Psalm 90:4

Psalm 90 is the one psalm attributed to Moses, which makes it one of the oldest in the Psalter. It opens by calling God the dwelling place of his people in all generations, God “from everlasting to everlasting”, who was there before the mountains were brought forth (Psalm 90:1–2). Verses 3 to 6 then turn from God to us. After them Moses traces the shortness of life to God’s wrath against sin (Psalm 90:7–11), speaks of how limited the span of a human life is (Psalm 90:10), and prays for wisdom to number our days and for God’s favour and his work to be shown among his people (Psalm 90:12–17).

The psalm most likely comes from the forty years in the wilderness, when a whole generation of Israel died there because of its unbelief and disobedience (Numbers 14, Deuteronomy 1–2). Moses lived to a hundred and twenty, and in those years he watched his people die one after another. He had also met the eternal God as few men ever have. Both experiences stand behind these verses, which set the everlasting God and the passing generations side by side.

“Thou turnest man to destruction” puts death in God’s hands. The word for man, ʼĕnôwsh, is a common word for man, mortals or people. The word for destruction, dakkâʼ, means something crushed, ground down or broken in pieces, reduced to powder. The picture is of the human body crumbled back into the dust from which it came.

Then God speaks: “Return, ye children of men.” The verb shûwb means to turn back or return. Elsewhere it is often used of turning back to God in repentance, but here it follows “turnest man to destruction”, and the return is to the dust. “Children of men” is bên ʼâdâm, and ʼâdâm is the general word for mankind, so the command reaches every human being who has ever lived.

This is the sentence of Eden being carried out, one generation after another. God formed man of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7), and after the fall he said, “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). Ecclesiastes speaks of the same end, when the dust returns to the earth and the spirit to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Job, in his suffering, reminded God that he had made him as the clay and asked whether he would bring him into dust again (Job 10:9).

The God who spoke the world into being in Genesis 1 speaks here as well, and his word is as effective at the end of a life as it was at the beginning of creation. He sets the span of every life, and when he says “Return”, it is done. Death entered the world with the sin of Genesis 3, and the body’s return to dust is the outward sign of the death that came through disobedience. So our mortality is a judgment, and it is also an order God keeps in his own hands. Our lives and our deaths are held by the Almighty, and that truth humbles us as creatures before the everlasting God.

Verse 4 sets God’s measure of time beside our short lives. A thousand, ʼeleph, was an almost unimaginable span to the people of Moses’ day, far beyond any human life. In God’s sight it is “as yesterday when it is past”. The word ʼethmôwl means yesterday, the day just ended, and a day that is over always feels short.

Then the comparison shrinks further, to “a watch in the night”. The word ʼashmurâh is a night watch. The night was divided into three or four watches for keeping guard, each lasting a few hours, and these were among the shortest divisions of time people marked. A thousand years, to God, are as brief as one of them.

God made time and stands above it. He is “from everlasting to everlasting”, as verse 2 says, and the ages that wear out whole generations pass before him like a day. Another psalm makes the same contrast between our few days and God’s years, which endure through all generations (Psalm 102:24–27). This is why we can trust him. His promises outlast every age, and his purposes, though they unfold over many generations, are always on time in his sight.

Verses 5 and 6 picture our lives three ways, as a flood, a sleep and grass.

“Thou carriest them away as with a flood” uses zâram, a verb meaning to gush or pour out like water, to carry away as with a flood. Generations are swept off as quickly as things caught in a sudden torrent, and they leave little trace behind. God is again the one acting: “Thou carriest”.

“They are as a sleep” uses shênâh, the ordinary word for sleep. A night’s sleep passes quickly and is soon forgotten on waking, and so is a life when it is set beside eternity. Sleep is also a common biblical way of speaking of death, though here the point is how brief and slight our life is.

“In the morning they are like grass which groweth up.” The word for grass, châtsîyr, means green grass or herbage. The verb for “groweth up”, châlaph, means to come up or sprout, and it can also mean to pass on or pass away. Verse 5 leaves the picture of the grass open, and verse 6 finishes it with the same verb: “In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up.” To flourish, tsûwts, is to blossom or bloom, from a root that means to glance or twinkle, the bright show of a plant in its prime.

“In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” The grass falls as if under a reaper’s scythe, and then it dries up. The verb yâbêsh means to dry up or wither, and it is also used of becoming weak. The morning and evening of one day hold the whole life of the grass, from fresh growth to dry stalk. In the land of Israel, grass and flowers spring up fresh after the night’s dew or rain and can be parched by the hot sun within a day. Shepherds and farmers saw this every day, and in the desert where Israel wandered, the sudden green after rain dried up just as fast.

Scripture uses this picture again and again. Isaiah says that “all flesh is grass” and that the grass withers, but “the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:6–8), and Peter uses the same words of the passing of our flesh and the enduring word (1 Peter 1:24–25). James calls our life “even a vapour” (James 4:14), and another psalm prays over the same shortness of our days (Psalm 39:4–5).

The Son is the Word who was in the beginning with God and was God (John 1:1), and the Word was made flesh (John 1:14). He took on this frail human nature and died, as every child of man dies, and then he rose from the dead, “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20). He says, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25–26), and Paul writes that he “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).

Against our passing yesterday and our watch in the night, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is the Alpha and Omega, who is, who was and who is to come (Revelation 1:8). Through him the timeless God entered time. Those who believe in him are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), they have everlasting life (John 3:16), and they are born again to an inheritance “that fadeth not away” (1 Peter 1:3–4), unlike the grass of verse 6. He promised them, “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). So for the believer the return to dust becomes the way into an everlasting life with the everlasting God.

These verses give us an honest measure of our lives and the eternal God to measure them against. They show him as the one who gives life and sets its end, who stands above every age, and who remains the dwelling place of his people while their generations come and go. Moses meets the shortness of life with prayer: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Each day God gives is his gift, and the prayer asks for the wisdom to spend it for his glory. The grass of verse 6 withers by evening, while the word of our God stands for ever, and the life Christ gives lasts as long as he does.