nor diminished by time, that first gives to and then withdraws from, all creatures their feeble power. The remarkable expressions for the coming forth of the material world from the abyss of Deity regard creation as a birth. The Hebrew text reads in Psa_90:2 b as above, "Thou gavest birth to"; but a very small change in a single vowel gives the possibly preferable reading which preserves the parallelism of a passive verb in both clauses, "Or the earth and the world were brought forth."

The poet turns now to the other member of his antithesis. Over against Gods eternal Being is set the succession of mans generations, which has been already referred to in Psa_90:1. This thought of successiveness is lost unless Psa_90:3 b is understood as the creative fiat which replaces by a new generation those who have been turned back to dust. Death and life, decay and ever-springing growth, are in continual alternation. The leaves, which are men, drop; the buds swell and open. The ever-knitted web is being ever run down and woven together again. It is a dreary sight, unless one can say with our psalm, "Thou turnest Thou sayest, Return." Then one understands that it is not aimless or futile. If a living Person is behind the transiencies of human life, these are still pathetic and awe kindling, but not bewildering. In Psa_90:3 a there is clear allusion to Gen_3:19. The word rendered "dust" may be an adjective taken as neuter -that which is crushed, i.e. dust; or, as others suppose, a substantive -crushing; but is probably best understood in the former sense. The psalm significantly uses the word for man which connotes frailty, and in b the expression "sons of man" which suggests birth.

The psalmist rises still higher in Psa_90:4. It is much to say that Gods Being is endless, but it is more to say that He is raised above Time, and that none of the terms in which men describe duration have any meaning for Him. A thousand years, which to a man seem so long, are to Him dwindled to nothing, in comparison with the eternity of His being. As Peter has said, the converse must also be true, and "one day be with the Lord as a thousand years." He can crowd a fulness of action into narrow limits. Moments can do the work of centuries. The longest and shortest measures of time are absolutely equivalent, for both are entirely inapplicable, to His timeless Being. But what has this great thought to do here, and how is the "For" justified? It may be that the psalmist is supporting the representation of Psa_90:2, Gods eternity, rather than that of Psa_90:3, mans transiency; but, seeing that this verse is followed by one which strikes the same note as Psa_90:3, it is more probable that here, too, the dominant thought is the brevity of human life. It never seems so short, as when measured against Gods timeless existence. So, the underlying thought of Psa_90:3, namely, the brevity of mans time, which is there illustrated by the picture of the endless flux of generations, is here confirmed by the thought that all measures of time dwindle to equal insignificance with Him.

The psalmist next takes his stand on the border moment between today and yesterday. How short looks the day that is gliding away into the past! "A watch in the night" is still shorter to our consciousness, for it passes over us unnoted.

The passing of mortal life has hitherto been contemplated in immediate connection with Gods permanence, and the psalmists tone has been a wonderful blending of melancholy and trust. But in Psa_90:5 the sadder side of his contemplations becomes predominant. Frail man, frail because sinful, is his theme. The figures which set forth mans mortality are grand in their unelaborated brevity. They are like some of Michaelangelos solemn statues. "Thou floodest them away"-bold metaphor, suggesting the rush of a mighty stream, bearing on its tawny bosom crops, household goods, and corpses, and hurrying with its spoils to the sea. "They become a sleep." Some would take this to mean falling into the sleep of death; others would regard life as compared to a sleep-"for before we are rightly conscious of being alive, we cease to live" (Luther, quoted by Cheyne); while others find the point of comparison in the disappearance, without leaving a trace behind, of the noisy generations, sunk at once into silence, and "occupying no more space on the scroll of Time than a nights sleep" (so Kay). It is tempting to attach "in the morning" to "a sleep," but the recurrence of the expression in Psa_90:7 points to the retention of the present division of clauses, according to which the springing grass greets the eye at dawn, as if created by a nights rain. The word rendered "springs afresh" is taken in two opposite meanings, being by some rendered passes away, and by others as above. Both meanings come from the same radical notion of change, but the latter is evidently the more natural and picturesque here, as preserving, untroubled by any intrusion of an opposite thought, the cheerful picture of the pastures rejoicing, in the morning sunshine, and so making more impressive the sudden, sad change wrought by evening, when all the fresh green blades and bright flowers lie turned already into brown hay by the mowers scythe and the fierce sunbeams.

"So passeth, in the passing of an hour,

Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower."

The central portion of the psalm (Psa_90:7-12) narrows the circle of the poets vision to Israel, and brings out the connection between death and sin. The transition from truths of universal application is marked by the use of we and us, while the past tenses indicate that the psalm is recounting history. That transitoriness assumes a still more tragic aspect, when regarded as the result of the collision of Gods "wrath" with frail man. How can such stubble but be wasted into ashes by such fire? And yet this is the same psalmist who has just discerned that the unchanging Lord is the dwelling place of all generations. The change from the previous thought of the eternal God as the dwelling place of frail men is very marked in this section, in which the destructive anger of God is in view. But the singer felt no contradiction between the two thoughts, and there is none. We do not understand the full blessedness of believing that God is our asylum, till we understand that He is our asylum from all that is destructive in Himself; nor do we know the significance of the universal experience of decay and death, till we learn that it is not the result of our finite being, but of sin.

That one note sounds on in solemn persistence through these verses, therein echoing the characteristic Mosaic lesson, and corresponding with the history of the people in the desert. In Psa_90:7 the cause of their wasting away is declared to be Gods wrath, which has scattered them as in panic. {Psa_48:5} The occasion of that lightning flash of anger is confessed in Psa_90:8 to be the sins which, however hidden, stand revealed before God. The expression, for "the light of Thy face" is slightly different from the usual one, a word being employed which means a luminary, and is used in Genesis 1 for the heavenly bodies The ordinary phrase is always used as expressing favour and blessing; but there is an illumination, as from an all-revealing light, which flashes into all dark corners of human experience, and "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Sin smitten by that light must die. Therefore, in Psa_90:9, the consequence of its falling on Israels transgressions is set forth. Their days vanish as mists before the sun, or as darkness glides out of the sky in the morning. Their noisy years are but as a murmur, scarce breaking the deep silence, and forgotten as soon as faintly heard. The psalmist sums up his sad contemplations in Psa_90:10, in which life is regarded as not only rigidly circumscribed within a poor seventy or, at most, eighty years, but as being, by reason of its transitoriness, unsatisfying and burdensome. The "pride" which is but trouble and vanity is that which John calls "the pride of life," the objects which, apart from God, men desire to win, and glory in possessing. The self-gratulation would be less ridiculous or tragic, if the things which evoke it lasted longer, or we lasted longer to possess them. But seeing that. they swiftly pass and we fly too, surely it is but "trouble" to fight for what is "vanity" when won, and what melts away so surely and soon.

Plainly, then, things being so, mans wisdom is to seek to know two things-the power of Gods anger, and the measure of his own days. But alas for human levity and bondage to sense, how few look beyond the external, or lay to heart the solemn truth that Gods wrath is inevitably operative against sin, and bow few have any such just conception of it as to lead to reverential awe, proportioned to the Divine character which should evoke it! Ignorance and inoperative knowledge divide mankind between them, and but a small remnant have let the truth plough deep into their inmost being and plant there holy fear of God. Therefore, the psalmist prays for himself and his people, as knowing the temptations to inconsiderate disregard and to inadequate feeling of Gods opposition to sin, that His power would take untaught hearts in hand and teach them this-to count their days. Then we shall bring home, as from a ripened harvest field, the. best fruit which life can yield, "a heart of wisdom," which, having learned the power of Gods anger, and the humber of our days, turns itself to the eternal dwelling place, and no more is sad, when it sees life ebbing away, or the generations moving in unbroken succession into the darkness.

The third part (Psa_90:13-17) gathers all the previous meditations into a prayer, which is peculiarly appropriate to Israel in the wilderness, but has deep meaning for all Gods servants. We note the invocation of God by the covenant name "Jehovah," as contrasted with the "Lord," of Psa_90:1. The psalmist, draws nearer to God, and feels the closer bond of which that name is the pledge. His prayer is the more urgent, by reason of the brevity of life. So short is his time that he cannot afford to let God delay in coming to him and to his fellows. "How long?" comes pathetically from lips which have been declaring that their time of speech is so short. This is not impatience, but wistful yearning, which, even while it yearns, leaves God to settle His own time, and, while it submits, still longs. Night has wrapped Israel, but the psalmists faith "awakes the morning," and he prays that its beams may soon dawn and Israel be satisfied with the longed for lovingkindness; {compare Psa_30:5} for life at its longest is but brief, and he would fain have what remains of it be lit with sunshine from Gods face. The only thing that will secure life-long gladness is a heart satisfied with the experience of Gods love. That will make morning in mirk midnight; that will take all the sorrow out of the transiency of life. The days which are filled with God are long enough to satisfy us; and they who have Him for their own will be "full of days," whatever the number of these may be.

The psalmist believes that Gods justice has in store for His servants joys and blessings proportioned to the duration of their trials. He is not thinking of any future beyond the grave; but his prayer is a prophecy, which is often fulfilled even in this life and always hereafter. Sorrows rightly borne here are factors determining the glory that shall follow. There is a proportion between the years of affliction and the millenniums of glory. But the final prayer, based upon all these thoughts of Gods eternity and mans transitoriness, is not for blessedness, but for vision and Divine favour on work done for Him. The deepest longing of the devout heart should be for the manifestation to itself and others of Gods work. The psalmist is not only asking that God would put forth His acts in interposition for himself and his fellow servants, but also that the full glory of these far-reaching deeds may be disclosed to their understandings as well as experienced in their lives. And since he knows that "through the ages an increasing purpose runs," he prays that coming generations may see even more glorious displays of Divine power than his contemporaries have done. How the sadness of the thought of fleeting generations succeeded by new ones vanishes when we think of them all as, in turn, spectators and possessors of Gods "work"! But in that great work we are not to be mere spectators. Fleeting as our days are, they are ennobled by our being permitted to be Gods tools; and if "the work of our hands" is the reflex or carrying on of His working we can confidently ask that, though we the workers have to pass, it may be "established." "In our embers may be" something that doth live," and that life will not all die which has done the will of God, but it and its doer will "endure forever." Only there must be the descent upon us of "the graciousness" of God before there can flow from us "deeds which breed not shame," but outlast the perishable earth and follow their doers into the eternal dwelling place. The psalmists closing prayer reaches further than he knew. Lives on which the favour of God has come down like a dove, and in which His will has been done, are not flooded away, nor do they die into silence like a whisper, but carry in themselves the seeds of immortality, and are akin to the eternity of God.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

Ps 90 Although the Lord’s people have made their home in him for generations, their sin widens the gap between them and their infinite Lord. The Lord’s wrath against a person’s sin might last a lifetime and yet be only a taste of his displeasure with sin. This lamentable situation calls the community to seek the Lord’s light. Taking the first step means seeking restoration with the Lord on the basis of his compassion and love (90:13-14). He alone makes his servants glad and blesses their future generations (90:16-17).

90:title Moses led God’s people from slavery in Egypt to Mount Sinai, where he received the law and established God’s covenant with Israel. • the man of God: Moses enjoyed a special relationship with God (Deut 33:1).

90:1-2 The Lord becomes the home of the godly; he has provided shelter for countless generations. The word translated home is not used frequently in the Psalter. It describes a place of safety where the Lord meets his needy people and cares for them (68:5; 71:3).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Thou hast been as an house and defense unto us in all our troubles and travels now this four hundred years.

Thus the Scripture useth to call the Prophets.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

PSALM XC

The eternity of God, 1, 2;

the frailty of the state of man, 3-9;

the general limits of human life, 10;

the danger of displeasing God, 11;

the necessity of considering the shortness of life, and of

regaining the favour of the Almighty, 12;

earnest prayer for the restoration of Israel, 13-17.

NOTES ON PSALM XC

The title of this Psalm is, A Prayer of Moses the man of God. The Chaldee has, "A prayer which Moses the prophet of the Lord prayed when the people of Israel had sinned in the wilderness." All the Versions ascribe it to Moses; but that it could not be of Moses the lawgiver is evident from this consideration, that the age of man was not then seventy or eighty years, which is here stated to be its almost universal limit, for Joshua lived one hundred and ten years, and Moses himself one hundred and twenty; Miriam his sister, one hundred and thirty; Aaron his brother, one hundred and twenty-three; Caleb, four-score and five years; and their contemporaries lived in the same proportion. See Clarke on Ps 90:4. Therefore the Psalm cannot at all refer to such ancient times. If the title be at all authentic, it must refer to some other person of that name; and indeed איש אלהים ish Elohim, a man of God, a divinely inspired man, agrees to the times of the prophets, who were thus denominated. The Psalm was doubtless composed during or after the captivity; and most probably on their return, when they were engaged in rebuilding the temple; and this, as Dr. Kennicott conjectures, may be the work of their hands, which they pray God to bless and prosper.

Verse 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place] מעון maon; but instead of this several MSS. have מעוז maoz, "place of defence," or "refuge," which is the reading of the Vulgate, Septuagint, Arabic, and Anglo-Saxon. Ever since thy covenant with Abraham thou hast been the Resting-place, Refuge, and Defence of thy people Israel. Thy mercy has been lengthened out from generation to generation.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1 O Lord! thou hast been our dwelling-place. In separating the seed of Abraham by special privilege from the rest of the human family, the Psalmist magnifies the grace of adoption, by which God had embraced them as his children. The object which he has in view in this exordium is, that God would now renew the grace which he had displayed in old time towards the holy patriarchs, and continue it towards their offspring. Some commentators think that he alludes to the tabernacle, because in it the majesty of God was not less conspicuous than if he had dwelt in the midst of the people; but this seems to me to be altogether out of place. He rather comprehends the whole time in which the Fathers sojourned in the land of Canaan. As the tabernacle had not yet continued for the space of forty years, the long duration here mentioned — our dwelling-place from generation to generation — would not at all be applicable to it. It is not then intended to recount what God showed himself to be towards the Israelites from the time that he delivered them from Egypt; but what their fathers had experienced him to be in all ages, even from the beginning. Now it is declared that as they had always been pilgrims and wanderers, so God was to them instead of a dwelling-place. No doubt, the condition of all men is unstable upon earth; but we know that Abraham and his posterity were, above all others, sojourners, and as it were exiles. Since, then, they wandered in the land of Canaan till they were brought into Egypt, where they lived only by sufferance from day to day, it was necessary for them to seek for themselves a dwelling-place under the shadow of God, without which they could hardly be accounted inhabitants of the world, since they continued everywhere strangers, and were afterwards led about through many windings and turnings. The grace which the Lord displayed in sustaining them in their wanderings, and shielding them with his hand when they sojourned among savage and cruel nations, and were exposed to injurious treatment at their hands — this grace is extolled by Moses in very striking terms, when he represents God as an abode or dwelling-place to these poor fugitives who were continually wandering from one place to another in quest of lodgings. This grace he magnifies from the length of time during which it had been exercised; for God ceased not to preserve and defend them for the space of more than four hundred years, during which time they dwelt under the wings of his protection.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(1) Dwelling place.—LXX. and Vulg., “refuse,” possibly reading maôz (as in Psa_37:39) instead of maôn. So some MSS. But Deu_33:17 has the feminine of this latter word, and the idea of a continued abode strikes the key-note of the psalm. The short duration of each succeeding generation of men on the earth is contrasted with the eternity of God and the permanence given to Israel as a race by the covenant that united them with the Eternal. But we may give extension to the thought. Human history runs on from generation to generation (so the Hebrew; comp. Deu_32:7); one goes, another comes; but in relation to the unchanging God, who rules over all human history, even the transient creatures of an hour may come to feel secure and at home.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place] The Psalmist addresses God not by the covenant Name Jehovah (Lord), but by the title which designates Him as the Ruler of the world. He not merely is, but has proved Himself to be, Israel’s home, age after age, in all the vicissitudes of its history. The same word is used in Psa_91:9. (A.V. habitation), and (in a slightly different form) in Deu_33:27, to which the Psalmist may be alluding. Some editors would change mâ‘ôn, ‘dwelling-place,’ into mâ‘ôz, ‘stronghold.’ In Psa_71:3 (see note) there has probably been a confusion between these words, but it is unnecessary to alter the text here.

in all generations] More forcibly the Heb., in generation and generation, i.e. in each successive generation. So Deu_32:7 (A.V. many generations).

1–6. The Psalmist’s confession that God is Israel’s refuge; that He alone is the Eternal; that He is the sovereign Disposer of human life.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations,.... Even when they had no certain dwelling place in the world; so their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, dwelt in tabernacles in the land of promise, as in a strange land; and their posterity for many years served under great affliction and oppression in a land that was not theirs; and now they were dwelling in tents in the wilderness, and removing from place to place; but as the Lord had been in every age, so he now was the dwelling place of those that trusted in him; being that to them as an habitation is to man, in whom they had provision, protection, rest, and safety; see Psa 31:2 so all that believe in Christ dwell in him, and he in them, Joh 6:56, they dwelt secretly in him before they believed; so they dwelt in his heart's love, in his arms, in him as their head in election, and as their representative in the covenant of grace from eternity; and, when they fell in Adam, they were preserved in Christ, dwelling in him; and so they were in him when on the cross, in the grave, and now in heaven; for they are said to be crucified, buried, and risen with him, and set down in heavenly places in him, Gal 2:20, and, being converted, they have an open dwelling in him by faith, to whom they have fled for refuge, and in whom they dwell safely, quietly, comfortably, pleasantly, and shall never be turned out: here they have room, plenty of provisions, rest, and peace, and security from all evils; he is an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the storm. Some render the word "refuge"; (a) such is Christ to his people, being the antitype of the cities of refuge; and others "helper", as the Targum; which also well agrees with him, on whom their help is laid, and is found.

(z) Huillus Patriarch. in Origen. apud Hieron. adv. Ruffin. l. 1. fol. 67. L. (a) "refugium", V. L. Vatablus; "asylum", Gejerus.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Lord - Not יהוה Yahweh here, but אדני 'Adonāy. The word is properly rendered “Lord,” but it is a term which is often applied to God. It indicates, however, nothing in regard to his character or attributes except that he is a “Ruler or Governor.”

Thou hast been our dwelling-place - The Septuagint renders this, “refuge” - καταφυγἡ kataphugē. So the Latin Vulgate, “refugium;” and Luther, “Zuflucht.” The Hebrew word - מעון mâ‛ôn - means properly a habitation, a dwelling, as of God in his temple, Psa 26:8; heaven, Psa 68:5; Deu 26:15. It also means a den or lair for wild beasts, Nah 2:12; Jer 9:11. But here the idea seems to be, as in the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Luther, “a refuge”; a place to which one may come as to his home, as one does from a journey; from wandering; from toil; from danger: a place to which such a one naturally resorts, which he loves, and where he feels that he may rest secure. The idea is, that a friend of God has that feeling in respect to Him, which one has toward his own home - his abode - the place which he loves and calls his own.

In all generations - Margin, “generation and generation.” That is, A succeeding generation has found him to be the same as the previous generation had. He was unchanged, though the successive generations of men passed away.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Although we and our fathers, for some generations, have had no certain and fixed habitation, but have been strangers in a land that was not ours, and afflicted for four hundred years, according to thy prediction, Gen 15:13; and although we now are, and have been for some time, and still are like to continue, in, a vast howling wilderness, having no houses but dwelling in tents, and wandering from place to place, we know not whither; yet thou, O Lord, hast fully supplied this want, and hast been instead of and better than a dwelling-place to us, by thy watchful and gracious providence over us in all places and exigencies. And this is a very proper preface to this Psalm, to intimate that all the following miseries were not to be imputed to God, but unto themselves, who by their own sins had brought these mischiefs upon themselves.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. Thou hast been our dwelling-place—This is the proposition sustained throughout the first six verses. The mutable and perishable in man are contrasted with the immutable and absolute in God, in whose eternal years alone the flickering and crushed life of man finds refuge and stability. Especially does the Church find its life and perpetuation in the all-invigorating life of God; and Moses speaks from the heart of the Church.

In all generations—Literally, In generation and generation. Four designations of time are given: “In generation and generation,” “before the mountains were brought forth,” “before the world was fashioned,” “from everlasting to everlasting.” Anterior to the date of the world nothing is known but eternity, but God fills both time and eternity. No conceptions of God can be more awful, more sublime.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE ascription of this psalm in the title to Moses must be admitted to be very remarkable. No other psalm is so ascribed. Nor indeed is a date given to any other earlier than the time of David. The psalm itself, however, when examined, is found to accord with the traditional date. Professor Cheyne notes in it a "roughness," which is presumably a sign of antiquity. Ewald says of it, "The poem has in it something uncommonly striking, solemn, sinking into the depth of the Godhead. In contents and language it is throughout original and powerful; and, as it is undoubtedly very old, it would have been universally considered as correctly derived from Moses, had we known exactly the reasons which guided the collector." Hengstenberg, Kay, professor Alexander, and Dean Johnson accept unhesitatingly the Mosaic authorship.

The psalm is termed, "A Prayer of Moses, the man of God." It is, however, only in part a "prayer," Meditation occupies the opening portion (vers. 16); complaint follows (vers. 7-11); it is only with ver. 12 that prayer begins. (For the application to Moses of the phrase, "man of God," see Deu 33:1Jo Deu_14:6 Ezr_3:2)

Lord, thou hast been our Dwelling place in all generations; or, "our habitation"; (see Psa_91:9) comp. Psa_32:7, "Thou art my Hiding place." For well nigh forty years Moses had had no fixed material dwelling place.

Vers. 1, 2. The fundamental truths of all religion.

"Lord, thou hast been our Dwelling place," etc. This psalm is a monument of spiritual power. It possesses in eminent. degree the perennial freshness which so wonderfully belongs to Scripture. Generations pass. Centuries mount up into thousands of years; but this ancient psalm lifts up its voice with undecaying strength and sweetness. It reminds us of a granite pillar which casts its unchanging image on a river which flows past, as it has flowed for ages. The inscription, cut thousands of years ago, is unworn by the finger of time; it is clear and sharp, as if cut yesterday. The psalm has been spoken of as "perhaps the most sublime of human compositions, the deepest in feeling, the loftiest in theologic conception, the most magnificent in its imagery" (Isaac Taylor). Even those who question the tradition that it was written by Moses (perhaps more from the habit of questioning than for any solid reason) are utterly at a loss to suggest who else can have been its author. Whether Moses or not, he "wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost." These opening verses express the fundamental truths of all religion. the eternal existence of God; the dependence of all other existence on him as Creator, and our personal relation to him as our Almighty Father and Friend Dwelling place in all generations.

ITHE ETERNITY OF GOD. His underived, unchangeable, self-existent being; independent of time. "From everlasting... thou art God." The Hebrew word means "duration," past or future; here, evidently, unlimited duration, or, as we say, eternity. The eternity of God, like his immensity, his omniscience, omnipotence, one of the truths reason cannot grasp, but is compelled to affirm. If we try to think of boundless, actually infinite space, we are baffled. Yet the moment we try to imagine a bound, thought overleaps it. So we cannot comprehend a past eternity; yet the moment we suppose a beginning, we cannot help asking What was before that? The greatest philosopher of Germany thought he had got rid of the perplexity by asserting that time and space have no existence except in our minds. But this ignores the plain fact that the whole universe, from the movement of suns and systems to the growth of a grain of seed or the ticking of a watch, is based on the reality of time and space, and governed by them. Faith accepts what reason cannot grasp; and falls down and worships "him that liveth forever and ever.

II THE DEPENDENCE OF ALL OTHER EXISTENCE ON THE SELF-EXISTENT, THE ETERNAL. "Ere ever thou hadst formed," etc. All things, God excepted, had a beginning. (Heb_11:3 Rev_4:11 Rom_11:36) Here, again, philosophy has striven hard to get rid of the necessity for creation; to lead us to believe matter and force eternal, and the parents of life, order, beauty, happiness. But the deepest science assures us that the universe in its present state is far enough from either immutable or everlasting; that life can spring only from life; and that the primary material of the universe atoms, or whatever else we like to call it bears as clearly the marks of being fitted to its work, by weight, measure, number, exact proportion, as the rudder and screw of a ship, or the beam and flywheel of a steam engine. Science, which is nothing but the study of God"s plans and methods of working, leads us back from all vain imaginings to the throne of God. Our deepest thought, our widest, most searching questionings of nature, cannot take us outside of St. Paul"s simple, profound declaration, "In him we live, and move, and have our being". (Act_17:28)

III OUR PERSONAL RELATION TO GOD. "Lord, thou hast been our Dwelling place." Our Refuge, our Rest, our Home. All that we can learn of God, or conjecture concerning him, would profit us nothing, if we do not say, "This God is our God forever and ever". (Psa_48:14) The same word and thought meet us in the sublime blessing. (Deu_33:27) (Internal confirmation of Mosaic authorship.) The thought of God dwelling with his people, is frequent; the great purpose of the tabernacle, with its covering cloud, and all connected with it, was to impress this idea. (for the highest fulfilment of which, see Eph_2:22 Rev_21:3) But here God is himself our Habitation. The whole range of Gentile religious thought cannot (I believe) produce a parallel to this tender, attractive, yet glorious representation of God as the Eternal Home of his people. In that most mournful, though beautiful psalm, in which the psalmist can see nothing but the frailty and vanity of human life, and Faith struggles not to lose her hold, he thinks of himself as "a sojourner" with God. (Psa_39:12) His fainting faith would have revived, had he said, "No! a sojourner with men, a pilgrim on earth; but at home with thee!

REMARKS.

1. How close, tender, full of encouragement, is this relation! To what does the heart cling more lovingly, trustfully, restfully, than to our home?

2. This looks beyond this fleeting life, the shadowy brevity of which is so powerfully contrasted, throughout the psalm, with the opening thought of God"s eternity. We are never to leave home. (cf. Psa_48:14) Our Guide till death; our God forever. Compare our Lord"s argument. (Luk_20:37, Luk_20:38)

3. The unity of the Church: "all generations" of the long succession of believers have one Home. (Heb_11:13, Heb_11:16, Heb_11:40)

4. Our Lord Jesus claims to sustain this relation. (Joh_15:4-7 1Jn_2:28)

HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY Vers. 1-17. The Lord our Dwelling place.

There is no need to doubt the assigned authorship of this psalm. It is in entire harmony with the facts and surroundings of Moses" and Israel"s life in the wilderness. Observe

I THE BLESSED FACT. The Lord our Dwelling place, which this psalm tells of at its beginning. Weary wanderers as the Israelites were, with no settled resting place, here today, gone tomorrow, how blessed for them that there was refuge, a dwelling place, a home, in God! And this, Moses and such as he had realized and may realize still.

1. Here there may be, there is, perpetual change; but in God a settled abode.

2. Here, weariness and turmoil; in God, rest and peace.

3. Here, continual disappointment; in God, the soul"s satisfaction. (Cf. Psa_63:5)

4. Here, perpetual peril; in God, perfect security.

5. Here, the coldness and enmity of men; in God, unfailing sympathy and love. Yes, God is the Home of the believing soul.

II THE SUSTAINING POWER OF THIS FACT. It enables us to meet with calmness the heart breaking events of life. The psalmist enumerates a number of them.

1. The brevity of our life. (Vers. 3-6)

2. The real cause of human misery. (Ver. 7) It is our sin, and God"s displeasure thereat. Hence is it (ver. 9) that the sense of that displeasure overwhelms us as with lightning flash, and our lives are as a breath. And so all life is sad, even at the best (ver. 10).

3. The fearfulness of the Divine anger. (Ver. 11) "Who knoweth the might of thine anger and thy wrath, according to the fear that is due unto thee?" (Perowne). None can even rightly estimate it, much less overestimate it.

III THE RELIEVING PRAYER TO WHICH IT LEADS.

1. That we may not miss the instruction which these sad facts should impart. The "wisdom" craved is that we may make the Lord our Dwelling place.

2. For brighter days. (Vers. 13-15)

3. For the promised salvation the work and the glory of God (ver. 16).

4. For the beauty of holiness. There had been none of this in Israel in all these many years.

5. That life may be worth living. Not a perpetual disappointment, such as it had been hitherto, but that the work of their hands might be established (ver. 17). Such are some of the prayers which the soul whose home is in God will be led to offer in view of the brevity, the frailty, and the sinfulness of life. Let the Lord be our Dwelling place, and all is well. "Our life is hid with Christ in God. S.C.

The glorious habitation.

It has been remarked that we have Moses presented to us in three aspects as poet (see his song at the Red Sea); as preacher (see Deuteronomy and elsewhere); and as a man of prayer (see the closing verses of this psalm). These three characters are not often combined, but when they are they make the subject of them very powerful with God for man, and with man for God. And the secret of his eminence in each character was that his spirit"s home was in God. Note

I WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? How can the Lord be our Dwelling place?

1. It is evident that a spiritual dwelling place is meant. It is not a material habitation, such as the body needs, but one for the spirit of man.

2. And the Lord is such a Dwelling place for our spirits. For if we be such as Moses was, men of God, then God will be our spirits" home, because there they continually abide. Christ said, "Abide in me," and this they do, as a man"s home is his dwelling place. And chiefly because it is there he not only dwells, but loves to dwell. Home is not a mere place: it is only home when love dwells there. A man"s habitation may be a hell for him, and it will be if it be without love. But it is his home when his affections centre there, when it contains those whom he dearly loves, and who in like manner love him. Then, whether rich or poor, great or small, a palace or a pauper"s hut, it is yet his home. Now, God is the home of his people, not alone because they do dwell there, but because they love to dwell there. (cf. Ps 63 Psa_43:3, Psa_43:5)

3. For in God there is rest for our intellects. Even unbelievers have recognized this. A French philosopher in the days of the Revolution said, "If it could be shown that there was no God, we should have to invent one." They felt that for the satisfaction of the understanding God was a necessity. In him we can see the adequate Cause and Creator of all things, and in his wisdom and power and goodness the mind finds rest.

4. And in him also there is met the cravings of our affections. Even the contemplation of God in his spiritual attributes, in his exalted character, has been found to be full of delight to God"s servants; but how much more when he is revealed to us in Christ! Then the heart goes out to him in a great rush of affection, as it beholds his infinite purity and goodness and love as these are seen in Christ our blessed Redeemer. The heart of the believer gazes upon him until it grows toward him as the flowers grow toward the sun.

5. And the will that lordliest faculty of our nature finds in him its Inspiration, Strength, and Guide, and loves to lose itself in the will of God. Thus is the Lord our Dwelling place, our spirit"s Home, where it dwells, and loves to dwell.

II WHO ARE THEY THAT DWELL IN GOD? St. John, in his First Epistle, lays down the marks of these blessed ones.

1. They are they who dwell in love. (1Jn_4:16) He who loveth not his brother cannot dwell in God, nor God in him.

2. They who possess the Spirit of God. (1Jn_4:13)

3. They who openly confess him. (1Jn_4:15)

4. They who keep his commandments. (1Jn_3:24) Thus may we test our right to say, "Lord, thou hast been our Dwelling place.

III WHAT COMES OF THIS DWELLING IN HIM?

1. The unity of God"s people.

2. The worlds conversion, when it sees all God"s people thus united. (Joh_17:21)

IV HOW CAN WE ENTER INTO AND ABIDE IN THIS BLESSED HOME? (Joh_14:6) Christ is the Way. Give yourselves up to him. S.C.

HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Ver. 1. God a Dwelling place.

God our Home; the soul"s Home. There seem to be no sufficient reasons for rejecting the Mosaic authorship of this psalm; but this much appears to be certain the associations of the time of Moses form the machinery of the psalm; and there are no other associations which fit to it so well. During the last forty years of his life, and during the long years of the desert wanderings for Israel, the people had no home, no resting place; they were constantly moving to and fro; and yet God was caring for them, preserving them from harm; God was their Home. A modern preacher has said, "There is one thing runs through the whole of the Scriptures which is above every other that was ever before the Hebrew mind it is that in which God is represented as the Dwelling place of his people, as the Home of the soul. It is an awful, incomprehensible, infinite thought; yet we can feel it and know it, not in the same sense as if we were Buddhists or Brahmins, hut, while awed by the grandeur, never losing our personality in the infiniteness of the thought. All things in nature seem to abide ever, constant and unchangeable, but they only seem. All things have the stamp of insecurity upon them; but how confidently secure God"s people stand in the eternal relationship of God to them!" See what thoughts we associate with home, and how far these may be applied to God as our "Home," our "Dwelling place.

I HOME IS A PLACE OF RELATIONSHIPS. Man enters into a variety of connections with his fellows; but his relationships, sanctified by love and service, centre in his home. Relationship to God as "our Father" makes his house our home, and our brothers" home.

II HOME IS A PLACE OF SECURITY. It is our sanctuary. There we feel not only that none will harm us, but that none ever want to harm us. We even feel that nothing can harm us if we only are safe at home. And nothing ever can harm the soul that is in the shelter of the "everlasting arms.

III HOME IS A PLACE OF PERSONAL INTERESTS. Each one is concerned in the best welfare of each of the others. It is full of mutual love service. Nothing is paid for, save by responsive love and service. So God may be thought of as personally concerned, personally interested, in all for whom he finds a home.

IV HOME IS A PLACE OF REST. For those wearied and worn by toil or by trouble. So we sing, "Oh rest in the Lord!

V HOME IS A PLACE OF REFUGE. To which the traveller gladly returns from the fatigue and peril of the way. To which the erring child, the prodigal, turns in the penitent hour. So God is the Home of the sinful soul, ever the Father. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Probably Moses wrote this psalm, on occasion of the sentence passed on the Israelites, that their carcases should fall in the wilderness. Herein he considers the eternity of God, ver. 1-3. And the frailty of man, ver, 4-6. He submits to the righteous sentence of God, ver. 7-11. And prays for the return of his favour, ver. 12-17. A prayer of Moses the Man of God. Title of the psalm. A prayer of Moses - Who considering that terrible sentence of God, concerning the cutting off all that sinful generation in the wilderness, takes occasion to publish these meditations concerning man's mortality and misery. V.

Dwelling place - Although we and our fathers, for some generations, have had no fixed habitation, yet thou hast been instead of a dwelling-place to us, by thy watchful and gracious providence. And this intimates that all the following miseries were not to be imputed to God but themselves.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The poet begins with the confession that the Lord has proved Himself to His own, in all periods of human history, as that which He was before the world was and will be for evermore. God is designedly appealed to by the name אדני, which frequently occurs in the mouth of Moses in the middle books of the Pentateuch, and also in the Song at the Sea, Exo 15:17 and in Deu 3:24. He is so named here as the Lord ruling over human history with an exaltation ever the same. Human history runs on in דּר ודר, so that one period (περίοδος) with the men living contemporaneous with it goes and another comes; the expression is deuteronomic (Deu 32:7). Such a course of generations lies behind the poet; and in them all the Lord has been מעון to His church, out of the heart of which the poet discourses. This expression too is Deuteronomic (Deu 33:27). מעון signifies a habitation, dwelling-place (vid., on Psa 26:8), more especially God's heavenly and earthly dwelling-place, then the dwelling-place which God Himself is to His saints, inasmuch as He takes up to Himself, conceals and protects, those who flee to Him from the wicked one and from evil, and turn in to Him (Psa 71:3; Psa 91:9). In order to express fuisti היית was indispensable; but just as fuisti comes from fuo, φύω, היה (הוה) signifies not a closed, shut up being, but a being that discloses itself, consequently it is fuisti in the sense of te exhibuisti. This historical self-manifestation of god is based upon the fact that He is אל, i.e., might absolutely, or the absolutely Mighty One; and He was this, as Psa 90:2 says, even before the beginning of the history of the present world, and will be in the distant ages of the future as of the past. The foundation of this world's history is the creation. The combination ארץ ותבל shows that this is intended to be taken as the object. ותּחולל (with Metheg beside the e4 of the final syllable, which is deprived of its accent, vid., on Psa 18:20) is the language of address (Rashi): that which is created is in a certain sense born from God (ילּד), and He brings it forth out of Himself; and this is here expressed by חולל (as in Deu 32:18, cf. Isa 51:2), creation being compared to travail which takes place amidst pains (Psychology, S. 114; tr. p. 137). If, after the example of the lxx and Targum, one reads as passive ותּחולל (Bttcher, Olshausen, Hitzig) from the Pulal חולל, Pro 8:24, - and this commends itself, since the pre-existence of God can be better dated back beyond facts than beyond the acts of God Himself, - then the conception remains essentially the same, since the Eternal and Absolute One is still to be thought of as מחולל. The fact that the mountains are mentioned first of all, harmonizes with Deu 33:15. The modus consecutivus is intended to say: before the mountains were brought forth and Thou wast in labour therewith.... The forming of the mountains consequently coincides with the creation of the earth, which is here as a body or mass called ארץ, and as a continent with the relief of mountains and lowlands is called תבל (cf. תבל ארץ, Pro 8:31; Job 37:12). To the double clause with טרם seq. praet. (cf. on the other hand seq. fut. Deu 31:21) is appended וּמעולם as a second definition of time: before the creation of the world, and from eternity to eternity. The Lord was God before the world was - that is the first assertion of Psa 90:2; His divine existence reaches out of the unlimited past into the unlimited future - this is the second. אל is not vocative, which it sometimes, though rarely, is in the Psalms; it is a predicate, as e.g., in Deu 3:24.

This is also to be seen from Psa 90:3, Psa 90:4, when Psa 90:3 now more definitely affirms the omnipotence of God, and Psa 90:4 the supra-temporality of God or the omnipresence of God in time. The lxx misses the meaning when it brings over אל from Psa 90:2, and reads אל־תּשׁב. The shorter future form תּשׁב for תּשׁיב stands poetically instead of the longer, as e.g., in Psa 11:6; Psa 26:9; cf. the same thing in the inf. constr. in Deu 26:12, and both instances together in Deu 32:8. The poet intentionally calls the generation that is dying away אנושׁ, which denotes man from the side of his frailty or perishableness; and the new generation בּני־אדם, with which is combined the idea of entrance upon life. It is clear that השׁיב עד־דּכּא is intended to be understood according to Gen 3:19; but it is a question whether דּכּא is conceived of as an adjective (with mutable aa), as in Psa 34:19, Isa 57:15 : Thou puttest men back into the condition of crushed ones (cf. on the construction Num 24:24), or whether as a neutral feminine from דּך (= דּכּה): Thou changest them into that which is crushed = dust, or whether as an abstract substantive like דּכּה, or according to another reading (cf. Psa 127:2) דּכּא, in Deu 23:2 : to crushing. This last is the simplest way of taking it, but it comes to one and the same thing with the second, since דּכּא signifies crushing in the neuter sense. A fut. consec. follows. The fact that God causes one generation to die off has as its consequence that He calls another into being (cf. the Arabic epithet of God el-mu‛ı̂d = המשׁיב, the Resuscitator). Hofmann and Hitzig take תּשׁב as imperfect on account of the following ותּאמר: Thou didst decree mortality for men; but the fut. consec. frequently only expresses the sequence of the thoughts or the connection of the matter, e.g., after a future that refers to that which is constantly taking place, Job 14:10. God causes men to die without letting them die out; for - so it continues in Psa 90:4 - a thousand years is to Him a very short period, not to be at all taken into account. What now is the connection between that which confirms and that which is confirmed here? It is not so much Psa 90:3 that is confirmed as Psa 90:2, to which the former serves for explanation, viz., this, that God as the Almighty (אל), in the midst of this change of generations, which is His work, remains Himself eternally the same. This ever the same, absolute existence has its ground herein, that time, although God fills it up with His working, is no limitation to Him. A thousand years, which would make any man who might live through them weary of life, are to Him like a vanishing point. The proposition, as Pe2 3:8 shows, is also true when reversed: "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years." He is however exalted above all time, inasmuch as the longest period appears to Him very short, and in the shortest period the greatest work can be executed by Him. The standpoint of the first comparison, "as yesterday," is taken towards the end of the thousand of years. A whole millennium appears to God, when He glances over it, just as the yesterday does to us when (כּי) it is passing by (יעבר), and we, standing on the border of the opening day, look back upon the day that is gone. The second comparison is an advance upon the first, and an advance also in form, from the fact that the Caph similitudinis is wanting: a thousand years are to God a watch in the night. אשׁמוּרה is a night-watch, of which the Israelites reckoned three, viz., the first, the middle, and the morning watch (vid., Winer's Realwrterbuch s. v. Nachtwache). It is certainly not without design that the poet says אשׁמוּרה בלּילה instead of אשׁמרת הלּילה. The night-time is the time for sleep; a watch in the night is one that is slept away, or at any rate passed in a sort of half-sleep. A day that is past, as we stand on the end of it, still produces upon us the impression of a course of time by reason of the events which we can recall; but a night passed in sleep, and now even a fragment of the night, is devoid of all trace to us, and is therefore as it were timeless. Thus is it to God with a thousand years: they do not last long to Him; they do not affect Him; at the close of them, as at the beginning, He is the Absolute One (אל). Time is as nothing to Him, the Eternal One. The changes of time are to Him no barrier restraining the realization of His counsel - a truth which has a terrible and a consolatory side. The poet dwells upon the fear which it produces.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

The Mercy of God Man’s Only Refuge.

A prayer of Moses, the man of God, the prophet who stood in the relation of an intimate friend to the God of Israel, who here contrasts man’s frailty, the consequence of his sin, with God’s eternity. This psalm is the oldest which has been preserved in the Psalter, the occasion for its writing probably being the incident recorded Num 14:22-23.

v. 1. Lord, the Majestic, the All-powerful, Thou hast been our Dwelling-place, a safe Habitation of refuge, in all generations, from one generation to the next, throughout the ages, the Messianic idea underlying the prayer.

v. 2. Before the mountains were brought forth, by a process of divine generation, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, bringing them into existence in a manner exceeding human comprehension, by an absolute creative act, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God, His divine being extending out of a limitless past and reaching forward to a boundless future, the eternal, unchanging Lord and Creator, in whom the trust of all believers may rest secure forever.

v. 3. Thou turnest man to destruction, changing the proud strength and beauty of their bodies into crushed particles, into dust, and sayest, Return, ye children of men, one generation sinking down into the misery of the grave, and a new generation arising by His creative will. From the moment of our birth we bear in our bodies the germ of death; the contrast is between the omnipotence and unchangeableness of God and the frailty and vanity of man.

v. 4. For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, the eternal God, for whom, strictly speaking, time does not exist, regards them as nothing more than a disappearing moment, and as a watch in the night, as the third part of the night, which, even in the ease of men, passes by unnoticed; for during sleep the consciousness of the passing of time is lost. All earthly time does not exist for the everlasting God; He is exalted above all the changes of puny men.

v. 5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood, a heavy and devastating rain, whose swift destruction carries mortals away into the sleep of death; they are as a sleep, their whole life is a sleep or a dream, which is past and gone before a person fully realizes it; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up, the blossoming grasses which come to a quick maturity.

v. 6. In the morning it flourisheth, the flowers of the prairies and meadows opening their blossoms in rapid succession, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, the scythe putting an end to the short-lived glory of the meadow-flowers, and withereth. Cf 1Pe 1:24; Psa 103:15-16.

v. 7. For we are consumed by Thine anger, withering away in the glow of its heat, and by Thy wrath are we troubled, destroyed by the intense heat of God’s anger. Such is the impression which the destruction of one generation after the other is bound to make upon the thoughtful observer.

v. 8. Thou hast set our iniquities, the open wickedness of deliberately leaving the paths of righteousness, before Thee, so that none of them is omitted or overlooked, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance; for the secrets of all men’s heart are open and uncovered before the eyes of His omniscience. Cf Psa 19:13. Note: If we see our sins in the proper spirit of repentance, then God does not see them, for they are then covered by the garment of Christ’s righteousness; but if we do not see our sins, then God surely will see them, for they remain uncovered before the light shining before Him, the light of His righteousness and holiness.

v. 9. For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath, they are diminished. they vanish, because the anger of the Lord is manifested upon the sins; we spend our years as a tale that is told, like a murmuring, meaningless noise, which is not even brought out in a definite word. Thus the vanity of human life is again brought out.

v. 10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten, literally, "The days of our years—in them seventy years," not worth mentioning, an insignificant sum; and if by reason of strength, that is, if a man possesses unusual vitality, they be fourscore years, if he actually reaches the age of eighty years, yet is their strength, even that about which men are wont to boast, labor and sorrow, vanity and foolishness, misery and grief. How foolish, then, for men to regard this life as the most desirable thing and to neglect the care for eternity! For it is soon cut off, the life of mortals glides past speedily, and we flyaway. All the events of life move past our eyes in rapid flight; there is nothing stable, nothing lasting, in this world. Moses now draws his conclusion, summarizing the points contained in the previous paragraphs.

v. 11. Who knoweth the power of Thine anger? this being as immeasurable as God Himself. Even according to Thy fear, so is Thy wrath, that is, Who fears the wrath of God in the proper measure? Who realizes what it means for his own fortunes! The great majority of people in the world go their heedless way, not knowing that death is hanging over their heads. But the believers are willing to learn their lesson.

v. 12. So teach us to number our days, giving us the proper understanding that we realize the uncertainty of human life, knowing that every day may be our last day here on earth, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom, for that is surely the essence of wisdom, to be prepared for death at all times. The prayer of Moses now changes to a fervent intercession.

v. 13. Return, O Lord, how long? turning back His face in mercy, since it had been averted so long in anger. And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants, His merciful kindness not permitting the threatened destruction to strike them.

v. 14. O satisfy us early with Thy mercy, His grace being their first food at the very break of the dawn, and being supplied in all rich fullness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days; for the happiness brought by the assurance of the grace of God is a lasting pleasure, its happy excess and wholesome surfeit both satisfying and stimulating desire.

v. 15. Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, in proportion to the period of misery which drove them to repentance, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Cf Psa 51:12.

v. 16. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, making the wonderful deeds of His grace manifest before them, and Thy glory unto their children, that generations to come may also realize the glory of God as manifested in his salvation of men.

v. 17. And let the beauty of the Lord, our God, the sweet favor of the Majestic and All-powerful, who is at the same time the God of our salvation, be upon us, resting upon the believers throughout their lives; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us, letting His blessing attend the proclamation of God’s glory in the work of redemption, as made by His children everywhere; yea, the work of our hands, establish Thou it, for only by and with the blessings of the Lord will the preaching of the Word, the proclamation of salvation, have success and the kingdom of the Lord on earth be built. Thus the prayer of Moses has significance and power for all periods of the Church’s existence, until the very end of time.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The first man.

A prayer of Moses, the man of God.

The preface to this is necessarily the picture of man as fallen away from God -the first man; as Adam’s seed may be most justly called, if Christ be in His day but a Second. The history of the world has fully proved this fall, and the broad fact of death being upon all the race has put God’s seal upon it. It is this last upon which Moses naturally dwells as the most concise and clearest argument. It is what the law also has demonstrated by experiment, conclusively, in saying, "the man that doeth these things shall live in them," and "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." The current views of the law have removed all this from the field of practical observation and common knowledge into the unseen future, so that men may dream and speculate upon it as they list. God’s purpose is that it should be present, definite certainty, that "by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified." The very effectiveness with which it gives this has been by the strange perversion of unbelief made an argument against its having a meaning which is too plain to be the right one!

1. But if death be that which has come in through sin; then life -immortal existence here -is the alternative; and for this man was originally created. It was necessarily conditional upon his continuing with God in the uprightness which he had at the beginning. Dependent he was, and must remain; for without this no creature-blessing is possible. "In God we live and move and have our being," and the recognition of this is uprightness for us. This is the key to the statement with which the psalm here begins.

"Lord, Thou hast been a habitation for us, in all generations": not, as in the common version; "our habitation"; for, alas, man has not profited by that which God has kept ever open to him. Paradise indeed has vanished from the earth, but the door of the Father’s house, which he has left, -for naturally, God being the "Father of spirits," "we are also His offspring" (Heb 12:9; Act 17:28), -has never been closed against him. "The Lord" -not here Jehovah, but the Ruler of the earth and men -is always the Lord of life and He is the Mighty and Eternal One: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, and from age to age, Thou art, O Mighty" (El). Here then is abundant resource, the Fountain of life ever open; the link with eternity in the Eternal God Himself, never distant from His creatures. How has it availed for man? how, after all, has he profited by it?

2. The answer is plain: it is no matter of speculation. Once, and but once, in the days before the flood, a man had walked with God 365 years of life, and then; without seeing death, been removed to heaven to walk with Him there. That life of Enoch, on which the shadow of death had never fallen, might suffice to show the possibility. Practically it might be left out in such an estimate as this: the answer remains really unaffected, or made the more solemn only by that possibility unavailed of: Thou makest frail man (Enosh) return to dust and sayest, Return; ye children of men." So God had to decide. It was His will, yet not of His will. And there remained but as contrast with His feeble creatures, that eternity of His into which they entered not: the thousand years that transcended even the life of a Methuselah, in His sight as but the remembrance of the past yesterday "and in its darkness of shadow, only "as a watch in the night."

But however brief, there is a long lesson in that brevity, and in that shadowed life, which is from God. The psalmist is pondering it before Him, and cannot let it go. "Thou carriest them away as with a flood" -" -"washest them away," literally -no doubt it is of the deluge he is thinking: manifest judgment, and yet generalized here, as the lot of every one, though he go singly. "They are asleep": what is appointed for man’s refreshment, though a sign of his frailty and dependence, yet but an incident, becomes, as it were, the whole thing. They themselves are that -a sleep without awaking!

The images of nature over which he was once appointed lord, nay, of the grass under his feet, become images in which he may see himself. now leveled to the general condition of that which was his kingdom only. and subject to him. Like grass which groweth up: -in the morning it flourisheth and groweth up by the evening it is cut down and withereth."

3. Such then is, very obviously, man’s condition: too obviously, it might be thought, to need the comment. But this is not ended yet; and the reason of it is now dwelt upon; and owned to God. The cause of it is His anger, which is consuming us, His hot wrath, which distresses us. But why such anger? Ah, it is not the unreasoning glow of passion; but discriminating judgment that weighs things in the evenest balances. "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee:" and, with knowledge from which nothing can escape, "our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." Thus in the full realization of what is here -"all our days pass away in Thine overflowing wrath:" upon us with that steady persistence under which a Job might plead, "How long wilt Thou not look away from me?" and the psalmist, "Look away from me, that I may recover strength." "We spend our days as a thought": perhaps, rather, "a moan."

Then comes the reiterated statement of man’s vanity, the experience, now shrunk from near a thousand to seventy or eighty years, in which man’s pride, if it last so long, goes out in travail. Soon cut off indeed, we fly away.

4. But this experience has, therefore, its practical use, to which the rest of the psalm is devoted and here it turns from contemplation and confession into prayer. "Who knoweth," the psalmist asks, "the power of Thine anger?" One might think He had pressed it heavily upon man but how could He do less? look, after all, at the folly that is bound up in man’s heart! He only strives to banish thought, "kill time," put away conviction; do Satan’s work for him as completely as possible. And yet no thought can exceed the truth of God’s anger against sin: even according to the fear of Thee is Thine overflowing wrath."

Let us not shun, then, the reality of things, he asks: let us profit by it: "so make us to number our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom." Here is the "beginning of wisdom" for here is the "fear of the Lord," which is that. Here the soul finds the need it has of Him, turns to Him, seeks to have Him turn to it: and so the psalmist: "Return; Jehovah" -not simply "Lord" now, but the nearer name of covenant-goodness, -"and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants." For as soon as man repents, God has declared that He will repent of the evil that He thought to do to them (Jer 18:8); and the story of Jonah and Nineveh is a precious illustration of His mercies in this way.

But to avert His judgment is comparatively a little thing. The heart truly touched longs after Himself. How can a creature be satisfied apart from his Creator? "Satisfy us with Thy loving-kindness in the morning, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." This joy in God, how rarely is it to be found after this fashion! our days come generally clad in much soberer apparel than is implied in this. And yet this is not less than we may all of us possess, and should possess. Nay, the soul taught of God in His wondrous ways of grace, claims compensation even for the affliction it has known before. "Make us glad according to the days Thou hast afflicted us, and for the years in which we have seen evil." Think of compensation from a judge for just judgment inflicted! But rather it is a Father’s heart that is free to show itself in wiping off the tears that for a time were salutary. It was a discipline which he prays now may be effectual, the "work appear," and His "glory" shine out after the storm is passed aye, and even "upon the children" afterwards.

The last verse closes with the prayer for perfect blessing, "the beauty of Jehovah our God upon us," nay, "the work of our hands" established, too. And this he is emphatic about: for "whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected" (1Jn 2:5). The glory of God is indeed accomplished in finding not only a free way for His love to show itself, but fruit also from the reconciled heart, upon which He can put the seal of His own approbation.

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

General Information:

Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry. (See: Poetry and Parallelism)

A prayer of Moses the man of God

"This is a prayer that Moses the man of God wrote"

Lord, you have been our refuge

God protecting his people is spoken of as if God were a refuge or shelter. AT: "Lord, you have been like a shelter for us" (See: Metaphor)

throughout all generations

"always"

Before the mountains were formed

This can be stated in active form. AT: "Before you formed the mountains" (See: Active or Passive)

were formed

"were created" or "were shaped"

the world

This represents everything that is in the world. (See: Metonymy)

from everlasting to everlasting

This phrase represents all time past, present, and future.

translationWords

pray

Moses

God

lord

refuge

generation

earth

eternity

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

A prayer of Moses Moses recited all the eleven psalms from here to (ch. 101) “Of David, a song.” Corresponding to them, he [Moses] blessed eleven tribes with eleven blessings, in (Deut. 33): “And this is the blessing.”

You have been our dwelling place Heb. מעון, an abode and a refuge in which to enter. [That is what] You have been for us.

throughout all generations From time immemorial, for You preceded all.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.