For all our days pass away in thy wrath we spend our years as a [passing] thought.
Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses. By verse 9 it has turned from God's eternity to a blunt account of human life, spent under His anger and sighed away. So the verse raises a question. Why should a creature made by God live his short life under God's displeasure?
Moses led Israel through the desert. The short life this psalm describes was counted out for the people around him.
Seventy years were the ordinary measure of man's days. This was true in a particular way of the people among whom Moses moved in the wilderness. Everyone counted from twenty years old and upward came under that word, "your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness" (Num. 14:29). So those who were in their prime at thirty when they left Egypt cannot have lived past seventy. Caleb and Joshua were the exceptions. It is remarkable that God used a man who lived to one hundred and twenty to declare seventy to be man's days. Moses was still full of strength when he died at that age.
Moses does not treat human frailty as an accident of nature. He names its cause.
But why is man so frail, so mortal? Because he has fallen under the divine displeasure. It is not an unreasonable accident that he is in this plight. He was not created like this. It is simply and only that anger and wrath from God lie upon him. This is a hard saying, but a true one. It is the only explanation of man's sad state.
The wrath is not temper. It follows a reckoning that takes in what no one else sees. Translators also differ over the last words of the verse: ESV reads "like a sigh," older versions "a thought."
The cause of it is His anger, which is consuming us, His hot wrath, which distresses us. But why such anger? It is not the blind heat of passion. It is careful judgment, weighing things in the most even balance. "You have set our iniquities before You," and, with knowledge from which nothing can escape, "our secret sins in the light of Your presence." So all our days pass away in overflowing wrath, which rests on us with steady persistence. "We spend our days as a thought" — or, rather, "a moan."
Psalm 90 shows what man is when left to himself. The psalm that follows it shows another Man in the same wilderness.
In the ninetieth you have what man is alone: "we bring our years to an end like a sigh." Man is born, he lives, his days are few and full of trouble, and he dies. All he can ask is, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." When you come to the ninety-first, you have a beautiful contrast. It is not the first man, but the second. It is the one who "dwells in the shelter of the Most High" and "abides in the shadow of the Almighty."
If our days run out this fast, the sane thing is to count them. Doing so changes what a person lives for.
We are only the feeble, dying children of Adam, and we gain much by recognising that fact. As long as we do not count our days properly, we imagine ourselves to be something other than what we are. Then we give our hearts to pleasure or money-making or sport or a hundred and one small things. When we count our days properly and realise the plight we are in, we give our hearts to wisdom. And the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But we have to pray to God to teach us to do this, for we will not do it by ourselves.
The verse can leave a believer mourning each year that runs out. One writer says that grief does not fit a heavenly calling.
The conclusion, then, is this. If we are living at the height of our heavenly calling, we will not regret how fast the years fly. Nor will we grieve at the prospect of death, if the Lord delays. But if we are not on our guard, the close of a year, with its reminder of times and seasons, may sink us to the level of the Old Testament believer. May the Lord help us instead to live so much in His presence, and to have Himself so filling our hearts, that "dying daily" we are already living beyond death the life of heaven.
- Cause. Life is short because God's anger rests on fallen man — not because of an accident or bad design.
- Reckoning. That anger weighs sin, and it weighs secret sins as well as public ones.
- Measure. Seventy years matched the wilderness generation. Moses wrote it, though he himself lived to one hundred and twenty.
- Contrast. Psalm 90 is the first man alone; Psalm 91 is the second Man, who dwells in the shelter of the Most High.
- Response. Ask God to teach you to count your days, or you will spend them on trifles. A heart living in heaven stops mourning the years that fly.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if, by reason of strength, they be fourscore years, yet their pride is labour and vanity, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Moses, called the man of God, sets a number on human life: seventy years, eighty if strength allows. Then he names what those years hold. Why did the span shrink to this? Why does the psalm call even the strongest years toil? And what should we do with that knowledge?
Earlier chapters of the Bible record lifetimes near a thousand years. Against that, seventy is a steep fall. The writers read the fall itself as part of the psalm's message about human pride.
Then comes the repeated statement of man's emptiness. The experience has now shrunk from near a thousand years to seventy or eighty. In that span man's pride, if it lasts that long, ends in hard labour. Soon cut off indeed, we fly away.
The seventy-year figure fits the people around Moses in the desert exactly. It also comes from a man whose own life broke the rule.
Seventy years were the ordinary measure of his days. This, we may notice, applied especially to the people among whom Moses moved in the wilderness. That word covered everyone counted from twenty years old and upward: "Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness" (Num. 14:29). So those who were in their prime at thirty when they left Egypt cannot have lived beyond seventy, apart from Caleb and Joshua. It is remarkable that God used a man who lived to a hundred and twenty to declare seventy to be man's days. When he died at that age he was still full of vigour.
One writer links the timing of the shortened lifespan with the arrival of Scripture in written form.
Long afterwards — and there was wisdom in the arrangement — when man's age began to be shortened to its present limit, God made a written revelation. Faith sees divine wisdom where unbelief mocks. Do you not see? At the very point where Scripture says man's age was shortened to seventy years (Ps. 90), God first used Moses, the man of God, to write this word down.
The verse does not treat the eightieth year as a prize. What a person might display as evidence of a strong constitution is exactly what the psalm reclassifies.
It may be that through strength our years are stretched beyond the allotted span of seventy, but even then, the strength we are proud of, and the years we boast in, will only bring labour and emptiness.
That reading has a practical edge. If added years add sorrow, then wanting a longer life turns out to be a strange thing to want — most of all for someone whose hope lies past death.
God may give some the strength to live 80 years, yet the extra years come with "toil and trouble." In other words, nothing here encourages us to wish for a longer life. That is especially true for someone redeemed by the blood of Christ, who is glad at the prospect of entering the Lord's presence. At any rate, "they are soon gone, and we fly away." Some do live past 100, but however long life is, it is still short!
Behind the arithmetic stands a cause. The short life is not bad luck, and it is not how God made man.
But why is man so frail, so mortal? Because he has fallen under God's displeasure. It is not an unreasonable accident that he is in this state. He was not created this way. It is simply and only that anger and wrath from God rest on him. This is a hard saying, but a true one. It is the only explanation of the sad condition man is in.
The psalm turns the count into a prayer. Facing the real number changes what a person gives their heart to.
We are only the weak, dying children of Adam, and we gain much by simply recognising that fact. As long as we do not count our days correctly, we imagine ourselves to be something other than what we are. Then we give our hearts to pleasure or money-making or sport or a hundred and one things of little importance. When we count our days correctly and see the state we are in, we give our hearts to wisdom. And the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But we have to ask God to teach us this, for we will not do it on our own.
One writer measures our view of passing years against our heavenly calling.
The conclusion, then, is this. If we are living up to the height of our heavenly calling, we will not regret the swift flight of years. Nor will we grieve at the prospect of death, if the Lord delays. If we are not on guard, we can soon sink to the level of the Jewish saint when the close of a year reminds us of times and seasons. May the Lord help us instead to live in His presence, and to have Himself filling our hearts, so that, dying daily, we are already living beyond death the life of heaven.
- Count. Seventy years, eighty at most. That is a steep fall from the near-thousand of earlier generations, and the psalm treats the fall as a message.
- Cause. God did not create man frail. Man fell under God's displeasure, and the writers offer no other explanation.
- Cost. Extra years add toil and trouble, so the strength people boast in ends in labour and emptiness.
- Count again. Moses turns the number into a prayer for wisdom. We must ask God to teach it, since we will not learn it alone.
- Comfort. The man who wrote "seventy" lived to a hundred and twenty, still full of vigour. The believer's hope reaches past the flight of years into the Lord's presence.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? and thy wrath according to the fear of thee?
The psalm has just described a short life lived under God's displeasure. Now it asks a question no one can answer: who has ever measured the force of God's anger, or weighed His wrath against the fear that is due to Him?
The question stays open, and one writer reads the whole line as two admissions of ignorance.
God's wrath, too, they keenly feel. But who knows the power of His anger? None on earth have experienced that. Who, indeed, knows that wrath according to the fear that is due to God?
The second half of the verse sets a standard. God's wrath is not a mood. It matches the fear due to Him, and so it comes out of His own character.
And first as to ways: "as his fear, so is his wrath." It is not arbitrary, but according to His own nature and character. Fear is knowing Him in truth. Then what He is judges, in holiness, everything inside the soul, so that nothing should displease Him or hinder fellowship with Him.
The phrase is short, and commentators differ on how to unfold it. One writer, working from an older wording, sets out two possible senses:
Verse 11, "even according to your fear, your wrath" — is it "the fear we have of you, so your wrath appears," or "as terror now, so wrath to come"?
God's anger can seem heavy. One writer answers that it could not be any less, and points to how hard people work to keep the subject out of mind.
One might think He had pressed it heavily on man — but how could He do less? Look, after all, at the folly bound up in man's heart! Man only tries to drive thought away, to "kill time," to push conviction aside, to do Satan's work for him as thoroughly as he can. And yet no thought can exceed the truth of God's anger against sin: even according to the fear of You is Your overflowing wrath.
The power of that anger is unknown. One writer draws a warning from it: cleaning ourselves up, apart from coming back to God as Saviour, is not a neutral act.
So every attempt by man to beautify or purify himself is only a fight against God — unless he returns to God as Saviour, in the faith of the gospel. It is a practical refusal to admit that God is true and righteous in giving him this dishonoured place. And it only arms him as an enemy against the One who avenges His own name, according to the unknown power of His wrath (Ps. 90:11).
Placed beside God's anger, present trouble shrinks. One writer weighs affliction against sin, hell and glory.
It is heavy to flesh and blood, but it is light to faith. It is light compared with sin; the one who feels sin heavy feels suffering light. Affliction is light compared with hell; what is persecution next to damnation? What is the fire of martyrdom to the fire of the damned? "Who knows the power of Your anger?" (Ps. 90:11). Affliction is light compared with glory; the weight of glory makes persecution light.
The verse is not the end of the thought. It is the hinge into the prayer of the next verse.
The power of God's anger goes beyond what man knows. If we take that serious lesson to heart, it will put a deep and reverent fear of God in us (v. 11). That leads to the right prayer: "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (v. 12). Our days are short, so we need grace from God to number them — to keep them under close watch, so that we do not lose the lessons each day is meant to teach.
- Unknown — No one on earth has taken the measure of God's anger; the question in the verse has no human answer.
- Not arbitrary — His wrath matches the reverence due to Him, so it expresses what He is, never a change of mood.
- Underestimated — Man kills time and pushes conviction away. Yet no thought can exceed the truth of God's anger against sin.
- Dangerous — Clean ourselves up apart from returning to God as Saviour, and we only arm ourselves against Him. His wrath is beyond our measuring.
- Wisdom — Take that unknown weight seriously and it breeds reverent fear. That fear turns into prayer: teach us to number our days and give us a heart of wisdom.