(A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.) Lord, *thou* hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.
Psalm 90 is called a prayer of Moses, the man of God, yet it opens with no request at all. Before the psalm says a word about human frailty, it names God as the home His people have always had.
One writer starts with the heading — who is speaking, and when.
The heading of Psalm 90 says that Moses wrote it, and that should catch our attention at once. It makes it fairly certain that this is the earliest of the psalms, written some hundreds of years before the rest. Moses is named here not as the prophet or the law-giver, but as the man of God. And it is called a prayer, though there is no request of any kind in the first eleven verses.
Moses calls God a dwelling place while leading a nation that had no address at all.
The psalm opens with a sublime appeal to Jehovah as the dwelling place of His people. The man of God looks back over all the generations of God's people. He sees Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as pilgrims and strangers with no settled home. He remembers the years of wandering in the wilderness, when Israel had no home and no country and faced danger on every side. Through all those generations he sees that Jehovah has been the home and refuge of His people.
The verse calls God "Lord." One writer sets out the names of God behind these opening lines.
Israel owns Adonai as its dwelling place in all generations. He is El, God from everlasting to everlasting, who turns weak man (enosh) to dust and says, Return, sons of men (Adam). He is the God of creation and of providence.
Another writer names who this Lord is.
Though Israel did not realize who this really was, there is no doubt that Moses is speaking of Christ the Lord. He is the Creator, and verse 2 makes it very clear, "from eternity to eternity You are God." No other can ever claim this place. So the psalm that stresses how frail man is opens by stressing the eternal glory of the Lord Jesus.
Most versions read "our dwelling place." One writer argues for different wording, and hangs a great deal on it.
"Lord, You have been a habitation for us, in all generations": not "our habitation," as the common version has it. For, sadly, man has not benefited from what God has kept always open to him. Paradise has indeed vanished from the earth. But the door of the Father's house, which man has left, has never been closed against him. By nature, God being the "Father of spirits," "we are also His offspring." "The Lord" here is not Jehovah, but the Ruler of the earth and men. He is always the Lord of life, and He is the Mighty and Eternal One. Here, then, is abundant resource: the Fountain of life always open, the link with eternity in the Eternal God Himself, never far from His creatures.
Commentators differ over which name of God stands here; this writer reads it as Jehovah. He sets the verse against Israel's lowest point.
Psalm 90 is the Spirit of Christ in Israel appealing to these great truths in the time of their distress and humiliation, and out of it. Faith always counts on the unchanging faithfulness of God to Himself. So it counts on His faithfulness to the relationships He has, in grace, put Himself into with others. And so, whatever man's failure in his responsibilities, faith looks up out of that failure to what God is: "Jehovah, You have been our dwelling-place to all generations."
The next psalm builds on this line.
Psalm 91 opens by stating the blessing of the one who dwells in that dwelling place. If Psalm 90 describes the blessedness of the dwelling place, Psalm 91 presents the blessedness of the dweller.
That leaves a plain personal question — whether you live there.
Years, centuries, ages make no change in God. "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations," said Moses in Psalm 90, for that dwelling place was never closed to the generations of God's people. He was, ever and always, their home. "So teach us," said the same psalmist, "to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." No wisdom is like that. He is a wise and happy man who makes God his dwelling place.
- Home — Moses, the man of God, names God as the dwelling place of a people who had no home at all; God Himself was their address.
- Open — one writer reads the line as "a habitation for us." The door has stood open in every generation, whether or not people came in.
- Eternal — the Lord here is Adonai, the God of creation, the Mighty and Eternal One. One writer identifies Him as Christ the Lord.
- Unchanging — faith rests on God's faithfulness to Himself, so human failure never removes the shelter.
- Enter — Psalm 90 shows the dwelling place; Psalm 91 shows the blessing of the one who lives in it. Wisdom is making God your home.
Before the mountains were brought forth, and thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from eternity to eternity thou art God.
Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses, and it sets God beside man: One who was there before the mountains, and a creature who crumbles back to dust. Verse 2 is the ground the whole prayer stands on: God has no beginning and no end.
The verse dates God by naming things that did not yet exist. One writer notes the title used here is not the covenant name Jehovah, and reads the Hebrew El as "Mighty":
"The Lord" here is not Jehovah, but the Ruler of the earth and men. He is always the Lord of life, and He is the Mighty and Eternal One: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or You had formed the earth and the world, and from age to age, You are, O Mighty" (El). Here then is abundant resource: the Fountain of life is always open. The link with eternity is in the Eternal God Himself, who is never distant from His creatures.
The word "everlasting" stretches past what our minds can hold. One writer explains why:
God is called the Father of eternity, and the eternal God. Scripture also says He inhabits eternity. We must take the word in its full unlimited bearing, as showing the infinity of Deity in regard to what we call time. We get lost when we try to think of eternity. Time, to us, is what comes between events our minds can take account of. Space is what we think of as the distance between bodies. There is no time with Him who is the First and the Last, who is, was, and is to come. There are no measurements of space with Him who fills heaven and earth.
God was there before the world, so the world's end is not His. Here the psalmist begins a contrast:
The psalmist has stated the ground of his confidence in appealing to God. Now he draws a contrast between the eternal God and mortal man. God is the unchangeable God, the same before the world was as now. Creation may pass, yet God remains. The One who is our resource is everlasting and unchanging — "from everlasting to everlasting you are God."
Another writer traces the same contrast through the Hebrew words the psalm chooses for "man" — first the word for weak, dying man, then the word for the race as a whole:
Generation after generation would come and go; but there is One who has been Israel's dwelling-place and their refuge in all generations… In His hands are all men. And their mortality becomes clear as they die under His hand. But the race does not become extinct… Men then may pass away, but the Everlasting One remains. Time to Him is nothing. A thousand years — and no man has ever yet lived so long — are in His eyes only like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. That is what God is — everlasting. That is what men are — fleeting mortal creatures.
Moses does not state God's eternity as an abstract fact. He states it as the reason a frail people can appeal to Him:
Jehovah, as the Eternal One, is the true dwelling-place of His people in all ages. He goes on His steady way from eternity to eternity without the shadow of turning. In contrast to this, mortal man is turned to destruction. As children of Adam we lie under the original sentence, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Christ makes this eternal God known, and the word "everlasting" runs through all His dealings with us:
This mighty God, He who is "from everlasting to everlasting," has been revealed in Christ in perfect love. What He is in Himself shapes His movements in grace towards us. We can surely know and enjoy in our day what Moses said of God's earthly people — "The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms." … He leads in the "way everlasting," and at last He says, even to a wayward people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love."
Several commentators read this verse as speaking of Christ. One looks ahead to the day He folds creation away:
The psalm looks at Him as from everlasting, and it traces Him to everlasting too. This is further proof that the Son is God, as Scripture says: "From everlasting to everlasting You are God." When the created heavens and earth have done their work, He who made them will fold them up and lay them aside, as men do a worn-out garment. For when the stream of time has run its course according to the divine counsels, eternity goes on.
Another notes the order of the psalm — glory first, frailty after:
Though Israel did not realise who this really was, there is no doubt that Moses is speaking of Christ the Lord. He is the Creator… No other can ever claim this place. So the psalm that stresses man's frailty begins with the eternal glory of the Lord Jesus.
- Before — the verse dates God by what did not yet exist: no mountains, no earth, no world. He is the Mighty and Eternal One, the Fountain of life.
- Beyond — eternity is not a long stretch of time but life outside it; with Him there is no measuring of time or space at all.
- Unchanged — He is the same before the world was as now; creation may pass, yet God remains.
- Refuge — He never changes, so He is His people's dwelling-place in every age, while man crumbles back to dust.
- Christ — commentators read this eternal One as the Son. The psalm about human frailty opens with His glory.