Psalms, chapter 90, comments

 

Psalm 90:1 ¶  «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.

 

In this most ancient Psalm, Moses, the man of God, recites his Psalm.

 

Deuteronomy 33:1 ¶  And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death.

 

We dwell in God and live in Him, by His power and with His consent, in His love and life.

 

Acts 17:28  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

 

1John 4:13  Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.

 

God is preexisting, the eternal entity, not bound by time or space.

 

Isaiah 57:15  For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

 

God simply is and always has been.

 

Exodus 3:14  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

There are those that say for God everything is now and that He sees all time as if it had already happened.

 

Before the physical universe was brought into existence He is. This negates Carl Sagan’s and Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s declaration in the TV series Cosmos that the physical universe is all that was, all that is, and all that ever will be.

 

He lets men and women turn away from Him to the path of destruction and He pleads with them to repent and turn back to Him.

 

For God a thousand years is as brief as a day or a watch in the night. In other words, time is meaningless to an eternal God.

 

And mankind in his short and fragile existence is likened to grass that flourishes and dies very quickly.

 

1Peter 1:24  For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

 

I recommend my study on the book of Job for more detail into our frailty.

 

Psalm 90:7 ¶  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 labour 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.

 

God’s wrath on the obstinate Israelites is lamented here. Moses presumes God’s anger on His people. Even the things which are not easily apparent, those secret things are exposed before the light of His face. Their lives seems like a story that has a beginning and an ending, and when finished it is gone. It is like a physicist saying you are a non-verbal event in space-time and nothing more.

 

Even if man lives to an average age of 70 or on to 80 years, it doesn’t matter, because he will be gone. There is nothing that can stand against God’s wrath, to oppose His anger.

 

Here, Moses has led the Israelites through the wilderness and they have suffered, so much so, that the generation of adults that left Egypt would die there in the barren wastes and never see the Promised Land.

 

Numbers 32:10  And the LORD’S anger was kindled the same time, and he sware, saying,

11  Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly followed me: 12  Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite, and Joshua the son of Nun: for they have wholly followed the LORD. 13  And the LORD’S anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation, that had done evil in the sight of the LORD, was consumed.

 

Deuteronomy 2:14  And the space in which we came from Kadeshbarnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the LORD sware unto them.

 

They must have suffered a great deal for their stubbornness, suffering which Moses is lamenting.

 

Psalm 90:12 ¶  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.

 

Show us, Lord, how short our lives are. Let us understand that and be wise regarding that brevity of life. And have mercy on us and turn from your wrath. If we would have your mercy we would be happy and praise you all of our lives. In this very poetic passage Moses pleads for mercy and on the people of Israel.

 

This, too, in a time of suffering we have brought on ourselves, can be our prayer. We know that in certain situations we have only our faithlessness to blame and God is correcting us. We need to repent of our sins and turn from them and then turn back to Christ. We need His mercy every single day and we should be asking for it, humbling ourselves before God.