Psalms 90:1 - Meaning and Application

This psalm is called “a prayer of Moses.” We do not know where it was kept from Moses’ day until the Psalms were gathered into a book. But since it was inspired by God, he surely kept it safe. It may have been written in the book of Jasher or the book of the Wars of the Lord.

Moses taught Israel how to pray and gave them words they could use when they turned back to the Lord. He is called the man of God because he was a prophet, the father of the prophets, and a clear picture of the great prophet to come. In these verses, we are taught to praise God for his care over his people at all times, and over us in our own day: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations” (Psalm 90:1).

Even though the people had come under God’s displeasure and feared he might leave them, they look back to his kindness to their ancestors. Canaan had been a place of wandering for the patriarchs, the early fathers of Israel, who lived there in tents. Yet God was their home, and wherever they went, they were safe in him. Egypt had been a place of slavery for many years, but even there God was their refuge, and he kept that oppressed people alive.

True believers are at home in God, and that is their comfort in every trouble they meet in this world. In him we can rest and hide ourselves as in our own house. We should also give God the glory of his eternal being (Psalm 90:2). Before the mountains were formed, before he made the earth and the world, before time began, God already was. From everlasting to everlasting, he is God, with no beginning and no end, unchanged by the passing of time.

This is a great comfort against everything that grieves us in our own mortality, and in the death of our friends. We are dying creatures, and all our comforts in this world are dying comforts. But God is the ever-living God, and those who belong to him will find him to be so.

We must also own God’s complete rule over man, and his power to do with us as he pleases (Psalm 90:3). He turns man back to dust with a word, when he chooses, and says, “Return, you children of men.”

When God, through sickness or other troubles, is turning people toward death, he is also calling them to return to him in repentance and a new life. He speaks once, yes, twice, saying, “Return to me, from whom you have turned away” (Jeremiah 4:1). When he threatens death and people feel their sentence of death within themselves, he sometimes wonderfully restores them and says, as the older translation puts it, “Return to life and health again.” For God kills and makes alive again, and he brings down to the grave and brings up.

When God turns men to destruction, he is carrying out the common sentence on all people: “Return, you children of men.” One by one, we must return to our first state, the body to the earth as dust, and the soul to God who gave it (Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 12:7). Yet even while God turns all men to death, he will one day say again, “Return, you children of men,” at the final resurrection. Then, though a man dies, he will live again, and the body and soul will be joined together once more (Job 14:14-15).

We must also see the great distance between God and man (Psalm 90:4). Some of the patriarchs lived almost a thousand years, and Moses knew that well. But what is even the longest human life compared with God’s eternal life? A thousand years are long to us, and we cannot expect to live so long, or even remember all of it if we did. Yet in God’s sight, it is like yesterday, like a single day, or even like a watch in the night, which lasted only a few hours.

A thousand years are nothing to God’s eternity. They are less than a day, even less than an hour, compared with endless life. There is some relation between a minute and a million years, but there is no relation between time and eternity. The long lives of the patriarchs were nothing to God, not even as much as the life of a child who is born and dies the same day.

All the events of a thousand years, past or future, are as present to God’s mind as yesterday is to ours, and even more so. On the great day, God will say to those he has turned to destruction, “Return, rise up, you dead.” People might object to the resurrection because so much time has passed and it has not yet come. But that should not trouble us, for a thousand years in God’s sight are like one day (2 Peter 3:8). To the king, all times are alike.

This should also show us human frailty, and our emptiness even at our best (Psalm 90:5-6). Look at all people, and we see that their life is a dying life. God carries them away like a flood. They are always moving down the stream of time into the ocean of eternity. The flood keeps flowing, and they are swept along with it. As soon as we are born, we begin to die, and every day brings us closer to death.

It is also as if we are carried off violently, like an overwhelming flood that sweeps everything away. In that way, death is like the flood in Noah’s day. God promised never to drown the whole world again, but death is a constant flood that comes to every person. Human life is also like a sleep. People do not think about how weak they are, or how near they are to a serious eternity. Like sleepers, they dream of great things, until death wakes them and ends the pleasant dream.

Time passes without our noticing it, as it does with people asleep, and when it is gone, it seems like nothing. Human life is short and passing, like grass. It grows and looks green and pleasant in the morning, but by evening the mower cuts it down, and it quickly withers. Death will change us soon, perhaps suddenly, and it will make a great change in us in a very little time.

Man, even at his strongest, only flourishes for a little while, like grass. Grass is weak, low, tender, and easily exposed to harm. When the winter of old age comes, it withers on its own, but it can also be cut down by sickness or disaster in the middle of summer. In the end, all human life is like grass.