Psalm 90: An Exposition

By Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum

Chafer Theological Seminary

Arnold Fruchtenbaum received a B.A. degree from Cedarville College, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from New York University. Arnold is the founder of Ariel Ministries, Tustin, CA, a ministry to Jewish people around the world, and also an adjunct professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. Dr. Fruchtenbaum holds Bible conferences around the globe and CTS accepts his bi-annual, five-week study tour of Israel for two semesters of elective credit.

Let me begin this Psalm by noting the superscription that introduces Psalm 90. It reads (beneath the Psalm number), A Prayer of Moses the man of God.

Psalm 90 is a unique Psalm. For example, Moses takes no statement in this Psalm from other Psalms. As a study of the Book of Psalms will show, the Psalms repeat themselves; we find certain thoughts in one Psalm almost word for word in other Psalms. However, in the case of Psalm 90, Moses takes no statement from any other Psalm. Furthermore, it has no affinity with any of the other Psalms, meaning that it does not cover any similar circumstances. It does have, however, similarity and affinity with one chapter that Moses wrote elsewhere, Deuteronomy 33. If you compare Deuteronomy 33 with Psalm 90, you will find several elements of comparison, similarity, and affinity. For example, Deuteronomy 33:1, which is another poetic song, starts out with the phrase, Moses the man of God. This is the same as the beginning of the superscription in Psalm 90. Moses is the author of this one Psalm, as well as the five Books of Moses. Because he is the writer of this Psalm, we know that this is the oldest of the 150 Psalms. Men who lived much later than Moses wrote the others.

Moses wrote this Psalm, as the context shows, at the end of the 40 years of Wilderness Wanderings. By the time he writes—after 40 years in the wilderness—the Exodus generation had passed away, the judgment of the sin at Kadesh Barnea had run its course, and the Wilderness Generation is soon to enter the Land. Therefore, he writes this Psalm from the background of the sin of Kadesh Barnea.

What was the sin at Kadesh Barnea? The Book of Numbers gives the details. In chapters 13–14 of that book, the Jewish people had finally arrived at the oasis of Kadesh Barnea, which was right on the border of the Promised Land. In other words, once they walked past Kadesh, they would be in the Promised Land. From that spot, Moses sent twelve spies to spy out the Land. They came back 40 days later, and they all agreed on one issue: The Land was everything that God said it was—a Land that flows with milk and honey. Then, there was a crucial point of disagreement: Ten of the spies said the inhabitants of the Land were so numerically and militarily strong that under no circumstances could they possibly capture the Land. Only two spies, Joshua and Caleb, believed and said that God was with His people and, so, would enable them to take the Land: We are well able to overcome it. As so many often do today, the people assumed that the majority had to be right. There was a massive rebellion against the authority of Moses and Aaron, with the two men almost losing their lives in a mob scene until God intervened and saved them. At that point, God pronounced a special judgment on the Exodus Generation. The judgment was that all those who came out of Egypt would have to continue wandering in the wilderness until a 40-year period was completed—40 years for the 40 days the spies were in the Land. During those 40 years, everyone who came out of Egypt would die, except for the two good spies and those under the age of 20. Therefore, the Exodus Generation lost the privilege of entering the Land of Israel. It would be the next generation, the Wilderness Generation, that the Lord allowed to enter the Land under Joshua.

The Exodus Generation, then, was under a sentence of physical death in the wilderness, meaning they would die outside the Land. Based upon the population numbers given in the Book of Numbers, this means that Moses saw the death of about 1,200,000 people in a 38-year period. This would be the entire adult population that left Egypt, those from age 20 upward. The wilderness, which God intended to be simply a place of passing through to a new Land, had become a huge cemetery. What does it mean to have 1,200,000 people die in a 38-year period? It means that 31,580 people died per year. More specifically, 87 people died every single day—87 funerals per day—all because of the sin at Kadesh Barnea.

Having witnessed this tremendous death toll, Moses reflects and writes Psalm 90. To understand this Psalm, we must understand the background. That is, Moses wrote it at the end of the 40 years of Wilderness Wanderings and at the end of seeing a whole generation die away in the wilderness—including members of his own family, Aaron and Miriam among them.

Now Psalm 90 has three main divisions. The first division comprises verses 1–6, which deal with the transitory nature of man in contrast to the eternity of God. The second part, comprising verses 7–12, attributes the reason for mankind’s transitoriness to human sin. In the third division, verses 13–17, Moses prays to God to visit His servants and to build upon His eternity through their mortality.

The Eternity of God and the Transitoriness of Man (Psalm 90:1-6)

Verses 1–2 emphasize the eternal God:

Lord thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

As Moses begins to discuss the eternity of God and the transitoriness of man, he starts with the divine side of the equation, the eternal God. Here, Moses says two things about God. The first is that God is our dwelling place (90:1): God has been Israel’s dwelling place, not just sporadically, but in all generations. The word dwelling-place means “a protective shelter.” God has been Israel’s protective shelter in all generations from the time of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. Here is one affinity with Deuteronomy 33. Deuteronomy 33:27 states: The eternal God is thy dwelling-place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. This shows the Mosaic authorship of both passages. In these verses, Moses is saying that although God is indeed lofty, He is not inaccessible. He is reachable, always there for those willing to approach Him on His basis, the basis of faith.

The second thing about God that Moses deals with is God as the Eternal One (90:2), and he uses three descriptive terms to emphasize this. First, before the mountains were brought forth. The mountains have existed for a very long time, and they are the long-existing witnesses of God’s covenant with Israel. In fact, here again is an affinity with Deuteronomy 33, where verse 15 indicates that the ancient mountains are the witnesses to God’s covenant relationship with the Jewish people. However, God is even older than the mountains, as the second phrase of verse two states, Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world. In other words, God not only pre-existed the mountains, He even pre-existed Genesis 1:1. He had formed the earth and the world: The Hebrew word for “earth” means “the world in general”; the Hebrew word for “world” means “the productive part of the world which is inhabited by man.” Moses’ third descriptive phrase of His eternity is, from everlasting to everlasting, i.e., from eternity past to eternity future. From before time was, until time shall be no more, he concludes, Thou art God. This is the eternity of God, which he will now proceed to contrast with the transitoriness of man.

The transitoriness of man is the second part of the equation, and is discussed in verses 3–6:

Thou turnest man to destruction and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, And as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: In the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

Moses begins, in verse three, by dealing with the frailty of man, saying, Thou turnest man to destruction. The Hebrew word used here for “man” emphasizes his human frailty, his weakness. The Hebrew word for “destruction” is a very strong word, meaning “to be pulverized like dust.” It is also a unique word, used only here in the Hebrew Old Testament. The point Moses makes is that man’s fate is to return to pulverized dust. This is in contrast to God’s deathlessness. Man is destined to return to that from which he came: God made him from dust; he is destined to return to pulverized dust. The future of man is the same as the origin of man: dust. Moses, then, points out that God says, Return, ye children of men. This is a call to repentance, because the purpose of divine judgment is always to bring one to repentance. Therefore, while God is threatening judgment, showing the frailty of man, He also calls for repentance, which will avert the divine decree.

In verse four, Moses again focuses on God’s timelessness. His point is that time has no meaning with God. To illustrate that point rather graphically, he says, For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past. What is a thousand years in God’s sight? Moses uses two phrases to describe what a thousand years is in God’s sight. The first phrase is, but as yesterday when it is past. In other words, a thousand years with God is like only a night in the life of man. It is not even a full 24-hour day, only a 12-hour night. The first comparison he makes, then, is that a thousand years—a very long period from man’s perspective—is to God merely about 12 hours. Moses then points out that 12 hours is even a bit too long, and the second phrase he uses to make his point is, as a watch in the night. In Moses’ time, the night was divided into three watches; in comparison to God’s eternity, man’s life is only one watch out of three, only a part of the night. Thus, the Psalmist reduces the thousand years of God to only four hours of human life. What is a thousand years with God? Merely four hours of human life! However, Moses goes further, emphasizing that this is not four hours of the day, but four hours of the night. It is four hours of the night of which the sleeper takes no reckoning, four hours that have vanished upon the sleeper’s awakening. This is the time that people sleep, and people do not reckon time while they are sleeping. While we are fast asleep, there is, in fact, no awareness of the passing of minutes and hours.

In verse 5a, Moses emphasizes the certainty of death. He says, Thou carriest them away as with a flood, i.e., eventually death will take all. He says, they are as a sleep, which is the sleep of death. After pointing out the shortness of human life compared to God’s eternity (90:4), Moses emphasizes the certainty of death.

To make it a bit more pessimistic, he then writes that the beauty of life is shorter than life itself (90:5b–6). In the morning, they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning, it flourisheth, and groweth up; In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

What is Moses’ point here? Three things: First, he bases his point on the fact that the flowers of Israel have a very short life span. Flowers in the Land sprout from the ground in mid-March, but they are dry and dead by mid-April. In other words, the beauty of man’s life is also very short-lived.

Second, the four hours of the life of man are still not the length of his productivity. No matter how long a man lives, not all of those years can be fully productive. The first few years must be spent in developing: One is born; one must suckle the breast; one must slowly learn to walk; one must gradually learn to think, make decisions, learn to read, learn to write, and learn to live in the real world. In this way, each person spends his early years developing. In later years, there is a sapping of physical strength and mental acuteness. Coming to a state of maturity does not necessarily mean we can be thoroughly productive for the rest of our lives. There are those who remain sharp in mind and physical abilities to the end of life, but we often see people who begin to fail. Various problems impair ones ability to produce, such as the development of physical weaknesses and/or mental problems like forgetfulness, Alzheimer’s Disease, and other ailments. People are generally not aware of the shortness of human life until they get older. A teenager has no consciousness of how short life really is; he knows he will die someday, but that day, in his mind, is very, very far away. An older, wiser person comes to that consciousness, but probably not before much of his physical and mental strength is spent. All that is left, then, are those middle years of productivity, a middle period of our lives during which we can be truly productive for the Lord. Notice, then, that the four hours of man Moses reduces even further, down to merely two or three hours of productivity.

Third, human life is frail and brief compared to God’s eternity. Because human life is brief, we must make it count for the Lord. Moses will move into that issue in the next segment, although he does make the application here. It is important that we carefully plan our lives to make them most productive for the Lord.

The Source of the Problem: Human Sin (Psalm 90:7-12)

Moses next deals with the reason behind human transitoriness. The source of the problem is human sin. There are three subdivisions in this particular section: (1) The death of man (90:7–9), (2) the life span of man and the wrath of God (9:10–11), and (3) the application: Number our days (90:12).

The Death of Man (90:7–9)

For we are consumed in Thine anger, And in thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: We bring our years to an end as a sigh.

In verses 7–9, Moses describes the essence of the death of man, with verse seven dealing with death. He begins with the word, “for,” which introduces an explanation as to why death comes. Why is death coming upon them? The answer: we are consumed in Thine anger, And in thy wrath are we troubled. “Troubled” is a term that means, “to be hurried away in untimely death.” This is Moses’ recognition of the results of the sin at Kadesh Barnea: that many of these people could have lived longer, but by God’s judgment, 1,200,000 died during a 38-year period. Many died simply of natural causes, but the wilderness accounts of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers also tell us that people often died by direct divine judgment because of sin. Therefore, Moses says, in thy wrath are we troubled. This is Moses’ own conclusion of his observations of the sin of Kadesh Barnea

In verse eight, Moses talks about the reason for the judgment; the reason was sin: Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, and he pictures the sins of man being set before God who judges them. Then, he says, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. In other words, our secret sins we may hide from man, but not from God. He brings them to light for the purpose of punishment.

In verse nine, Moses points out that the whole life of man is under the wrath of God, to the extent, he says, For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. The point is that the hours of sunlight seem to get shorter because of the darkness caused by the wrath of God. Then, comes the termination, We bring our years to an end as a sigh. This describes the exhaling of the last breath, showing a feeling of weariness, but, ultimately, the exhaling of the last breath of death. Such is the death of man: untimely; a judgment caused by sin; and a judgment that comes finally to bring an end to lives that have passed under the wrath of God.

The Life Span of Man and the Wrath of God (90:10–11)

The days of our years are threescore years and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore years; Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; For it is soon gone, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger, and thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto thee?

Moses discusses the life span of man and the wrath of God, with verse ten focusing on the years of man. What are the years of man? What is man’s life span? Moses says, The days of our years are [seventy]. That is a basic minimum, although many people live less than that. Then he says, or even because of strength, 80 years. That is a basic maximum, although some live longer. In other words, Moses gives us an average age span of life, between 70 and 80 years. Most people can expect to live until 70, although some live less than that. Others can expect to live up to 80, but some do live longer than that. Whether we go the basic minimum or the basic maximum, whether we live less or more, the writer says, regardless, it is all vanity. The Psalmist describes the vanity of it all as, Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow. One spends all these years in travail and vanity, For it is soon gone, and we fly away. In other words, what initially appears long to us, at the end is actually short, and life flies away like a fleeting bird. As noted earlier, initially things appear a long way ahead of us: Young people see their eventual death as very far off, having no sense of their mortality; older people look back and say, “Where have the years gone?” Young people view time as moving slowly, with one year of high school or college seeming to take forever; older people cannot understand how the years have passed so quickly. This is the difference between looking at it from the beginning and viewing it from the end. That is the point of this verse. What initially appears long to us, at the end appears short, for life flies away like a fleeting bird.

Why does this happen? Verse eleven attributes it to the wrath of God. Here, Moses asks two questions: First, Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Second, And thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto thee? The lessons that Moses wants to bring home to us include, first, that there are only a few who truly appreciate the intensity of the divine wrath aroused by sinfulness. Few people understand and appreciate that much of their sufferings are due to the wrath of God. Second, in very few people does the wrath of God induce a sense of fear to turn away from sin. Even when tragedy hits, although a minority will turn to God in faith, a vast majority always fail to make the shift to faith in Him.

The Application: Number Our Days (90:12)

So teach us to number our days, That we may get us a heart of wisdom.

In the third subdivision, Moses gives the application of the lesson of Kadesh Barnea (90:12): So teach us to number our days, That we may get us a heart of wisdom. The lesson he wants to teach us is to number our days. We need to realize how few our days really are and that, again, not all of our days will be productive for God. We need to count the days that we have with a full understanding of the consequences of unworthy days.

Here is an interesting exercise I did for myself, one that I would encourage you to do for yourself. Figure that you have the minimum total amount to live, about 70 years, or 25,600 days. From the day you were born, that is how many days you have to live, approximately. No matter what age you are at the present time, count the number of days you have left until your 70th birthday. Now, I do not suggest you do this on an ongoing daily basis. Just do it, say, for a couple of weeks, and I think it will change your life as it did mine upon realizing the brief length of one’s life and the nature of one’s responsibility. So, count the number of days you have left until your 70th birthday, and then every morning subtract one day.

Again, you might live less than 70 years; you might live more than 70 years. However, in the days you have left, your productivity level may not always be the same. What you do have, make it count for eternity and not only for time. Keep in mind that the result of Kadesh Barnea was the killing of time for 38 years with nothing positive accomplished. It was the same monotonous thing every day. Get up in the morning, have some manna, wait it out, and wait for the cloud or the pillar of fire to move or not move. In addition, if circumstances broke the monotony, it generally happened only for instantaneous judgment when many would die. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you try numbering your days for only a couple of weeks. Do not keep going indefinitely, because it may leave you thinking somewhat morbidly. (“Oh, I only have a couple of thousand days to live.”) Simply, for merely a short season, count up how many days you have left to live. Every morning, subtract one day, and realize how much time you have left to be truly productive for God. Then make each day count for eternity because the purpose of counting our days, Moses says, is to get us a heart of wisdom. The Hebrew word for “wisdom” means to gain skill in living. We are to gain skill in living our daily lives for God in righteousness and godly deeds. Godly deeds done with godly wisdom will continue into eternity. Moses wanted to make sure the new generation would not waste time like the old generation.

Prayer for the Return of God’s Favor (90:13-17)

The third main division contains a prayer to God to visit His servants to build upon His eternity through their mortality.

Return, O Jehovah; how long? And let it repent thee concerning thy servants. Oh satisfy us in the morning with thy lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory upon their children. And let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And establish thou the work of our hands upon us; Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

Moses issues a prayer for the return of God’s favor. In verse thirteen, he prays for a turning away of God’s wrath: Return, O Jehovah; how long? His request, “Return,” means “turn away Your wrath.” The question, “how long?” means, “how long will You be angry?” Then Moses says, Let it repent thee concerning thy servants. The word repent means to “change your mind.” Not that God needs repentance for sin, obviously, but Moses’ plea is that God’s program would be different for the Wilderness Generation than it was for the Exodus Generation. In other words, “Do not let the wrath on the Exodus Generation extend to the Wilderness Generation. Change Your mind and do not let Your wrath continue on the present-day servants,” the servants here referring to Israel. In other words, Moses is asking God to turn sorrow into joy.

In verse fourteen, Moses asks God to remember His covenant love, requesting, Oh satisfy us in the morning with thy lovingkindness. When he says, in the morning, he wants the Lord to satisfy speedily. This is the morning after the troubles of the night. He now looks forward to a new era of joy for Israel. He uses a word for lovingkindness, chesed, which means “covenant-faithfulness.” Accordingly, Moses asks God to restore favor because of God’s covenant with Israel, specifically, the unconditional Abrahamic Covenant. The reason and the result is that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

The Hebrew word for rejoice means “to sing in ringing tones,” emphasizing external joy. The Hebrew word for be glad emphasizes internal joy. In other words, he wants Israel to experience both internal and external joys in all their days. The prayer is that they may enjoy life abundantly rather than continue passing it in sorrow. The point is to beseech God that what He has done to the Exodus Generation, He would avoid doing to the Wilderness Generation. Moses asks for a new era of joy, salvation, and peace on behalf of this new generation.

In verse fifteen, he prays for proportionate restoration. The comparison is as follows: Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. The point is this: After the restoration of God’s favor, may the enjoyment of abundant life be proportionate to the period suffered while the wrath of God burned against them. His wrath burned against them for 40 years; now may He restore His favor for 40 years. Moses asks for proportionate restoration.

In verses 16–17, as Moses concludes this Psalm, he makes another contrast between the work of God and the work of man. Verse sixteen states two things in emphasizing the work of God: First, Let thy work appear unto thy servants. In other words, may God’s providence become evident in His work with the new generation, the Wilderness Generation. Likewise, the work of God’s providence is to remain evident in His dealings with our own lives. Second, Moses says, and thy glory upon their children. The word glory is not the usual Hebrew word for glory, but is another Hebrew word that means “beauty.” It emphasizes the beauty of the Lord. Thus, let Israel have a demonstration of the beauty of the Lord by seeing the divine splendor as revealed in God’s saving power. Let them see the beauty of the Lord, in that, just as God is able to punish, He is also able to bless. When He says, upon their children, he asks not only for the present-day Wilderness Generation, but also for subsequent generations to be able to experience the beauty of the Lord. For such is the work of God.

In verse 17, Moses discusses the work of man, beginning with a request: And let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us. The Hebrew word for favor means “the pleasantness of God.” He not only asks God to display His beauty, he also asks Him to display His pleasantness to Israel. Let Israel now enjoy the beauty and pleasantness of God in contrast to the wrath and judgment of God. More specifically, let Israel experience Your beauty in place of Your wrath, Your pleasantness in place of Your judgment. The request is, therefore, Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us.

Moses concludes by emphasizing the means by which the favor of the Lord our God will be upon us. He makes two statements that are repetitious, thus emphatic. The first point Moses makes is, And establish thou the work of our hands upon us. The work of our hands refers to our daily tasks, done in obedience and according to the will of God to glorify Him. In other words, the work of God described in verse sixteen He did through the work of man. We need to learn to work skillfully, having wisdom or skillfulness in living daily for the work of the Lord. Then, Moses’ second statement is, Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. This repeats for emphasis. The Lord’s servants should accomplish the work of God and they will thus enjoy success in their labors although life is short.

Psalm 90 has a four-fold application to us: First, we need to recognize that no matter how long we live, from the divine perspective, life is very short. Second, no matter how long we live, not all of our years—and only, in fact, those middle years—are productive. Even in those middle years tragedy, illness, and sickness, may sideline us, thus making us less productive. Third, we must be very conscious of how much time we have left in this world. Fourth, we must plan our lives in such a way to be most productive for the Lord, doing His work.

Conclusion

The following quotation is a beautiful summary of this Psalm:

When God rebukes one for his sin, he feels most frail and transitory; but when he is blessed by God’s favor, he feels most worthwhile. He shares in the work of the everlasting God. Weakened by God’s discipline, one is acutely aware of his mortality. Abiding in God’s love and compassion, he is aware of being crowned with glory and honor. [1]

We believers often use many sayings and cliches, including some that are not even biblically valid, such as “Let go, Let God.” However, in keeping with Psalm 90, one cliche is biblical. We should make its message real in our lives:

Only one life ‘twill soon be passed,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Notes

1. “Psalms,” by Allen P. Ross, Bible Knowledge Commentary, John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, editors (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985); 1:860.