PSALMS 90

PSALMS 90

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalms 90:12).

The main purpose of the psalm is revealed in the prayer with which it concludes (verses 13-17). This prayer is prefaced by a meditation on the frailty of man (verses 3-12), in the light of the eternity of God (verses 1,2). By this backward method of analysis we gain a concept of the general scheme of the psalm which now enables us to take the three movements in their orderly sequence.

The eternity of God is described in three stages. First, as measured by the history of His people, He has ever been their dwelling place. Secondly, as measured by creation, He was before all. Finally, whether the mind travels backward or forward to the vanishing point, He is still God.

In this light man is seen in the frailty of his being. To God a thousand years are comparatively nothing, and in every millennium men appear and pass in a sequence as orderly as that of the grass, but in a life as transitory. This frailty is the more feeble because man is a sinner, and therefore out of harmony with God. Yet this very eternity of God is the hope of man in his frailty and sin, and the heart is lifted to Jehovah in a prayer that the mornings, the days, the years of brief life may all be set in true relation to Him. Satisfaction, gladness, success in work must all come from the right relation of man in his frailty to the eternal Lord.

—G. Campbell Morgan