The Treasury Of David
by C H Spurgeon
Psalm 90
| Exposition | Explanatory Notes And Quaint Sayings | Hints To The Village Preacher | Works Upon This Psalm |
TITLE. 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.
SUBJECT AND DIVISION. --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 Ps 90:12-17 there is indeed no need to make even this break, for the unity is well preserved throughout.
EXPOSITION
Verse 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.
Verse 2. Before the mountains were
brought forth. Before those elder giants had struggled forth from nature's womb, as her
dread firstborn, the Lord was glorious and self sufficient. Mountains to him, though hoar with the snows of ages,
are but new born babes, young things whose birth was but yesterday, mere novelties of an hour. Or ever thou hadst
formed the earth and the world. Here too the allusion is to a birth. Earth was born but the other day, and her
solid land was delivered from the flood but a short while ago. Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God,
or, "thou art, O God." God was, when nothing else was. He was God when the earth was not a world but
a chaos, when mountains were not upheaved, and the generation of the heavens and the earth had not commenced. In
this Eternal One there is a safe abode for the successive generations of men. If God himself were of yesterday,
he would not be a suitable refuge for mortal men; if he could change and cease to be God he would be but an uncertain
dwelling place for his people. The eternal existence of God is here mentioned to set forth, by contrast, the brevity
of human life.
Verse 3. Thou turnest man to destruction, or "to dust." Man's body is resolved into its elements, and is as though it had been crushed
and ground to powder. And sayest, Return, ye children of men, i.e., return
even to the dust out of which ye were taken. The frailty of man is thus forcibly set forth; God creates him out
of the dust, and back to dust he goes at the word of his Creator. God resolves and man dissolves. A word created
and a word destroys. Observe how the action of God is recognised; man is not said to die because of the decree
of faith, or the action of inevitable law, but the Lord is made the agent of all, his hand turns and his voice
speaks; without these we should not die, no power on earth or hell could kill us.
"An angel's arm cannot save me from the grave,
Myriads of angels cannot confine me there."
Verse 4. For a thousand years in thy
sight are but as yesterday when it is past. A thousand years! This is a long stretch of time. How much may be crowded into it, --the rise and fall
of empires, the glory and obliteration of dynasties, the beginning and the end of elaborate systems of human philosophy,
and countless events, all important to household and individual, which elude the pens of historians. Yet this period,
which might even be called the limit of modern history, and is in human language almost identical with an indefinite
length of time, is to the Lord as nothing, even as time already gone. A moment yet to come is longer than "yesterday
when it is past", for that no longer exists at all, yet such is a chiliad to the eternal. In comparison with
eternity, the most lengthened reaches of time are mere points, there is in fact, no possible comparison between
them. And as a watch in the night, a time which is no sooner come than gone. There is scarce time enough in a thousand
years for the angels to change watches; when their millennium of service is almost over it seems as though the
watch were newly set. We are dreaming through the long night of time, but God is ever keeping watch, and a thousand
years are as nothing to him. A host of days and nights must be combined to make up a thousand years to us, but
to God, that space of time does not make up a whole night, but only a brief portion of it. If a thousand years
be to God as a single night watch, what must be the life time of the Eternal!
Verse 5. Thou carriest them away as
with a flood. As when a torrent rushes down the river bed and bears all before it, so
does the Lord bear away by death the succeeding generations of men. As the hurricane sweeps the clouds from the
sky, so time removes the children of men. They are as a sleep. Before God men must appear as unreal as the dreams
of the night, the phantoms of sleep. Not only are our plans and devices like a sleep, but we ourselves are such.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made of." In the morning they are like grass which groweth up. As grass
is green in the morning and hay at night, so men are changed from health to corruption in a few hours. We are not
cedars, or oaks, but only poor grass, which is vigorous in the spring, but lasts not a summer through. What is
there upon earth more frail than we!
Verse 6. In the morning it flourisheth,
and groweth up. Blooming with abounding beauty till the meadows are all besprent with
gems, the grass has a golden hour, even as man in his youth has a heyday of flowery glory. In the evening it is
cut down, and withereth. The scythe ends the blossoming of the field flowers, and the dews at flight weep their
fall. Here is the history of the grass--sown, grown, blown, mown, gone; and the history of man is not much more.
Natural decay would put an end both to us and the grass in due time; few, however, are left to experience the full
result of age, for death comes with his scythe, and removes our life in the midst of its verdure. How great a change
in how short a time! The morning saw the blooming, and the evening sees the withering.
Verse 7. This mortality is not accidental, neither was it inevitable
in the original of our nature, but sin has provoked the Lord to anger, and therefore thus we die. For we are consumed
by thine anger. This is the scythe which mows and the scorching heat which withers. This was specially the case
in reference to the people in the wilderness, whose lives were cut short by justice on account of their waywardness;
they failed, not by a natural decline, but through the blast of the well deserved judgments of God. It must have
been a very mournful sight to Moses to see the whole nation melt away during the forty years of their pilgrimage,
till none remained of all that came out of Egypt. As God's favour is life, so his anger is death; as well might
grass grow in an oven as men flourish when the Lord is wroth with them. "And by thy wrath are we troubled",
or terror stricken. A sense of divine anger confounded them, so that they lived as men who knew that they were
doomed. This is true of us in a measure, but not altogether, for now that immortality and life are brought to light
by the gospel, death has changed its aspect, and, to believers in Jesus, it is no more a judicial execution. Anger
and wrath are the sting of death, and in these believers have no share; love and mercy now conduct us to glory
by the way of the tomb. It is not seemly to read these words at a Christian's funeral without words of explanation,
and a distinct endeavour to shew how little they belong to believers in Jesus, and how far we are privileged beyond
those with whom he was not well pleased, "whose carcasses fell in the wilderness." To apply an ode, written
by the leader of the legal dispensation under circumstances of peculiar judgment, in reference to a people under
penal censure, to those who fall asleep in Jesus, seems to be the height of blundering. We may learn much from
it, but we ought not to misapply it by taking to ourselves, as the beloved of the Lord, that which was chiefly
true of those to whom God had sworn in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest. When, however, a soul
is under conviction of sin, the language of this Psalm is highly appropriate to his case, and will naturally suggest
itself to the distracted mind. No fire consumes like God's anger, and no anguish so troubles the heart as his wrath.
Blessed be that dear substitute,
"Who bore that we might never
His Father's righteous ire."
Verse 8. Thou hast set our iniquities
before thee. Hence these tears! Sin seen by God must work death; it is only by the covering
blood of atonement that life comes to any of us. When God was overthrowing the tribes in the wilderness he had
their iniquities before him, and therefore dealt with them in severity. He could not have their iniquities before
him and not smite them. Our secret sins in the fight of thy countenance. There are no secrets before God; he unearths
man's hidden things, and exposes them to the light. There can be no more powerful luminary than the face of God,
yet, in that strong light, the Lord set the hidden sins of Israel. Sunlight can never be compared with the light
of him who made the sun, of whom it is written, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." If
by his countenance is here meant his love and favour, it is not possible for the heinousness of sin to be more
clearly manifested than when it is seen to involve ingratitude to one so infinitely good and kind. Rebellion in
the light of justice is black, but in the light of love it is devilish. How can we grieve so good a God? The children
of Israel had been brought out of Egypt with a high hand, fed in the wilderness with a liberal hand, and guided
with a tender hand, and their sins were peculiarly atrocious. We, too, having been redeemed by the blood of Jesus,
and saved by abounding grace, will be verily guilty if we forsake the Lord. What manner of persons ought we to
be? How ought we to pray for cleansing from secret faults? It is to us a wellspring of delights to remember that
our sins, as believers are now cast behind the Lord's back, and shall never be brought to light again: therefore
we live, because, the guilt being removed, the death penalty is removed also.
Verse 9. For all our days are passed
away in thy wrath. Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel; each halting place
became a graveyard; they marked their march by the tombs they left behind them. Because of the penal sentence their
days were dried up, and their lives wasted away. We spend our years as a tale that is told. Yea, not their days
only, but their years flew by them like a thought, swift as a meditation, rapid and idle as a gossip's story. Sin
had cast a shadow over all things, and made the lives of the dying wanderers to be both vain and brief. The first
sentence is not intended for believers to quote, as though it applied to themselves, for our days are all passed
amid the lovingkindness of the Lord, even as David says in the Ps 23:6 "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow
me all the days of my life." Neither is the life of the gracious man unsubstantial as a story teller's tale;
he lives in Jesus, he has the divine Spirit within him, and to him "life is real, life is earnest" --the
simile only holds good if we consider that a holy life is rich in interest, full of wonders, chequered with many
changes, yet as easily ordered by providence as the improvisatore arranges the details of the story with which
he beguiles the hour. Our lives are illustrations of heavenly goodness, parables of divine wisdom, poems of sacred
thought, and records of infinite love; happy are we whose lives are such tales.
Verse 10. The days of our years are
threescore years and ten. Moses himself lived longer than this, but his was the exception
not the rule: in his day life had come to be very much the same in duration as it is with us. This is brevity itself
compared with the men of the elder time; it is nothing when contrasted with eternity. Yet is life long enough for
virtue and piety, and all too long for vice and blasphemy. Moses here in the original writes in a disconnected
manner, as if he would set forth the utter insignificance of man's hurried existence. His words may be rendered,
"The days of our years! In them seventy years": as much as to say, "The days of our years? What
about them? Are they worth mentioning? The account is utterly insignificant, their full tale is but seventy."
And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and
sorrow. The unusual strength which overleaps the bound of threescore and ten only lands
the aged man in a region where life is a weariness and a woe. The strength of old age, its very prime and pride,
are but labour and sorrow; what must its weakness be? What panting for breath! What toiling to move! What a failing
of the senses! What a crushing sense of weakness! The evil days are come and the years wherein a man cries, "I
have no pleasure in them." The grasshopper has become a burden and desire faileth. Such is old age. Yet mellowed
by hallowed experience, and solaced by immortal hopes, the latter days of aged Christians are not so much to be
pitied as envied. The sun is setting and the heat of the day is over, but sweet is the calm and cool of the eventide:
and the fair day melts away, not into a dark and dreary night, but into a glorious, unclouded, eternal day. The
mortal fades to make room for the immortal; the old man falls asleep to wake up in the region of perennial youth.
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. The cable is broken and the vessel sails upon the sea of eternity; the
chain is snapped and the eagle mounts to its native air above the clouds. Moses mourned for men as he thus sung:
and well he might, as all his comrades fell at his side. His words are more nearly rendered, "He drives us
fast and we fly away; "as the quails were blown along by the strong west wind, so are men hurried before the
tempests of death. To us, however, as believers, the winds are favourable; they bear us as the gales bear the swallows
away from the wintry realms, to lands
"Where everlasting spring abides
And never withering flowers."
Who wishes it to be otherwise? Wherefore should we linger here? What has this poor world to offer us that we should
tarry on its shores? Away, away! This is not our rest. Heavenward, Ho! Let the Lord's winds drive fast if so he
ordains, for they waft us the more swiftly to himself, and our own dear country.
Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of
thine anger? Moses saw men dying all around him: he lived among funerals, and was overwhelmed
at the terrible results of the divine displeasure. He felt that none could measure the might of the Lord's wrath.
Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Good men dread that wrath beyond conception, but they never ascribe
too much terror to it: bad men are dreadfully convulsed when they awake to a sense of it, but their horror is not
greater than it had need be, for it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. Holy Scripture when
it depicts God's wrath against sin never uses an hyperbole; it would be impossible to exaggerate it. Whatever feelings
of pious awe and holy trembling may move the tender heart, it is never too much moved; apart from other considerations
the great truth of the divine anger, when most powerfully felt, never impresses the mind with a solemnity in excess
of the legitimate result of such a contemplation. What the power of God's anger is in hell, and what it would be
on earth, were it not in mercy restrained, no man living can rightly conceive. Modern thinkers rail at Milton and
Dante, Bunyan and Baxter, for their terrible imagery; but the truth is that no vision of poet, or denunciation
of holy seer, can ever reach to the dread height of this great argument, much less go beyond it. The wrath to come
has its horrors rather diminished than enhanced in description by the dark lines of human fancy; it baffles words,
it leaves imagination far behind. Beware ye that forget God lest he tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver.
God is terrible out of his holy places. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah! Remember Korah and his company! Mark well
the graves of lust in the wilderness! Nay, rather bethink ye of the place where their worm dieth not, and their
fire is not quenched. Who is able to stand against this justly angry God? Who will dare to rush upon the bosses
of his buckler, or tempt the edge of his sword? Be it ours to submit ourselves as dying sinners to this eternal
God, who can, even at this moment, command us to the dust, and thence to hell.
Verse 12. So teach us to number our
days. Instruct us to set store by time, mourning for that time past wherein we have wrought
the will of the flesh, using diligently the time present, which is the accepted hour and the day of salvation,
and reckoning the time which lieth in the future to be too uncertain to allow us safely to delay any gracious work
or prayer. Numeration is a child's exercise in arithmetic, but in order to number their days aright the best of
men need the Lord's teaching. We are more anxious to count the stars than our days, and yet the latter is by far
more practical. That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Men are led by reflections upon the brevity of time to
give their earnest attention to eternal things; they become humble as they look into the grave which is so soon
to be their bed, their passions cool in the presence of mortality, and they yield themselves up to the dictates
of unerring wisdom; but this is only the case when the Lord himself is the teacher; he alone can teach to real
and lasting profit. Thus Moses prayed that the dispensations of justice might be sanctified in mercy. "The
law is our school master to bring us to Christ", when the Lord himself speaks by the law. It is most meet
that the heart which will so soon cease to beat should while it moves be regulated by wisdom's hand. A short life
should be wisely spent. We have not enough time at our disposal to justify us in misspending a single quarter of
an hour. Neither are we sure of enough life to justify us in procrastinating for a moment. If we were wise in heart
we should see this, but mere head wisdom will not guide us aright.
Verse 13. Return, O LORD, how long? Come in mercy, to us again. Do not leave us to perish. Suffer not our lives to be both brief and bitter.
Thou hast said to us, "Return, ye children of men", and now we humbly cry to thee, "Return, thou
preserver of men." Thy presence alone can reconcile us to this transient existence; turn thou unto us. As
sin drives God from us, so repentance cries to the Lord to return to us. When men are under chastisement they are
allowed to expostulate, and ask "how long?" Our faith in these times is not too great boldness with God,
but too much backwardness in pleading with him. And let it repent thee concerning thy servants. Thus Moses acknowledges
the Israelites to be God's servants still. They had rebelled, but they had not utterly forsaken the Lord; they
owned their obligations to obey his will, and pleaded them as a reason for pity. Will not a man spare his own servants?
Though God smote Israel, yet they were his people, and he had never disowned them, therefore is he entreated to
deal favourably with them. If they might not see the promised land, yet he is begged to cheer them on the road
with his mercy, and to turn his frown into a smile. The prayer is like others which came from the meek lawgiver
when he boldly pleaded with God for the nation; it is Moses like. He here speaks with the Lord as a man speaketh
with his friend.
Verse 14. O satisfy us early with thy
mercy. Since they must die, and die so soon, the psalmist pleads for speedy mercy upon
himself and his brethren. Good men know how to turn the darkest trials into arguments at the throne of grace. He
who has but the heart to pray need never be without pleas in prayer. The only satisfying food for the Lord's people
is the favour of God; this Moses earnestly seeks for, and as the manna fell in the morning he beseeches the Lord
to send at once his satisfying favour, that all through the little day of life they might be filled therewith.
Are we so soon to die? Then, Lord, do not starve us while we live. Satisfy us at once, we pray thee. Our day is
short and the night hastens on, O give us in the early morning of our days to be satisfied with thy favour, that
all through our little day we may be happy. That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Being filled with divine
love, their brief life on earth would become a joyful festival, and would continue so as long as it lasted. When
the Lord refreshes us with his presence, our joy is such that no man can take it from us. Apprehensions of speedy
death are not able to distress those who enjoy the present favour of God; though they know that the night cometh
they see nothing to fear in it, but continue to live while they live, triumphing in the present favour of God and
leaving the future in his loving hands. Since the whole generation which came out of Egypt had been doomed to die
in the wilderness, they would naturally feel despondent, and therefore their great leader seeks for them that blessing
which, beyond all others, consoles the heart, namely, the presence and favour of the Lord.
Verse 15. Make us glad according to
the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein
we have seen evil. None can gladden the heart as thou canst, O Lord, therefore as thou
hast made us sad be pleased to make us glad. Fill the other scale. Proportion thy dispensations. Give us the lamb,
since thou has sent us the bitter herbs. Make our days as long as our nights. The prayer is original, childlike,
and full of meaning; it is moreover based upon a great principle in providential goodness, by which the Lord puts
the good over against the evil in due measure. Great trial enables us to bear great joy, and may be regarded as
the herald of extraordinary grace. God's dealings are according to scale; small lives are small throughout; and
great histories are great both in sorrow and happiness. Where there are high hills there are also deep valleys.
As God provides the sea for leviathan, so does he find a pool for the minnow; in the sea all things are in fit
proportion for the mighty monster, while in the little brook all things befit the tiny fish. If we have fierce
afflictions we may look for overflowing delights, and our faith may boldly ask for them. God who is great in justice
when he chastens will not be little in mercy when he blesses, he will be great all through: let us appeal to him
with unstaggering faith.
Verse 16. Let thy work appear unto
thy servants. See how he dwells upon that word servants. It is as far as the law can
go, and Moses goes to the full length permitted him henceforth Jesus calls us not servants but friends, and if
we are wise we shall make full use of our wider liberty. Moses asks for displays of divine power and providence
conspicuously wrought, that all the people might be cheered thereby. They could find no solace in their own faulty
works, but in the work of God they would find comfort. And thy glory unto their children. While their sons were
growing up around them, they desired to see some outshinings of the promised glory gleaming upon them. Their Sons
were to inherit the land which had been given them by covenant, and therefore they sought on their behalf some
tokens of the coming good, some morning dawnings of the approaching noonday. How eagerly do good men plead for
their children. They can bear very much personal affliction if they may but be sure that their children will know
the glory of God, and thereby be led to serve him. We are content with the work if our children may but see the
glory which will result from it: we sow joyfully if they may reap.
Verse 17. And let the beauty of the
Lord our God be upon us. Even upon us who must not see thy glory in the land of Canaan;
it shall suffice us if in our characters the holiness of God is reflected, and if over all our camp the lovely
excellences of our God shall cast a sacred beauty. Sanctification should be the daily object of our petitions.
And establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish
thou it. Let what we do be done in truth, and last when we are in the grave; may the
work of the present generation minister permanently to the building tip of the nation. Good men are anxious not
to work in vain. They know that without the Lord they can do nothing, and therefore they cry to him for help in
the work, for acceptance of their efforts, and for the establishment of their designs. The church as a whole earnestly
desires that the hand of the Lord may so work with the hand of his people, that a substantial, yea, an eternal
edifice to the praise and glory of God may be the result. We come and go, but the Lord's work abides. We are content
to die so long as Jesus lives and his kingdom grows. Since the Lord abides for ever the same, we trust our work
in his hands, and feel that since it is far more his work than ours he will secure it immortality. When we have
withered like grass our holy service, like gold, silver, and precious stones, will survive the fire.
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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.
Verse 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.
Verse 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.
Verse 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.
Verse 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.
Verse 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.
Verses 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.
Verses 1-2. If man be ephemeral, God is eternal. --James Hamilton.
Verses 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.
Verse 2. The earth and the world. The word earth here is used to denote the world as
distinguished either from heaven (Ge 1:1), or from the sea (Ge 1:10). The term "world" in the original is commonly employed to denote the earth considered as inhabited,
or as capable of being inhabited, a dwelling place for living beings. --Albert Barnes.
Verse 2. From everlasting to everlasting,
thou art God. The everlastingness of which Moses speaks is to be referred not only to
the essence of God, but also to his providence, by which he governs the world. He intends not merely that he is,
but that he is God. --John Calvin.
Verse 2. Such a God (he says) have we, such a God do we worship,
to such a God do we pray, at whose command all created things sprang into being. Why then should we fear if this
God favours us? Why should we tremble at the anger of the whole world? If He is our dwelling place, shall we not
be safe though the heavens should go to wrack? For we have a Lord greater than all the world. We have a Lord so
mighty that at his word all things sprang into being. And yet we are so fainthearted that if the anger of a single
prince or king, nay, even of a single neighbour, is to be borne, we tremble and droop in spirit. Yet in comparison
with this King, all things beside in the whole world are but as the lightest dust which a slight breath moves from
its place, and suffers not to be still. In this way this description of God is consolatory, and trembling spirits
ought to look to this consolation in their temptations and dangers. --Martin Luther.
Verse 3. Thou turnest man to destruction, etc. The prophet conceives of God as of a potter, that having of dust tempered a mass, and framed it
into a vessel, and dried it, doth presently, within a minute or an hour after, dash it again in pieces, and beat
it to dust, in passion as it were speaking unto it, "Get thee to dust again." The word here translated
"destruction", signifies a beating, or grinding, or
pounding of a thing to powder. And the prophet seems to allude to the third of Genesis, where God speaks of Adam,
"Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return", as if he should say, O Lord, thou that hast made and
framed man of the dust of the earth, thou beatest him to dust again; and as thou madest him by thy word alone,
so with thy word thou suddenly turnest, and beatest him against to dust; as a man that makes a thing, and presently
mars it again...He doth it with a word, against which is no resistance, when that word is once come out of his
mouth; it is not all the diet, physic, and help, and prayers in the world that can save the life. And this he can
do suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye. And therefore we should, as we love our lives, fear him, and take heed
how we offend and displease him that can with a word turn the strongest man into dust. --William
Bradshaw.
Verse 3. Thou turnest man to destruction, etc. The first word for "man", signifies
a man full of misery, full of sickness and infirmities, a miserable man, vwna. And the other word here used in the end of the verse, signifies a man made of clay,
or of the very slime of the earth. From hence we learn what is the nature of all men,
of all the sons of Adam, viz., a piece of living clay, a little piece of red earth. And besides that man is subject to breaking and crushing, every
way a miserable man; so is he of a brittle mould, a piece of red clay, that hath in it for a time a living soul,
which must return to God that gave it; and the body, this piece of earth, return to the earth from whence it came:
and if we had no Scripture at all to prove this, daily experience before our eyes makes it clear how all men, even
the wisest, the strongest, the greatest and the mightiest monarchs and princes in the world, be but miserable men,
made of red earth, and quickly turn again to dust. --Samuel Smith, in "Moses his
Prayer", 1656.
Verse 3. Thou turnest man to destruction. Augustine says, We walk amid perils. If we were glass vases we might fear less dangers. What is there
more fragile than a vase of glass? And vet it is preserved, and lasts for centuries: we therefore are more frail
and infirm. --Le Blanc.
Verse 3. Return ye. One being asked what life was? made an answer answerless, for he presently turned his back and went his
way. --John Trapp.
Verse 4. A thousand years, etc. As to a very rich man a thousand sovereigns are as one penny; so, to the eternal God, a thousand
years are as one day. --John Albert Bengel, 1687-1752.
Verse 4. The Holy Ghost expresses himself according to the manner
of men, to give us some notion of an infinite duration, by a resemblance suited to our capacity. If a thousand
years be but as a day to the life of God, then as a year is to the life of man, so are three hundred and sixty-five
thousand years to the life of God; and as seventy years are to the life of man, so are twenty-five millions five
hundred and fifty thousand years to the life of God. Yet still, since there is no proportion between time and eternity,
we must dart our thoughts beyond all these, for years and days measure only the duration of created things, and
of those only that are material and corporeal, subject to the motion of the heavens, which makes days and years.
--Stephen Charnock.
Verse 4. As yesterday when it is past,
and as a watch in the night. He corrects the previous clause with an extraordinary abbreviation.
For he says that the whole space of human life, although it may be very long, and reach a thousand years, yet with
God it is esteemed not only as one day, which has already gone, but is scarcely equal to the fourth part of a night.
For the nights were divided into four watches, which lasted three hours each. And indeed by the word night, it is meant that human affairs in this life are involved in much darkness,
many errors, dangers, terrors, and sorrows. --Mollerus.
Verse 4. As a watch in the night. The night is wont to appear shorter than the day, and to pass more swiftly, because those who sleep,
says Euthymius, notice not the lapse of time. On account of the darkness also, it is less observed; and to those
at work the time seems longer, than to those who have their work done. --Lorinus.
Verse 4. A watch in the night. Sir John Chardin observes in a note on this verse, that as the people of the East have no clocks, the
several parts of the day and of the night, which are eight in all, are given notice of. In the Indies, the parts
of the night are made known as well by instruments of music in great cities, as by the rounds of the watchmen,
who with cries, and small drums, give them notice that a fourth part of the night is passed. Now as these cries
awaked those who had slept, all that quarter part of the night, it appeared to them but as a moment. --Harmer's Observations.
Verse 4. --The ages and the dispensations, the promise to Adam,
the engagement with Noah, the oath to Abraham, the covenant with Moses-- these were but watches, through which
the children of men had to wait amid the darkness of things created, until the morning should dawn of things uncreated.
Now is "the right far spent, and the day at hand." --Plain Commentary.
Verse 5. Thou carriest them away as
with a flood. Mtmrz (zeram-tam) thou hast inundated them, namely, the years of man, i.e., thou hast hurried them away with a flood, thou hast made them to glide
away as water, they will be sleep. --Bythner's
"Lyre of David."
Verse 5. Thou carriest them away as
with a flood. Let us meditate seriously upon the swift passage of our days, how our life
runs away like a stream of waters, and carrieth us with it. Our condition in the eyes of God in regard of our life
in this world is as if a man that knows not how to swim, should be cast into a great stream of water, and be carried
down with it, so that he may sometimes lift up his head or his hands, and cry for help, or catch hold of this thing
and that, for a time, but his end will be drowning, and it is but a small time that he can hold out, for the flood
which carries him away will soon swallow him up. And surely our life here if it be rightly considered, is but like
the life of a person thus violently carried down a stream. All the actions and motions of our life are but like
unto the strivings and struggles of a man in that case: our eating, our drinking, our physic, our sports, and all
other actions are but like the motions of the sinking man. When we have done all that we can, die we must, and
be drowned in this deluge. --William Bradshaw.
Verse 5. Away as with a flood. "A man is a bubble", said the Greek proverb, which Lucian represents to this purpose, saying,
"All the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations like bubbles. Some of these instantly
sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having no other business in the
world but to be born, that they might be able to die; others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly
disappear, and give their place to others: and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual
motion, restless and uneasy, and being crushed in by a great drop from a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth;
the change not being great; it being hardly possible that a bubble should be more a nothing than it was before."
--Jeremy Taylor.
Verse 5. (first clause). The most ancient mode of measuring small portions of time was by water flowing out of a vessel the
clepsydra of the Greeks and Romans; and Ovid has compared the lapse of time to the flowing of a river (Metam. 15,
180.) --Stephen Street.
Verse 5. They are as a sleep. For as in the visions of sleep, we seeing, see not, hearing we hear not, tasting or touching we neither
taste nor touch, speaking we speak not, walking we walk not; but when we seem to employ movements and gestures,
in no respect do we employ them, since the mind vainly forms without any real objects images of things that exist
not, as if they existed. In this very way, the imaginations of those who are awake closely resemble dreams; they
come, they go, they confront us and flee from us; before they are seized, they fly away. --Philo,
in Le Blanc.
Verse 5. They are as a sleep. Our life may be compared to sleep in four respects.
1. In regard of the shortness of it.
2. In regard of the easiness of being put out of it.
3. In regard of the many means to disquiet and break it off.
4. With regard to the many errors in it.
For the first three. Sleep is but short, and the sweeter it is, the shorter it seems to be. And as it is but short
of itself, though it should last the full swing of nature; so the soundest sleep is easily broken; the least knock,
the lowest call puts men out of it; and a number of means and occasions there be to interrupt and break it off.
And is it not so with the life of man? Is not the longest life short? Is it not the shorter, the sweeter and fuller
of contents it is? And is it not easily taken away? Are there not many means to bring us unto our end? even as
many as there are to waken us out of sleep. For the fourth. How many errors are we subject to in sleep? In sleep
the prisoner many times dreams that he is at liberty; he that is at liberty, that he is in prison; he that is hungry,
that he is feeding daintily; he that is in want, that he is in great abundance; he that abounds, that he is in
great want. How many in their sleep have thought they have gotten that which they shall be better for for ever,
and when they are even in the hope of present possessing some such goodly matter, or beginning to enjoy it, or
in the midst of their joy, they are suddenly awaked, and then all is gone with them, and their golden fancies vanish
away in an instant. So for evil and sorrow as well. And is it not just so in the life of man? --William Bradshaw.
Verse 5. They are like grass. In this last similitude, the prophet compares men to grass, that as grass hath a time of growing and
a time of withering, even so has man. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up. In which words Moses compares the former
part of man's life, which is the space of thirty-three years, to the time of growing of grass, and that is accounted
the time of the perfection of man's strength and age; at which age, according to the course of nature, man flourisheth
as grass doth; that is the time of a man's prime and flourishing estate. But in the evening; that is, when the grass is ripe, and ready to be cut down, it withereth. Even so man, being once at his strength, and ripest age, doth not stand at a stay, nor continueth long
so; but presently begins to decay, and to wither away, till old age comes, and he is cut down by the scythe of
death. Now, in that Moses useth so many similitudes, and all to show how frail this life of man is, we are taught,
that the frailty, vanity, and shortness of man's life is such, that examples will scarcely shew it. Death comes
as a flood, violently and suddenly; we are as a sleep; we are as grass; our
life is like a dream; we spend our days as
a tale that is told, Ps 90:9. All these similitudes Moses hath in this Psalm, as if he
wanted words and examples, how to express the vanity, frailty, and shortness thereof. --Samuel
Smith.
Verse 6. In the morning. This can hardly mean "in early youth", as some of the Rabbis explain. The words, strictly speaking,
are a part of the comparison ("they are as grass which springeth afresh in the morning"), and are only
thus placed first to give emphasis to the figure. In the East, one night's rain works a change as if by magic.
The field at evening was brown, parched, arid as a desert; in the morning it is green with the blades of grass.
The scorching hot wind (Jas 1:11) blows upon it, and again before evening it is withered. --J.J.S.
Perowne.
Verse 6. Cut down.
Stout and strong today,
Tomorrow turned to clay.
This day in his bloom,
The next, in the tomb.
It is true that to some Death sends his grey harbingers before, and gives them timely warning of his approach.
But in how many cases does he arrive unannounced, and, lifting up his scythe, mows down the lofty! On shipboard
there is but a plank between us and death; on horseback, but a fall. As we walk along the streets, death stretches
a threatening finger from every tile upon the roofs! "He comes up into our windows, and enters into our palaces;
he cuts off the children from without, and the young men from the streets." Jer 9:21. Our life is less than
an handbreadth. How soon and how insensibly we slip into the grave! --Augustus F. Tholuck.
Verse 7. For we are consumed by thine
anger. This is a point disputed by philosophers. They seek for the cause of death, since
indeed proofs of immortality that cannot be despised exist in nature. The prophet replies, that the chief cause
must not be sought in the material, either in a defect of the fluids, or in a failure of the natural heat; but
that God being offended at the sins of men, hath subjected this nature to death and other infinite calamities.
Therefore, our sins are the causes which have brought down this destruction. Henee he says, In
thine anger we vanish away. --Mollerus.
Verse 7. For we are consumed by thine
anger, etc. Whence we may first of all observe, how they compare their present estate
in the wilderness, with the estate of other nations and people, and shew that their estate was far worse than theirs:
for others died now one, and then one, and so they were diminished; but for them, they were hastily consumed and
suddenly swept away by the plague and pestilence which raged amongst them. Hence we may observe, first of all--That
it is a ground of humiliation to God's people when their estate is worse than God's enemies'.Moses gathers this
as an argument to humble them, and to move them to repentance and to seek unto God; viz., that because of their
sins they were in a far worse case and condition than the very enemies of God were. For though their lives were
short, yet they confess that theirs was far worse than the very heathen themselves, for they were suddenly consumed by his anger. When God is worse to his own church and people
than he is to his enemies; when the Lord sends wars in a nation called by his name, and peace in other kingdoms
that are anti Christian; sends famine in his church, and plenty to the wicked; sends the plague and pestilence
in his church, and health and prosperity to the wicked; oh, here is matter of mourning and humiliation; and it
is that which hath touched God's people to the quick, and wounded them to the heart, to see the enemies of the
church in better condition than the church itself. --Samuel Smith.
Verse 7. By thy wrath are we troubled. The word used by Moses is much stronger than merely "troubled." It implies being cut off, destroyed--in
forms moreover of overwhelming terror. --Henry Cowles, in "The Psalms; with Notes."
New York, 1872.
Verse 8. God needs no other light to discern our sins by but
the light of his own face. It pierceth through the darkest places; the brightness thereof enlightens all things,
discovers all things. So that the sins that are committed in deepest darkness are all one to him as if they were
done in the face of the sun. For they are done in his face, that shines more, and from which proceeds more light
than from the face of the sun. So that this ought to make us the more fearful to offend; he sees us when we see
not him, and the light of his countenance shines about us when we think ourselves hidden in darkness. Our sins
are not only then in his sight when they are a committing and whilst the deed is doing; but ever after, when the
act is past and gone and forgotten, yet then is it before the face of God, even as if it were in committing: and
how should this make us afraid to sin! When our sins are not only in his sight while they are a committing, but
so continue still for ever after they are past and done. God sets our sins before him;
this shows he is so affected with them, he takes them so to heart, that he doth in a
special manner continue the remembrance of them. As those that having had great wrong will store it up, or register
it, or keep some remembrance of it or other, lest they should forget, when time shall serve, to be quit with those
that have wronged them: so doth God, and his so doing is a sign that he takes our sins deeply to heart; which should
teach us to fear the more how we offend him. When God in any judgment of death, or sickness, or loss of friends,
shows his wrath, we should think and meditate of this; especially when he comes nearest us: Now the Lord looks
upon my sins, they are now before him; and we should never rest till we have by repentance moved him to blot them
out. Yea, to this end we should ourselves call them to remembrance. For the more we remember them, the more God
forgets them; the more we forget them, the more God remembers them; the more we look upon them ourselves, the more
he turneth his eyes from them. --William Bradshaw.
Verse 8. It is a well known fact that the appearance of objects,
and the ideas which we form of them, are very much affected by the situation in which they are placed in respect
to us, and by the light in which they are seen. Objects seen at a distance, for example, appear much smaller than
they really are. The same object, viewed through different mediums, will often exhibit different appearances. A
lighted candle, or a star, appears bright during the absence of the sun; but when that luminary returns, their
brightness is eclipsed. Since the appearance of objects, and the ideas which we form of them, are thus affected
by extraneous circumstances, it follows, that no two persons will form precisely the same ideas of any object,
unless they view it in the same light, or are placed with respect to it in the same situation.
Apply these remarks to the case before us. The psalmist addressing God, says, Thou hast
set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light
of thy countenance. 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, immediately under his eye; 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 is possible, in his situation, and look at sin,
as it were, through his eyes. We must place ourselves and our sins in the centre of that circle which is irradiated
by the light of his countenance where all his infinite perfections are clearly displayed, where his awful majesty
is seen, where his concentrated glories blaze, and burn and dazzle, with insufferable brightness. And in order
to this, we must, in thought, leave our dark and sinful world, where God is unseen and almost forgotten, and where
consequently, the evil of sinning against him cannot be fully perceived--and mount up to heaven, the peculiar habitation
of his holiness and glory, where he does not, as here, conceal himself behind the veil of his works, and of second
causes, but shines forth the unveiled God, and is seen as he is.
My hearers, if you are willing to see your sins in their true colours; if you would rightly estimate their number,
magnitude and criminality, bring them into the hallowed place, where nothing is seen but the brightness of unsullied
purity, and the splendours of uncreated glory; where the sun itself would appear only as a dark spot; and there,
in the midst of this circle of seraphic intelligences, with the infinite God pouring all the light of his countenance
round you, review your lives, contemplate your offences, and see how they appear. 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. --Edward Payson.
Verse 9. For all our days go back again (wnp) in thy wrath. Hitherto he has spoken of the cause of that wrath of
God which moveth him to smite the world with such mortality. Now here he further sets forth the same by the effects
thereof in reference to that present argument he hath in hand. 1. That our days do as it were go backward in his
wrath: that whereas God gave us being to live, our life and our being are nothing else but a going backward, as
it were, to death and to nothing. Even as if a stranger being suddenly rapt and carried midway to his home, where
are all his comforts, he should spend all the time that is behind, not in going forward to his home, but in going
backward to the place from which he was suddenly brought. All the sons of Adam as soon as they have being and live
are brought suddenly a great part of their way: and whereas they should go forward and live longer and longer,
they from their first beginning to live go backward again to death and to nothing. This is the sum in effect of
that which the Lord saith in the beginning of the Psalm, (Ps 90:3:) Thou bringest men
to destruction; saying, Return again, ye sons of Adam: as if he should say, Thou makest a man, and when he is made, he in thy wrath doth haste to nothing else
but destruction and to be marred again. Thus do our days as it were go backward, and we in them return from whence
we came. --William Bradshaw.
Verse 9. When I was in Egypt, three or four years ago, I saw
what Moses himself might have seen, and what the Israelites, no doubt, very often witnessed: --a crowd of people
surrounding a professed story teller, who was going through some tale, riveting the attention and exciting the
feelings of those who listened to him. This is one of the customs of the East. It naturally springs up among any
people who have few books, or none; where the masses are unable to read, and where, therefore, they are dependent
for excitement or information on those who can address the ear, and who recite, in prose or verse, traditionary
tales and popular legends. I dare say this sort of thing would be much in repute among the Israelites themselves
during their detention in the wilderness, and that it served to beguile for them many a tedious hour. It is by
this custom, then, that we venture to illustrate the statement of the text. The hearing of a story is attended
by a rapid and passing interest --it leaves behind it a vague impression, beyond which comparatively but few incidents
may stand out distinctly in the after thought. In our own day even, when tales are put into printed books, and
run through three or four volumes, we feel when we have finished one, how short it appears after all, or how short
the time it seemed to take for its perusal. If full of incident, it may seem sometimes long to remember, but we
generally come to the close with a sort of feeling that says, "And so that's all." But this must have
been much more the case with the tales "that were told." These had to be compressed into what could be
repeated at one time, or of which three or four might be given in an evening or an hour. The story ended; and then
came the sense of shortness, brevity, the rapid flight of the period employed by it, with something like a feeling
of wonder and dissatisfaction at the discovery of this. "For what is your life? It is even as a vapour, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." --Thomas Binney.
Verse 9. As a tale. The grace whereof is brevity. --John
Trapp.
Verse 9. As a tale that is told. The Chaldee has it, like the breath
of our mouth in winter. --Daniel Cresswell.
Verse 9. The thirty-eight years, which after this they were
away in the wilderness, were not the subject of the sacred history, for little or nothing is recorded of that which
happened to them from the second year to the fortieth. After they came out of Egypt, their time was perfectly trifled
away, and was not worthy to be the subject of a history, but only of a tale that is told; for it was only to pass away time like telling stories, that they spent those years in the wilderness;
all that while they were in the consuming, and another generation was in the rising...The spending of our years
is like the telling of a tale. A year when it is past is like a tale when it is told. Some of our years are as
a pleasant story, others as a tragical one; most mixed, but all short and transient; that which was long in the
doing may be told in a short time. --Matthew Henry.
Verse 9. We spend our year as a tale
that is told, or, as a meditation (so some translate) suddenly or swiftly: a discourse is quickly over,
whether it be a discourse from the mouth, or in the mind; and of the two the latter is far the more swift and nimble
of foot. A discourse in our thoughts outruns the sun, as much as the sun outruns a snail; the thoughts of a man
will travel the world over in a moment; he that now sits in this place, may be at the world's end in his thoughts,
before I can speak another word. --Joseph Caryl.
Verse 9. We spend our years as a tale
that is told. This 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.
--John Foster, 1768-1843.
Verse 9. As a tale that is told. In the Hebrew it is hgx-wmk, sicut meditatio, (as a meditation)
and so we read it in the margin, as if all our years were little else than a continual meditation upon the things
of this world. Indeed, much of man's time is spent in this kind of vain meditation, as how to deceive and play
fast and loose for advantage; such a meditation had they, Isa 59:13, or meditating with the heart lying words;
the same word in the Hebrew as in my text; or how to heap up riches, such a meditation had that covetous man in
the gospel, Lu 12:17; or how to violate the sacred bonds of religion and laws of God, such a meditation had they,
Ps 2:1-3; and in such vain meditations as these do men spend their years "as a tale that is told." .
. . To close this point with Gregory Nazianzen. What are we but a vain dream that hath no existence or being, a
mere phantasm or apparition that cannot be held, a ship sailing in the sea which leaves no impression or trace
behind it, a dust, a vapour, a morning dew, a flower flourishing one day and fading another, yea, the same day
behold it springing and withered, but my text adds another metaphor from the flying of a bird, and we fly away, not go and run but fly, the quickest motion that any corporeal
creature hath. Our life is like the fight of a bird, it is here now and it is gone out of sight suddenly. The Prophet
therefore speaking of the speedy departure of Ephraim's glory expresses it thus, "It shall flee away like
a bird", Ho 9:11; and Solomon saith the like of riches, "they make themselves wings and flee away like
an eagle toward heaven": Pr 23:5. David wished for the wings of a dove that he might flee away and be at rest
and good cause he had for it, for this life is not more short than miserable. . . . Be it our care then not to
come creeping and coughing to God with a load of diseases and infirmities about us, when we are at death's door
and not before, but to consecrate the first fruits of our life to his service. It is in the spending our time (as
one compares it) as in the distilling of waters, the thinnest and purest part runs out first and only the lees
at last: what an unworthy thing will it be to offer the prime of our time to the world, the flesh, and the devil,
and the dregs of it to God. He that forbade the lame and the blind in beasts to be sacrificed, will not surely
allow it in men; if they come not to present their bodies a living sacrifice, while they are living and lively
too, ere they be lame or blind or deformed with extremity of age, it is even a miracle if it prove then a holy,
acceptable, or reasonable service. --Thomas Washbourne, 1655.
Verse 9. (second clause). The Hebrew is different from all the Versions. We consume our years (hgx-wmk kemo
hegeh) like a groan. We live a dying,
whining, complaining life, and at last a groan is its termination!
--Adam Clarke.
Verse 9. The Vulgate translation has, Our
years pass away like those of a spider.
It implies that our life is as frail as the thread of a spider's web. Constituted most curiously the spider's web
is; but what more fragile? In what is there more wisdom than in the complicated frame of the human body; and what
more easily destroyed? Glass is granite compared with flesh; and vapours are rocks compared with life. --C.H.S.
Verse 10. It is soon cut off, and we
fly away. At the Witan or council assembled at Edwin of Northumbria at Godmundingham
(modern name Godmanham), to debate on the mission of Paulinus, the King was thus addressed by a heathen Thane,
one of his chief men: --"The present life of man, O King, may be likened to what often happens when thou art
sitting at supper with thy thanes and nobles in winter time. A fire blazes on the hearth, and warms the chamber;
outside rages a storm of wind and snow; a sparrow flies in at one door of thy hall, and quickly passes out at the
other. For a moment and while it is within, it is unharmed by the wintry blast, but this brief season of happiness
over, it returns to that wintry blast whence it came, and vanishes from thy sight. Such is the brief life of man;
we know not what went before it, and we are utterly ignorant as to what shall follow it. If, therefore, this new
doctrine contain anything more certain, it justly deserves to be followed." --Bede's
Chronicle.
Verse 10. The time of our life is threescore
years and ten (saith Moses), or set it upon the tenters, and rack it to fourscore, though not one in every fourscore arrives to that account, yet can
we not be said to live so long; for take out, first, ten years for infancy and childhood, which Solomon calls the
time of wantonness and vanity (Ec 11:1-10.), wherein we scarce remember what we did, or whether we lived or no;
and how short it is then? Take out of the remainder a third part for sleep, wherein like blocks we lie senseless,
and how short is it then? Take out yet besides the time of our carking and worldly care, wherein we seem both dead
and buried in the affairs of the world, and how short is it then? And take out yet besides, our times of wilful
sinning and rebellion, for while we sin, we live not, but we are "dead in sin", and what remaineth of
life? Yea, how short is it then? So short is that life which nature allows, and yet we sleep away part, and play
away part, and the cares of the world have a great part, so that the true spiritual and Christian life hath little
or nothing in the end. --From a Sermon by Robert Wilkinson, entitled "A Meditation
of Mortalitie, preached to the late Price Henry, some few daies before his death", 1612.
Verse 10. Threescore years and ten. It may at first seem surprising that Moses should describe the days of man as "Threescore
years and ten." But when it is
remembered, that, in the second year of the pilgrimage in the wilderness, as related in Nu 14:28-39, God declared
that all those who had been recently numbered at Sinai should die in the wilderness, before the expiration of forty
years, the lamentation of Moses on the brevity of human life becomes very intelligible and appropriate; and the
Psalm itself acquires 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 preannounced by the awful voice of God. --Christopher
Wordsworth.
Verse 10. There have been several gradual
abbreviations of man's life. Death hath been coming nearer and nearer to us, as you may
see in the several ages and periods of the world. Adam, the first of human kind, lived nine hundred and thirty
years. And seven or eight hundred years was a usual period of man's life before the Flood. But the Sacred History
(which hath the advantage and preeminence of all other histories whatsoever, by reason of its antiquity) acquaints
us that immediately after the Flood the years of man's life were shortened by no less than half...After the Flood man's life was apparently shorter than it was before, for they
fell from nine hundred, eight hundred, and seven hundred years to four hundred and three hundred, as we see in
the age of Arphaxad, Salah, Heber: yea, they fell to two hundred and odd years, as we read of Peleg, Reu, Serug,
and Tharah; yea, they came down to less than two hundred years. In the space of a few years man's life was again
cut shorter by almost half, if not a full half. We read that Abraham lived but one hundred and seventy-five years,
so that man's age ran very low then. See the account given in Scripture of Nahor, Sarah, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph (who died at a hundred) which confirms the same. And again the third time, man's life was shortened by almost another half, viz.,
about the year of the World 2,500, in Moses' time. For he sets the bounds of man's life thus: "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." Ps 90:10. Eighty years is the utmost limit he
sets man's life at, i.e., in the most ordinary and common account
of man's life. Though some are of the opinion that these words do not give an account of the duration of man's
life in general, but refer to the short lives of the Israelites in the wilderness, yet I do not see but it may
take in both; and Moses who composed the Psalm, lived a hundred and twenty years himself, yet he might speak of
the common term of man's life, and what usually happened to the generality of men. --John
Edwards.
Verse 10. Their strength is labour
and sorrow. Most commonly old age is a feeble estate; the very grasshopper is a burden
to it. Ec 12:5. Even the old man himself is a burden, to his wife, to his children, to himself. As Barzillai said
to David, "I am this day fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste
what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women?" 2Sa 19:35. Old
age, we say, is a good guest, and should be made welcome, but that he brings such a troop with him; blindness,
aches, coughs, & c.; these are troublesome, how should they be welcome? Their strength
is labour and sorrow. If their very
strength, which is their best, be labour and grief, what is their worst? --Thomas Adams.
Verse 10. Their strength is labour
and sorrow.
Unnumbered maladies his joints invade,
Lay siege to life, and press the dire blockade.
--Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784.
Verse 10. Their strength. Properly, the pride of the days of our life is labour
and sorrow--i.e., our days at their best. --Barth's "Bible Manual".
Verse 10. We fly away.
Bird of my breast, away!
The long wished hour is come.
On to the realms of cloudless day,
On to thy glorious home!
Long has been thine to mourn
In banishment and pain.
Return, thou wandering dove, return,
And find thy ark again!
Away, on joyous wing,
Immensity to range;
Around the throne to soar and sing,
And faith for sight exchange.
Flee, then, from sin and woe,
To joys immortal flee;
Quit thy dark prison house below,
And be for ever free!
I come, ye blessed throng,
Your tasks and joys to share;
O, fill my lips with holy song,
My drooping wing upbear.
--Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847.
Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of
thine anger? We may take some scantling, some measure of the wrath of man, and know how
far it can go, and what it can do, but we can take no measure of the wrath of God, for it is unmeasurable. --Joseph Caryl.
Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of
thine anger? None at all; and unless the power of that can be known, it must abide as
unspeakable as the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. --John Bunyan.
Verse 11. Moses, I think, here means, that it is a holy awe
of God, an that alone, which makes us truly and deeply feel his anger. We see that the reprobate, although they
are severely punished, only chafe upon the bit, or kick against God, or become exasperated, or are stupefied, as
if they were hardened against all calamities; so far are they from being subdued. And though they are full of trouble,
and cry aloud, yet the Divine anger does not so penetrate their hearts as to abate their pride and fierceness.
The minds of the godly alone are wounded with the wrath of God; nor do they wait for his thunder bolts, to which
the reprobate hold out their hard and iron necks, but they tremble the very moment when God moves only his little
finger. This I consider to be the true meaning of the prophet. --John Calvin.
Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of
thine anger? etc. The meaning is, What man doth truly know and acknowledge the power
of thine anger, according to that measure of fear wherewith thou oughtest to be feared? Note hence, how Moses and
the people of God, though they feared God, yet notwithstanding confess that they failed in respect of that measure
of the feat of God which they ought to have had; for we must not think, but Moses and some of his people did truly
fear God. But yet in regard of the power of God's anger, which was now very great and grievous, their fear of God
was not answerable and proportionable; then it is apparent that Moses and his people failed in respect of the measure
of the fear of God which they ought to have had, in regard of the greatness and grievousness of the judgments of
God upon them. See, that the best of God's servants in this life fall short in their fear of God, and so in all
graces of the Spirit; in that love of God, in faith in repentance, and in obedience, we come short all of us of
that which the Lord requires at our hands. For though we do know God, and that he is a just God, and righteous,
and cannot wink at sin; yet what man is there that so fears before him as he ought to be feared? what man so quakes
at his anger as he should; and is so afraid of sin as he ought to be? We have no grace here in perfection, but
the best faith is mixed with infidelity; our hope with fear; our joy with sorrow. It is well we can discern our
wants and imperfections, and cry out with the man in the gospel, "I believe; Lord, help my unbelief!"
--Samuel Smith.
Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of
thine anger? No man knows the power of God's anger, because that power has never yet
put itself forth to its full stretch. Is there, then, no measure of God's wrath --no standard by which we may estimate
its intenseness? There is no fixed measure or standard, but there is a variable one. The wicked man's fear of God
is a measure of the wrath of God. If we take the man as he may be sometime taken, when the angel of death is upon
him, when the sins of his youth and of his maturer years throng him like an armed troop, and affright and afflict
him--when with all his senses keenly alive to the rapid strides of bodily decay, he feels that he must die, and
yet that he is not prepared--why, it may come to pass, it does occasionally, though not always come to pass, that
his anticipations of the future are literally tremendous. There is such a fear and such a dread of that God into
whose immediate presence he feels himself about to be ushered, that even they who love him best, and charm him
most, shrink from the wildness of his gaze and the fearfulness of his speech. And we cannot tell the man, though
he may be just delirious with apprehension, that his fear of God invests the wrath of God with a darker than its
actual colouring. On the contrary, we know that according to the fear, so is the wrath. We know that if man's fear
of God be wrought up to the highest pitch, and the mind throb so vehemently that its framework threaten to give
way and crumble, we know that the wrath of the Almighty keeps pace with this gigantic fear. . . .
If it has happened to you--and there is not perhaps a man on the face of the earth to whom it does not sometimes
happen--if it has ever happened to you to be crushed with the thought, that a life of ungodliness must issue in
an eternity of woe, and if amid the solitude of midnight and amid the dejections of sickness there pass across
the spirit the fitful figures of all avenging ministry, then we have to tell you, it is not the roar of battle
which is powerful enough, nor the wail of orphans which is thrilling enough, to serve as the vehicle of such a
communication; we have to tell you, that you fly to a refuge of lies, if you dare flatter yourselves that either
the stillness of the hour or the feebleness of disease has caused you to invest vengeance with too much of the
terrible. We have to tell you, that the picture was not overdrawn which you drew in your agony. "According to thy fear, so is thy wrath." Fear is but a mirror, which you may lengthen indefinitely, and widen indefinitely, and wrath lengthens
with the lengthening and widens with the widening, still crowding the mirror with new and fierce forms of wasting
and woe. We caution you, then, against ever cherishing the flattering notion, that fear can exaggerate God's wrath.
We tell you, that when fear has done its worst, it can in no degree come up to the wrath which it images...
Now, it is easy to pass from this view of the text to another, which is in a certain sense similar. You will always
find, that men's apprehensions of God's wrath are nicely proportioned to the fear and reverence which are excited
in them by the name and the attributes of God. He will have but light thoughts of future vengeance, who has but
low thoughts of the character and properties of his Creator: and from this it comes to pass, that the great body
of men betray a kind of stupid insensibility to the wrath of Jehovah...Look at the crowd of the worldly and the
indifferent. There is no fear of God in that crowd; they are "of the earth earthy." The soul is sepulchred
in the body, and has never wakened to a sense of its position with reference to a holy and avenging Creator. Now,
then, you may understand the absence of all knowledge of the power of God's wrath. "Who
knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear,
so is thy wrath." --Henry Melvill.
Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of
thine anger? etc. This he utters, 1. By way of lamentation. He sighing forth a most doleful
complaint against the security and stupor he observed in that generation of men in his time, both in those that
had already died in their sins, as well as of that new generation that had come up in their room, who still lived
in their sins; oh, says he, `Who of them knoweth the power of thine anger?' namely, of that wrath which followeth
after death, and seizes upon men's souls for ever; that is, who considers it, or regards it, till it take hold
upon them? He utters it, 2. In a way of astonishment, out of the apprehension he had of the greatness of that wrath.
"Who knoweth the power of thine
anger?" that is, who hath or can take it in according to the greatness of it? which
he endeavours to set forth, as applying himself to our own apprehension, in this wise, Even
according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Where those words, "thy
fear" are taken objective, and
so signify the fear of thee; and so the meaning is, that according
to whatever proportion our souls can take in, in fears of thee and of thine anger, so great is thy wrath itself.
You have souls that are able to comprehend vast fears and terrors; they are as extensive in their fears as in their
desires, which are stretched beyond what this World or the creatures can afford them, to an infinity. The soul
of man is a dark cell, which when it begets fears once, strange and fearful apparitions rise up in it, which far
exceed the ordinary proportion of worldly evils (which yet also our fears usually make greater than they prove
to be); but here, as to that punishment which is the effect of God's own immediate wrath, let the soul enlarge
itself, says he, and widen its apprehension to the utmost; fear what you can imagine, yet still God's wrath, and
the punishment it inflicts, are not only proportionable, but infinitely exceedingly all you can fear or imagine.
"Who knoweth the power of thine
anger?" It passeth knowledge. --Thomas Goodwin.
Verse 12. So teach us to number our
days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Moses who was learned in all the sciences of the Egyptians (among which arithmetic was one) desireth
to learn this point of arithmetic only of thee, O Lord; and why? Is it because, as Job speaketh, thou hast determined
the number of his days? Would Moses have thee reveal to every man the moment of his end? Such speculations may
well beseem an Egyptian, an Israelite they do not beseem. Thy children, O Lord, know that it is not for them so
to know times and seasons which thou keepest in thine own power, and are a secret sealed up with thee: we should
not pry into that counting house, nor curiously inquire into that sum. It is not then a mathematical numbering
of days that Moses would be schooled in, but a moral; he would have God not simply to teach him to number, but
to number "so"; and "so" points out a special manner, a manner that may be useful for the children of God. And indeed our petitions
must bear this mark of profitable desires, and we should not ask aught of thee but that by which (if we speed)
we may become the better; he that so studies his mortality learns it as he should, and it is only thou, O Lord,
that takest him out such a lesson. But what is the use, O Moses, that thou wouldst have man make of such a knowledge?
"Even to apply his heart unto
wisdom." O happy knowledge, by which a man becomes wise; for wisdom is the beauty
of a reasonable soul. God created him therewith, but sin hath divorced the soul and wisdom; so that a sinful man
is indeed no better than a fool, so the Scripture calleth him; and well it may call him so, seeing all his carriage
is vain, and the upshot of his endeavours but vexation of spirit. But though sin have divorced wisdom and the soul,
yet are they not so severed but they may be reunited; and nothing is more powerful in furthering this union than
this feeling meditation--that we are mortal. --Arthur Lake.
Verse 12. So teach us, etc. Moses sends you to God for teaching. "Teach Thou us; not as the world teacheth--teach Thou
us." No meaner Master; no inferior school; not Moses himself except as he speaks God's word and becomes the
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ; not the prophets, not apostles themselves, neither "holy men of old",
except as they "spake and were moved by the Holy Ghost." This knowledge comes not from flesh and blood,
but from God. "So teach Thou us." And so David says, "Teach me Thy way, O Lord, and I will walk
in Thy truth." And hence our Lord's promise to his disciples, "The Holy Ghost, He shall teach you all
things." --Charles Richard Summer, 1850.
Verse 12. Teach us to number our days. Mark what it is which Moses here prays for, only to be taught to number his days. But did he not do this
already? Was it not his daily work this, his constant and continual employment? Yes, doubtless it was; yea, and
he did it carefully and conscientiously too. But yet he thought he did it not well enough, and therefore prays
here in the text to be taught to do better. See a good man, how little he pleaseth himself in any action of his
life, in any performance of duty that he does. He can never think that he does well enough whatever he does, but
still desires to do otherwise, and would fain do better. There is an affection of modesty and humility which still
accompanies real piety, and every pious man is an humble, modest man, and never reckons himself a perfect proficient,
or to be advanced above a teaching, but is content and covetous to be a continual learner; to know more than he
knows and to do better than he does; yea, and thinks it no disparagement to his graces at all to take advice, and
to seek instruction where it is to be had. --Edm. Barker's Funeral Sermon for Lady Capell,
1661.
Verse 12. Teach us to number our days.
"Improve Time in time, while the Time doth last.
For all Time is no time, when the Time is past."
--From Richard Pigot's "Life of Man, symbolised by the Months of the Year", 1866.
Verse 12. Teach us to number our days. The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us that the fatal waste of fortune
is by small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer
ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is prodigality of life: he that hopes to look back hereafter with
satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle
of time fall useless to the ground. An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto that time was his estate; an
estate, indeed, that will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labours of
industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be
overrun by noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use. --Samuel Johnson.
Verse 12. To number our days, is not simply to take the reckoning and admeasurement of human life. This has been done already in Holy
Scripture, where it is said, "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." Nor yet is it, in the
world's phrase, to calculate the chances of survivorship, which any man may do in the instance of the aggregate,
but which no man can do in the case of the individual. But 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. Under this aspect
it is, that David contemplates man when he says, "Thou hast made our days as an handbreadth;
and mine age is as nothing before thee", Ps 39:5; and then proceeds to include in this comprehensive estimate even those whose days have been the
longest upon earth: "Verily, every man at his best estate is altogether vanity." --Thomas
Dale, 1847.
Verse 12. To number our days. Number we our days by our daily prayers--number we them by our daily obedience and daily acts of love--number
we them by the memories that they bring of holy men who have entered into their Saviour's peace, and by the hopes
which are woven with them of glory and of grace won for us! --Plain Commentary.
Verse 12. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. Sir Thomas Smith, secretary to Queen Elizabeth, some months before his death said, That it was a great
pity men know not to what end they were born into this world, until they were ready to go out of it. --Charles Bradbury.
Verse 12. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. St. Austin says, "We can never do that, except we number every day as our last day." Many put
far the evil day. They refuse to leave the earth, when the earth is about to take its leave of them. --William Secker.
Verse 12. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. Moses speaketh of wisdom as if it were physic, which
doth no good before it be applied; and the part to apply it to is the heart, where all man's affections are to love it and to cherish it, like a kind of hostess. When the heart seeketh
it findeth, as though it were brought unto her, like Abraham's ram. Therefore God saith, "They shall seek
me and find me, because they shall seek me with their hearts", Jer 29:13; as though they should not find him
with all their seeking unless they did seek him with their heart. Therefore the way to get wisdom is to apply your
hearts unto it, as if it were your calling and living, to which you were bound aprentices. A man may apply his
ears and his eyes as many truants do to their books, and yet never prove scholars; but from that day when a man
begins to apply his heart unto wisdom, he learns more in a month after than he did in a year before, nay, than
ever he did in his life. Even as you see the wicked, because they apply their hearts to wickedness, how fast they
proceed, how easily and how quickly they become perfect swearers, expert drunkards, cunning deceivers, so if ye
could apply your hearts as thoroughly to knowledge and goodness, you might become like the apostle which teacheth
you. Therefore, when Solomon sheweth men the way how to come by wisdom, he speaks often of the heart, as, "Give
thine heart to wisdom", "let wisdom enter into thine heart", "get wisdom", "keep
wisdom", "embrace wisdom", Pr 2:10 4:5 8:8, as though a man went a wooing for wisdom. Wisdom is
like God's daughter, that he gives to the man that loves her, and sueth for her, and means to set her at his heart.
Thus we have learned how to apply knowledge that it may do us good; not to our ears, like them which hear sermons
only, nor to our tongues, like them which make table talk of religion, but to our hearts, that we may say with
the virgin, "My heart doth magnify the Lord", Lu 1:46, and the heart will apply it to the ear and to
the tongue, as Christ saith, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," Mt 12:34. --Henry Smith.
Verse 12. Of all arithmetical rules this is the hardest--to number our days. Men can
number their herds and droves of oxen and of sheep, they can estimate the revenues of their manors and farms, they
can with a little pains number and tell their coins, and yet they are persuaded that their days are infinite and
innumerable and therefore do never begin to number them. Who saith not upon the view of another, surely yonder
man looketh by his countenance as if he would not live long, or yonder woman is old, her days cannot be many: thus
we can number other men's days and years, and utterly forget our own, therefore this is the true wisdom of mortal
men, to number their own days. --Thomas Tymme.
Verse 12. Observe here, after that Moses had given us a description
of the wrath of God, presently his thoughts are taken up with the meditation of death. The wrath of God thought
on makes us think of death...Let us often think of the wrath of God, and let the thought of it so far work upon
us, as to keep us in a constant awe and fear of God; and let this fear drive us to God by prayer, that fearing
as we ought, we may pray as we are commanded, and praying, we may prevent the wrath of God. If our present sorrows
do not move us, God will send greater; and when our sorrows are grown too great for us, we shall have little heart
or comfort to pray. Let our fears then quicken our prayers; and let our prayers be such as are able to overcome
our fears; so both ways shall we be happy, in that our fears have taught us to pray, and our prayers have made
us to fear no more. --Christopher Shute, in "Ars pie moriendi: or, The true Accomptant. A Sermon", etc., 1658.
Verse 12. It is evident, that the great thing wanted to make
men provide for eternity, is the practical persuasion that they have but a short time to live. They will not apply
their hearts unto wisdom until they are brought to the numbering of their days. And how are you to be brought,
my brethren? The most surprising thing in the text is, that it should be in the form of a prayer. It is necessary
that God should interfere to make men number their days. We call this surprising. What! is there not enough to
make us feel our frailty, without an actual, supernatural impression? What! are there not lessons enough of that
frailty without any new teaching from above? Go into our churchyards--all ages speak to all ranks. Can we need
more to prove to us the uncertainty of life? Go into mourning families, and where are they not to be found? --in
this it is the old, in that it is the young, whom death has removed--and is there not eloquence in tears to persuade
us that we are mortal? Can it be that in treading every day on the dust of our fathers, and meeting every day with
funerals of our brethren, we shall not yet be practically taught to number our days, unless God print the truth
on our hearts, through some special operation of his Spirit? It is not thus in other things. In other things the
frequency of the occurrence makes us expect it. The husbandman does not pray to be made believe that the seed must
be buried and die before it will germinate. This has been the course of the grain of every one else, and where
there is so much experience what room is there for prayer. The mariner does not pray to be taught that the needle
of his compass points towards the north. The needle of every compass has so pointed since the secret was discovered,
and he has not to ask when he is already so sure. The benighted man does not pray to be made to feel that the sun
will rise in a few hours. Morning has succeeded to night since the world was made, and why should he ask what he
knows too welt to doubt? But in none of these things is there greater room for assurance than we have each one
for himself, in regard to its being appointed to him once to die. Nevertheless, we must pray to be! made to know--to
be made to feel--that we are to die, in the face of an experience which is certainly not less than that of the
parties to whom we have referred. This is a petition that we may believe, believe as they do: for they act on their
belief in the fact which this experience incontestably attests. And we may say of this, that it is amongst the
strangest of the strange things that may be affirmed of human nature, that whilst, in regard to inferior concerns,
we can carefully avail ourselves of experience, taking care to register its decisions and to deduce from them rules
for our guidance--in the mightiest concern of all we can act as though experience had furnished no evidence, and
we were left without matter from which to draw inferences. And, nevertheless, in regard to nothing else is the
experience so uniform. The grain does not always germinate --but every man dies. The needle does not always point
due north-- but every man dies. The sun does not cross the horizon in every place in every twenty-four hours--but
every man dies. Yet we must pray-- pray as for the revelation of a mystery hidden from our gaze--we must pray to
be made to know--to be made to believe--that every man dies! For I call it not belief, and our text calls it not
belief, in the shortness of life and the certainty of death, which allows men to live without thought of eternity,
without anxiety as to the soul, or without an effort to secure to themselves salvation. I call it not belief--no,
no, anything rather than belief. Men are rational beings, beings of forethought, disposed to make provision for
what they feel to be inevitable; and if there were not a practical infidelity as to their own mortality, they could
not be practically reckless as to their own safety. --Henry Melvill.
Verse 12. So teach us to number our
days, etc. Five things I note in these words: first, that death is the haven of every
man; whether he sit on the throne, or keep in a cottage, at last he must knock at death's door, as all his fathers
have done before him. Secondly, that man's time is set, and his bounds appointed, which he cannot pass, no more
than the Egyptians could pass the sea; and therefore Moses saith, "Teach us to number
our days", as though there were a number of our days. Thirdly, that our days are
few, as though we were sent into this world but to see it; and therefore Moses, speaking of our life, speaks of
days, not of years, nor of months, nor of weeks; but "Teach us to number our days",
shewing that it is an easy thing even for a man to number his days, they be so few. Fourthly,
the aptness of man to forget death rather than anything else; and therefore Moses prayeth the Lord to teach him
to number his days, as though they were still slipping out of his mind. Lastly