Psalm 90:12

The wisdom here, chokmâh, is the skill of living well in God’s sight. It includes moral insight and prudence, discerning God’s will, and making right choices, so it shapes what we do as well as what we think. It is something deeper than cleverness or a store of information, and it is a gift from God: “For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding” (Proverbs 2:6). It begins with reverence for him, for “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). James tells us how to receive it: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5). Moses’ prayer is that very asking.

Wisdom of this kind shows itself in how we use our time, our gifts and what we have. Paul ties wisdom to our days in the same way: “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16, 5:16).

Moses prayed for wisdom to live a short life, and in Christ God has given wisdom in person. Paul calls him “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), the one “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), who “of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Jesus lived every moment in obedience to the Father, and by his death and resurrection he overcame death itself. For those who believe in him, numbered days lead on to everlasting life (John 3:16). He teaches us to lay up treasure in heaven, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19–21). To apply our hearts to wisdom is in the end to apply them to him.

“Let it repent thee concerning thy servants” uses nâcham, a word whose root means to sigh or breathe hard, and so to be sorry, to pity, to comfort, or to relent. The form here, v’hinnachem, asks God to have compassion and to relent toward his servants. When Scripture says that God repents, it does not mean that he regrets a mistake or that his character changes, for he is perfect and unchanging. It speaks of a change in his dealings with people, in answer to their prayer or their repentance, as when he turns from a judgment he has announced. Scripture uses these human words about God so that we can understand his ways with us.

Nineveh is the clearest example: “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not” (Jonah 3:10). Joel ties this to who God is: “turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:13). Moses asks for that same mercy, appealing to the compassion that belongs to God’s own nature.

The people he prays for are “thy servants”, the word ʻebed, a servant who belongs to his master. Israel are God’s own people in covenant with him, and Moses appeals to his faithfulness toward those who are his.

God answered this cry more fully than Moses could have asked. In the Incarnation he came in person and took on the mortality and suffering this psalm laments. Jesus is the LORD’s own servant, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth” (Isaiah 42:1), and he cried out in his own agony on the cross. By his death God’s turning from wrath to mercy toward his people was accomplished: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:8–9).

Christ has promised his presence to his servants: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18), and “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). His Spirit lives in those who believe, and as our high priest he is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15) and intercedes for us. The full answer to “Return, O LORD” comes on the day when “the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them”, and every tear is wiped away (Revelation 21:3–4).

The gladness Moses asks for rests on God’s unfailing mercy and presence, so it lasts through trials. Grief and hardship still come in a fallen world, and alongside them this joy goes on, a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) that grows from the assurance of God’s love and his rule over everything. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). So Paul can write, “we glory in tribulations also” (Romans 5:3).

The deepest hunger of the human heart, the emptiness that sin leaves, is filled in Christ. “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35), and the water he gives becomes in a person “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13–14). The cheçed Moses prayed for took flesh in Jesus, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). By his sacrifice he took away God’s wrath against his people and secured for them an everlasting covenant of grace, and the Holy Spirit fills believers with “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17).

Moses says plainly, “thou hast afflicted us.” In the wilderness the afflictions came directly from Israel’s rebellion and God’s righteous judgment, in the forty years of wandering (Numbers 14:33–35). Moses later told Israel that God had led them all those years “to humble thee, and to prove thee”, and that “as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee” (Deuteronomy 8:2–5). God rules over hardship as well as joy. He uses it to humble and refine his people and to draw them back to himself, and his purpose in it is their good. Scripture holds every hardship within his control, and some come as discipline for sin, as these did, while it stops short of tracing every trouble to a direct act of his. The New Testament shows him using suffering for our good and his glory, for “tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope” (Romans 5:3–5).

The “evil” of this verse is mainly calamity and misfortune, the hardship that comes upon people, as distinct from moral wickedness. For the generation in the wilderness it meant the deaths of loved ones, want, endless wandering and life under God’s discipline. Their own sin lay underneath it, and in Scripture the two are often bound together.

Christ, the perfect Son, entered the deepest affliction of all and bore God’s wrath against sin on the cross: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). By his suffering, death and resurrection he won for his people a gladness far greater than any affliction in this life. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). He told his disciples, “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and “your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and so he takes away the root of our affliction, until the day when “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4).

The two words go together, and each shows a different side of God. His work is what he does: his creating (Genesis 1:1), his deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and his miracles. His glory is who he is, his majesty made visible, as when “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34–35). The verse pairs work with glory and servants with children, so the prayer is for each generation to see both what God does and who he is.

Jesus is the fullest showing of God’s work and glory. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory...)” (John 1:14), and at the end of his ministry he could say to the Father, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), and “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Moses’ prayer for the children is answered as the gospel of Christ is handed down from one generation to the next. Believers today see God’s work in lives he transforms, and by his Spirit they are made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The church carries his work and glory to all nations until he returns (Matthew 28:19–20).

“And establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” To establish, kûwn, is to set up, make firm, confirm and secure. The hand, yâd, stands for power and the means of doing things, so “the work of our hands” is all human labour, from daily toil to service of God. In the wilderness that meant the work of staying alive, the careful building of the tabernacle, and the hope of settling in the land. Moses asks God to make that work stand and bear fruit. He says it twice, and the “yea” before the second time makes it more earnest still. A people whose lives pass like grass ask that what they do might last, and only God can grant it.

Scripture says the same in many places. The enjoyment of good in our labour “was from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). “Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established” (Proverbs 16:3). “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1). Paul says of his own ministry, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6–7).

Christ is the beauty of the LORD in person, “the brightness of his glory” (Hebrews 1:3), and in him God’s grace and favour are shown to the world. His finished work has eternal worth, for “by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). Joined to him by faith, believers do their “work of faith, and labour of love” (1 Thessalonians 1:3) in his name and by his Spirit, and God establishes it. Built on the foundation that is Christ, it will stand: “If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward” (1 Corinthians 3:12–14).