Psalms 90 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Attributed to Moses, which would place its setting in the wilderness years of about 1400 BC, and positioned by the editors to speak to the exile after 586 BC
Location
No fixed place, framed as the desert generation's view of a lifetime spent under God's displeasure
Audience
Israelites facing the loss of their nation, invited to look past kings and temples to God himself
Situation
The only psalm carrying Moses' name, opening Book Four of the collection with a meditation on how brief human life is against God's timelessness. It asks God to teach people to count their days and to satisfy them with steadfast love for the years they have.
Key Background
It follows directly after Psalm 89's despair over the fallen monarchy, and the editors placed it there so that the answer to a lost dynasty is God as the dwelling place of every generation, older than the mountains. The line about a thousand years being like yesterday reflects a common ancient contrast between gods who endure and humans who wither like grass, though here it produces a request for wisdom rather than despair. Seventy or eighty years as a human span was a realistic upper figure in a world where most people died far younger, so it reads as a sober measurement rather than a promise.
A prayer of Moses, the man of God. Yahweh, you have been our shelter generation
Before the mountains were born, before you labored to bring forth the earth and the world -- from to ahead, you are God.
You turn people back to dust, saying, "Go back, of
A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday once it has passed, like a few in the
You a in their sleep. In the morning they are grass that springs up --
in the morning it and flourishes; by evening it is cut down and withers.
We are consumed by your anger, terrified by your
You have laid out our before you, our in the of
All our days slip away under your frustration; we finish our years with a
The of is seventy years -- or eighty, if we have the strength. Yet even the best of those years are and sorrow; they pass quickly, and we
Who truly the force of your anger? Your fury matches the you deserve.
Teach us to carefully, so we may gain a of
to us, Yahweh! How long will this go on? Have compassion on the who you.
Satisfy us in the morning with your love, so we can sing and all our days.
Give us joy to match the days you us suffer, the years we have known
Let be visible to the people who serve you, your to their children.
Let the of Yahweh our God rest on us. Establish the work of our hands for us -- yes, the work of our hands.