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, that to remember
how short a time we have to live, will make us apply our hearts
to that which is good.—Henry Smith.
Verse 12. Our hearts. In both the Scriptures of
the Old and New Testament, the term "heart" is
applied alike to the mind that thinks, to the spirit that feels,
and the will that acts. And it here stands for the whole mental
and moral nature of man, and implies that the whole soul and
spirit, with all their might, are to be applied in the service
of wisdom.—William Brown Keer, 1863.
Verse 12. Wisdom. I consider this "wisdom"
identical with the hypostatic wisdom described by
Solomon, Pr 8:15-31, and Pr 9:1,5, even Immanuel, the wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption of his people. The
chief pursuit of life should be the attainment of an
experimental knowledge of Christ, by whom "kings reign and
princes decree justice; whose delights are with the sons of men,
and who crieth, Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain
favour of the Lord; come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine
which I have mingled." David in the Psalms, and Solomon,
his son, in the Proverbs, have predictively manifested Messiah
as the hypostatic wisdom, "whose goings forth have
been from of old, from everlasting."—J.N. Coleman.
Verse 13. Let it repent thee. According to the
not infrequent and well known phraseology of Scripture, God is
said to repent, when putting away men's sorrow, and affording
new ground of gladness, he appears as it were to be changed.—John
Calvin.
Verse 14. O satisfy us with thy mercy. A poor
hungry soul lying under sense of wrath, will promise to itself
happiness for ever, if it can but once again find what it hath
sometime felt; that is, one sweet fill of God's sensible mercy
towards it.—David Dickson.
Verse 14. O satisfy us. That is everywhere and
evermore the cry of humanity. And what a strange cry it is, when
you think of it, brethren! Man is the offspring of God; the
bearer of his image; he stands at the head of the terrestrial
creation; on earth he is peerless; he possesses wondrous
capacities of thought, and feeling, and action. The world, and
all that is in it, has been formed in a complete and beautiful
adaptation to his being. Nature seems to be ever calling to him
with a thousand voices, to be glad and rejoice; and yet he is
unsatisfied, discontented, miserable! This is a most strange
thing—strange, that is, on any theory respecting man's
character and condition, but that which is supplied by the
Bible; and it is not only a testimony to the ruin of his nature,
but also to the insufficiency of everything earthly to meet his
cravings.—Charles M. Merry, 1864.
Verse 14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that
we may rejoice and be glad all our days. We pass now to this
particular prayer, and those limbs that make up the body of it.
They are many; as many as words in it: satisfy, and satisfy us,
and do that early, and do that with that which is thine, and let
that be mercy. So that first it is a prayer for fulness and
satisfaction,—satisfy: and then it is a prayer not only
of appropriation to ourselves, satisfy me, but of a charitable
dilation and extension to others, satisfy us, all us, all
thy servants, all thy church; and then thirdly it is a prayer of
despatch and expedition, "Satisfy us early; "and
after that, it is a prayer of evidence and manifestation,
satisfy us with that which is, and which we may discern to be thine;
and then lastly it is a prayer of limitation even upon God
himself, that God will take no other way herein but the way of "mercy."
"Satisfy us early with thy mercy."...There is a
spiritual fulness in this life of which St. Hierome speaks, Ebrietas
felix, satietas salutaris, A happy excess and a wholesome
surfeit; quoe quanto copiosius sumitur, majorem donat
sobrietatem, In which the more we eat, the more temperate we
are, and the more we drink, the more sober. In which (as St.
Bernard also expresses it in his mellifluence) Mutua
interminabili inexplicabili generatione, desiderium generat
satietatem, et satietas parit desiderium, By a mutual and
reciprocal, by an undeterminable and inexpressible generation of
one another, the desire of spiritual graces begets a satiety,
and then this satiety begets a farther desire. This is a holy
ambition, a sacred covetousness. Naphtali's blessing, "O
Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of
the Lord", De 33:23; St. Stephen's blessing, "Full
of faith and of the Holy Ghost", Ac 6:5; the blessed
Virgin's blessing, "Full of grace"; Dorcas'
blessing, "Full of good works and of alms deeds",
Ac 9:36; the blessing of him who is blessed above all, and who
blesseth all, even Christ Jesus, "Full of wisdom, full
of the Holy Ghost, full of grace and truth". Lu 2:40
4:1 Joh 1:14. ..."Satisfy us early with" that
which is thine, "thy mercy; "for there are
mercies (in a fair extent and accommodation of the word, that is
refreshing, eases, deliverances), that are not his
mercies, nor his satisfactions...It is not his mercy, except we
go by good ways to good ends; except our safety be established
by alliance with his friends, except our peace may be had with
the perfect continuance of our religion, there is no safety,
there is no peace. But let me feel the effect of this prayer, as
it is a prayer of manifestation, let me discern that that which
is done upon me is done by the hand of God, and I care not what
it be, I had rather have God's vinegar, than man's oil, God's
wormwood, than man's manna, God's justice, than any man's mercy;
for therefore did Gregory Nyssen call St. Basil in a holy sense,
Ambidextrum, because he took everything that came by the right
handle, and with the right hand, because he saw it come from
God. Even afflictions are welcome when we see them to be his:
though the way that he would choose, and the way that this
prayer entreats, be only mercy, "Satisfy us early with
thy mercy."—John Donne.
Verse 16. And thy glory unto their children.
That is to say, that our children may see the glorious fruit of
this affliction in us, that so they may not be discouraged
thereby to serve thee, but rather the more heartened, when they
shall see what a glorious work thou hast wrought in and upon us
by afflicting us.—William Bradshaw.
Verse 16-17. "Thy work." "The work of
our hands." You will observe a beautiful parallelism
between two things which are sometimes confounded and sometimes
too jealously sundered: I mean God's agency and man's
instrumentality, between man's personal activity and that
power of God which actuates and animates, and gives it a vital
efficacy. For forty years it had been the business of Moses to
bring Israel into a right state politically, morally,
religiously: that had been his work, And yet, in
so far as it was to have any success or enduringness, it must be
God's work. "The work of our hands" do thou establish;
and this God does when, in answer to prayer, he adopts the work
of his servants, and makes it his own "work", his own
"glory", his own "beauty."—James
Hamilton.
Verse 16-17. There is a twofold Rabbinical tradition
respecting this verse and the preceding one; that they were the
original prayer recited by Moses as a blessing on the work of
making the Tabernacle and its ornaments, and that subsequently
he employed them as the usual formula of benediction for any
newly undertaken task, whenever God's glorious Majesty
was to be consulted for an answer by Urim and Thummim.—Lyranus,
R. Shelomo, and Genebrardus, quoted by Neale.
Verses 16-17. They were content to live and to die as
pilgrims, provided only they could feel that in his sterner
dealings with them, God was, however slowly, preparing the way
for that display of glorious blessedness which should be the lot
of their descendants. In a similar spirit they ask God to
establish the work of their hands, though they reckoned not that
they should behold its results. Their comfort in sowing was the
belief that their children would reap.—Joseph Francis
Thrupp.
Verses 16-17. It is worthy of notice that this prayer
was answered. Though the first generation fell in the
wilderness, yet the labours of Moses and his companions were
blessed to the second. These were the most devoted to God of any
generation that Israel ever saw. It was of them that the Lord
said, "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love
of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the
wilderness, in a land that was not sown. Israel was holiness
unto the Lord, and the first fruits of his increase." It
was then that Balaam could not curse, but, though desirous of
the wages of unrighteousness, was compelled to forego them, and
his curse was turned into a blessing. We are taught by this
case, amidst temporal calamities and judgments, in which our
earthly hopes may be in a manner extinguished, to seek to have
the loss repaired by spiritual blessings. If God's work does but
appear to us, and our posterity after us, we need not be
dismayed at the evils which afflict the earth.—Andrew
Fuller.
Verse 17. Let the beauty of the LORD our God be
upon us, etc. Let us try to look at our life's work in
relation to the Lord's beauty. Our work and Divine Beauty, at
first sight, how different; yet, on deeper insight, how truly
one, how inseparably united. There is light so beauty giving,
that nothing it touches is positively ugly. In our sea girt
island, with our fickle climate and grey atmosphere, we can only
rarely imagine what magic power the serene skies, the balmy air,
the sunny atmosphere of the South have over even the least
interesting object in nature; but from certain hours, in certain
places, I think we may form an idea of the transforming faculty
of light. There is also spiritual light, so beauty inspiring,
that the plainest face within which it is born is illumined with
singular loveliness, which wins its way into many a heart. Who
of us has not marvelled at an unexpected light, in what we had
always thought an uninteresting face? Who has not beheld a light
divine irradiate the human countenance, giving joy, and
prophesying perfection, where we had least thought to find
beauty? May we not take these facts as emblems, albeit faint and
imperfect, of what the "Beauty of the Lord"
does for us, and our work? You know what the natural light can
do for material objects; you know what mental and moral light
can work for human faces; rise from these, and know what
spiritual light, Divine Light, can do for immortal beings and
immortal works.—Jessie Coombs, in "Thoughts for the
Inner Life", 1867.
Verse 17. The beauty of the Lord. In the word
Men (beauty) there is something like a deluge of grace. Thus
far, he says, we have sought thy work, O Lord. There we do
nothing, but are only spectators and recipients of thy gifts, we
are merely passive. There thou showest thyself to us, and makest
us safe, by thy work alone, which thou doest, when thou dost
liberate us from that disease which Satan inflicted on the whole
human race in Adam, to wit, Sin and Eternal death.—Martin
Luther.
Verse 17. God is glorified and his work advances when
his church is beautiful. The beauty of the Lord is the
beauty of holiness,—that beauty which in the Lord Jesus
himself shone with lustre so resplendent, and which ought to be
repeated or reflected by every disciple. And it is towards this
that all amongst us who love the Saviour, and who long for the
extension of his Kingdom, should very mainly direct their
endeavours. Nothing can be sadder than when preaching or
personal effort is contradicted and neutralized by the low or
unlovely lives of those who pass for Christians; and nothing can
go further to insure success than when prayer is carried out and
preaching is seconded by the pure, holy, and benevolent lives of
those who seek to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.—James
Hamilton.
Verse 17. The work of our hands. Jarchi
interprets this of the work of the Tabernacle, in which the
hands of the Israelites were employed in the wilderness; so
Arama of the Tabernacle of Bezaleel.—John Gill.
HINTS TO THE VILLAGE PREACHER
Verse 1. The near and dear relation between God and
his people, so that they mutually dwell in each other.
Verse 1. The abode of the church the same in all ages;
her relation to God never changes.
Verse 1.
1. The soul is at home in God. (a) Originally. Its birth
place—its native air—home of its thoughts, will, conscience,
affections, desires. (b) Experimentally. When it returns here it
feels itself at home: "Return unto thy rest", etc. (c)
Eternally. The soul, once returned to this home, never leaves
it: "it shall go no more out for ever."
2. The soul is not at home elsewhere. "Our dwelling
place", etc. (a) For all men. (b) At all times. He is ever
the same, and the wants of the soul substantially are over the
same.—G.R.
Verse 2. A Discourse upon the Eternity of God. S.
Charnock. Works pg 344-373, Nichol's Edition.
Verse 2. (last clause).—The consideration of
God's eternity may serve,
1. For the support of our faith; in reference to our own
condition for the future; in reference to our posterity; and to
the condition of God's church to the end of the world.
2. For the encouragement of our obedience. We serve the God
who can give us an everlasting reward.
3. For the terror of wicked men.
—Tillotson's Sermon on the Eternity of God.
Verse 3.
1. The cause of death—"thou turnest."
2. The nature of death—"return."
3. The necessities of death—reconciliation with God, and
preparation to return.
Verse 4.
1. Contemplate the lengthened period with all its events.
2. Consider what He must be to whom all this is as nothing.
3. Consider how we stand towards Him.
Verse 5. Comparison of mortal life to sleep. See
William Bradshaw's remarks in our Notes on this verse.
Verses 5-6. The lesson of the Meadows.
1. Grass growing the emblem of youth.
2. Grass flowering—or man in his prime.
3. The scythe.
4. Grass mown—or man at death.
Verse 7.
1. Man's chief troubles are the effect of death. (a) His own
death. (b) The death of others.
2. Death is the effect of Divine anger: "We are consumed
by", etc.
3. Divine anger is the effect of sin. Death by sin.—G.R.
Verse 8.
1. The notice which God takes of sin. (a) Individual. "Our
iniquities." (b) Universal
notice—"iniquities"—not one only, but all. (c)
Minute, even the most secret sins. (d) Constant: "Set them
before" him—"in the light", etc.
2. The notice which we should take of them on that account.
(a) In our thoughts. Set them before us. (b) In our consciences.
Condemn ourselves on account of them. (c) In our wills. Turn
from them by repentance—turn to a pardoning God by faith.—G.R.
Verse 9.
1. Every man has a history. His life is as a tale—a
separate tale—to be told.
2. Every man's history has some display of God in it. All our
days, some may say, are passed away in thy wrath—all, others
may say, in thy love—and others, some of our days in anger and
some in love.
3. Every man's history will be told. In death, at judgment,
through eternity.—G.R.
Verse 10.
1. What life is to most. It seldom reaches its natural
limits. One half die in childhood; more than half of the other
half die in manhood; few attain to old age.
2. What life is at most. "Threescore years",
etc.
3. What it is to most beyond that limit. "If by
reason", etc.
4. What it is to all. "It is soon cut off", etc.—G.R.
Verse 11.
1. The anger of God against sin is not fully known by its
effects in this life. "Who knoweth the power", etc.
Here we see the hiding of its power.
2. The anger of God against sin hereafter is equal to our
greatest fears. "According to thy fear", etc.; or,
"the fear of thee", etc.—G.R.
Verse 12.
1. The Reckoning. (a) What their usual number. (b) How many
of them are already spent. (c) How uncertain the number that
remains. (d) How much of them must be occupied with the
necessary duties of this life. (e) What afflictions and
helplessness may attend them.
2. The use to be made of it. (a) To "seek
wisdom"—not riches, worldly honours, or pleasures—but
wisdom; not the wisdom of the world, but of God. (b) To
"apply the heart" to it. Not mental merely, but moral
wisdom; not speculative merely, but experimental; not
theoretical merely, but practical. (c) To seek it at
once—immediately. (d) To seek it constantly—"apply
our hearts", etc.
3. The help to be sought in it. "So teach us", etc.
(a) Our own ability is insufficient through the perversion both
of the mind and heart by sin. (b) Divine help may be obtained.
"If any man lack wisdom." etc.—G.R.
Verse 12.—The Sense of Mortality. Show the variety
of blessings dispensed to different classes by the right use of
the sense of mortality.
1. It may be an antidote for the sorrowful. Reflect,
"there is an end."
2. It should be a restorative to the labouring.
3. It should be a remedy for the impatient.
4. As a balm to the wounded in heart.
5. As a corrective for the worldly.
6. As a sedative to the frivolous.
—R. Andrew Griffin, in "Stems and Twigs",
1872.
Verse 13. In what manner the Lord may be said to
repent.
Verse 14. (first clause). See
"Spurgeon's Sermons", No. 513: "The Young Man's
Prayer."
Verse 14.
1. The deepest yearning of man is for satisfaction.
2. Satisfaction can only be found in the realization of
Divine Mercy.
—C.M. Merry, 1864.
Verse 14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy,
etc. Learn,
1. That our souls can have no solid satisfaction in earthly
things.
2. That the mercy of God alone can satisfy our souls.
3. That nothing but satisfaction in God can fill our days
with joy and gladness.
—John Cawood, 1842.
Verse 14.
1. The most cheerful days of earth are made more cheerful by
thoughts of Divine mercy.
2. The most sorrowful days of earth are made glad by the
consciousness of Divine love.
—G.R.
Verse 15.
1. The joy of faith is in proportion to the sorrow of
repentance.
2. The joy of consolation is in proportion to suffering in
affliction.
3. The joy of the returning smiles of God is in proportion to
the terror of his frowns.—G.R.
Verse 15. The Balance of life, or the manner in which
our joys are set over against our sorrows.
Verse 16.
1. Our duty—"work", and our desire about it.
2. Our children's portion—"glory", and our prayer
in reference to it.
Verse 17. The Right Establishment, or the work which
will endure—why it will endure and should endure. Why we wish
our work to be of such a nature, and whether there are enduring
elements in it.
WORKS UPON THE NINETIETH PSALM
Enarratio Psalmi 90. Per D. Doctorem Martinum
Luth. In Schola Vuittembergensi, Anno, 1534, publice absoluta,
edita vers Anno MD.
41. (In Vol. 4 of the Jena edition of
Luther's Works, 1712 and other years, folio.)
A Meditation of Man's Mortalitie. Containing
an Exposition of the Ninetieth Psalme. By that Reverend and
Religious Servant of God Mr. William Bradshaw, sometime Fellow
of Sidney Colledge in Cambridge. Published since his decease by
Thomas Gataker B. of D. and Pastor of Rotherhith. London...1621.
Moses his Prayer. Or, An Exposition of the
Ninetieth Psalme. In which is set forth, the Frailty and Misery
of Mankind: most needful for these Times.
Wherein:
1. The Sum and Scope.
2. The Doctrines.
3. The Reasons.
4. The uses of most Texts are observed.
By Samuel Smith, Minister of the
Gospel, Author of David's Repentance and the Great
Assize, and yet Living...1656.