Psalms 90
Big idea: The oldest voice in the Psalter, and it starts by fixing the scale. A thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night — and against that, seventy years, or by reason of strength eighty, most of it labor and sorrow, and then we fly away. What the psalm asks for is not more time. It is the ability to do arithmetic: teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. And it ends with a request that a life which passes like grass should leave something standing — establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses about how short life is. Psalm 91 is about how safe it can be anyway.
90:1–12 — Teach us to count our days
Book IV opens with the oldest voice in the Psalter, and it does the arithmetic nobody wants done. God's timescale and ours are set side by side — a thousand years against a watch in the night, a life against grass that sprouts and dries between morning and evening — and the psalm refuses to make that comforting. Then the request, which is not for more days but for the ability to count the ones there are.
1 A Prayer by Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born, before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. 3 You turn man to destruction, saying, “Return, you children of men.” 4 For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night. 5 You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass. 6 In the morning it sprouts and springs up. By evening, it is withered and dry. 7 For we are consumed in your anger. We are troubled in your wrath. 8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. 9 For all our days have passed away in your wrath. We bring our years to an end as a sigh. 10 The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away. 11 Who knows the power of your anger, your wrath according to the fear that is due to you? 12 So teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
90:13–17 — Establish the work of our hands
Five verses of request, and they are calibrated to the arithmetic just done. Satisfy us IN THE MORNING — the hour the grass sprouts in verse 5. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us — the compensation is asked for in matching units. And the last verse asks for the one thing a seventy-year life cannot supply itself: that the work outlast the worker.
13 Relent, Yahweh! How long? Have compassion on your servants! 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil. 16 Let your work appear to your servants, your glory to their children. 17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).