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Psalm Ninety
Psalm 90
Chapter Contents
The eternity of God, the frailty of man. (1-6) Submission
to Divine chastisements. (7-11) Prayer for mercy and grace. (12-17)
Commentary on Psalm 90:1-6
(Read Psalm 90:1-6)
It is supposed that this psalm refers to the sentence
passed on Israel in the wilderness, Numbers 14. The favour and protection of God are
the only sure rest and comfort of the soul in this evil world. Christ Jesus is
the refuge and dwelling-place to which we may repair. We are dying creatures,
all our comforts in the world are dying comforts, but God is an ever-living
God, and believers find him so. When God, by sickness, or other afflictions,
turns men to destruction, he thereby calls men to return unto him to repent of
their sins, and live a new life. A thousand years are nothing to God's
eternity: between a minute and a million of years there is some proportion;
between time and eternity there is none. All the events of a thousand years,
whether past or to come, are more present to the Eternal Mind, than what was
done in the last hour is to us. And in the resurrection, the body and soul
shall both return and be united again. Time passes unobserved by us, as with
men asleep; and when it is past, it is as nothing. It is a short and
quickly-passing life, as the waters of a flood. Man does but flourish as the
grass, which, when the winter of old age comes, will wither; but he may be mown
down by disease or disaster.
Commentary on Psalm 90:7-11
(Read Psalm 90:7-11)
The afflictions of the saints often come from God's love;
but the rebukes of sinners, and of believers for their sins, must be seen
coming from the displeasure of God. Secret sins are known to God, and shall be
reckoned for. See the folly of those who go about to cover their sins, for they
cannot do so. Our years, when gone, can no more be recalled than the words that
we have spoken. Our whole life is toilsome and troublesome; and perhaps, in the
midst of the years we count upon, it is cut off. We are taught by all this to
stand in awe. The angels that sinned know the power of God's anger; sinners in
hell know it; but which of us can fully describe it? Few seriously consider it
as they ought. Those who make a mock at sin, and make light of Christ, surely
do not know the power of God's anger. Who among us can dwell with that
devouring fire?
Commentary on Psalm 90:12-17
(Read Psalm 90:12-17)
Those who would learn true wisdom, must pray for Divine
instruction, must beg to be taught by the Holy Spirit; and for comfort and joy
in the returns of God's favour. They pray for the mercy of God, for they
pretend not to plead any merit of their own. His favour would be a full
fountain of future joys. It would be a sufficient balance to former griefs. Let
the grace of God in us produce the light of good works. And let Divine
consolations put gladness into our hearts, and a lustre upon our countenances.
The work of our hands, establish thou it; and, in order to that, establish us
in it. Instead of wasting our precious, fleeting days in pursuing fancies,
which leave the possessors for ever poor, let us seek the forgiveness of sins,
and an inheritance in heaven. Let us pray that the work of the Holy Spirit may
appear in converting our hearts, and that the beauty of holiness may be seen in
our conduct.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Psalms》
Psalm 90
Verse 2
[2]
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
Thou —
Thou hadst thy power, and all thy perfections, from all eternity.
Verse 3
[3] Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
Turnedst —
But as for man, his case is far otherwise, though he was made by thee happy.
and immortal, yet for his sin thou didst make him mortal and miserable.
Saidst —
Didst pronounce that sad sentence, return, O men, to the dust out of which ye
were taken, Genesis 3:19.
Verse 4
[4] For
a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a
watch in the night.
Past —
Indeed time seems long when it is to come, but when it is past, very short and
contemptible.
A watch —
Which lasted but three or four hours.
Verse 5
[5] Thou
carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they
are like grass which groweth up.
Them —
Mankind.
Away —
Universally, without exception or distinction.
A sleep —
Short and vain, as sleep is, and not minded 'till it be past.
Verse 7
[7] For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Are consumed —
Thou dost not suffer us to live so long as we might by the course of nature.
Verse 8
[8] Thou
hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy
countenance.
Hast set —
Thou dost observe them, as a righteous judge, and art calling us to an account
for them.
Secret sins —
Which though hid from the eyes of men, thou hast brought to light by thy
judgments.
Verse 10
[10] The
days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength
they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon
cut off, and we fly away.
Our years — Of
the generality of mankind, in that and all following ages, some few persons
excepted.
Flee — We
do not now go to death, as we do from our very birth, but flee swiftly away
like a bird, as this word signifies.
Verse 11
[11] Who
knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
Thy fear —
According to the fear of thee; according to that fear which sinful men have of
a just God.
So — It bears full
proportion to it, nay indeed doth far exceed it.
Verse 12
[12] So
teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Teach us — To
consider the shortness of life, and the certainty and speediness of death.
That —
That we may heartily devote ourselves to true wisdom.
Verse 13
[13]
Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
Return — To
us in mercy.
How long —
Will it be before thou return to us? Repent thee - Of thy severe proceedings
against us.
Verse 14
[14] O
satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Early —
Speedily.
Verse 17
[17] And
let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of
our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
The beauty —
His gracious influence, and glorious presence.
In us — Do
not only work for us, but in us,
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Psalms》
Exposition
Explanatory Notes and
Quaint Sayings
Hints to the Village
Preacher
Other Works
TITLE. A Prayer of
Moses the man of God. Many attempts have been made to prove that Moses did not
write this Psalm, but we remain unmoved in the conviction that he did so. The
condition of Israel in the wilderness is so preeminently illustrative of each
verse, and the turns, expressions, and words are so similar to many in the
Pentateuch, that the difficulties suggested are, to our mind, light as air in
comparison with the internal evidence in favour of its Mosaic origin. Moses was
mighty in word as well as deed, and this Psalm we believe to be one of his
weighty utterances, worthy to stand side by side with his glorious oration
recorded in Deuteronomy. Moses was peculiarly a man of God and God's man;
chosen of God, inspired of God, honoured of God, and faithful to God in all his
house, he well deserved the name which is here given him. The Psalm is called a
prayer, for the closing petitions enter into its essence, and the preceding
verses are a meditation preparatory to the supplication. Men of God are sure to
be men of prayer. This was not the only prayer of Moses, indeed it is but a
specimen of the manner in which the seer of Horeb was leant to commune with
heaven, and intercede for the good of Israel. This is the oldest of the Psalms,
and stands between two books of Psalms as a composition unique in its grandeur,
and alone in its sublime antiquity. Many generations of mourners have listened
to this Psalm when standing around the open grave, and have been consoled
thereby, even when they have not perceived its special application to Israel in
the wilderness and have failed to remember the far higher ground upon which
believers now stand.
SUBJECT
AND DIVISION.—Moses sings of the frailty of man, and the shortness of life,
contrasting therewith the eternity of God, and founding thereon earnest appeals
for compassion. The only division which will be useful separates the
contemplation Ps 90:1-11 from the Ps 90:12-17 there is indeed no need to make
even this break, for the unity is well preserved throughout.
EXPOSITION
Verse
1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
We must consider the whole Psalm as written for the tribes in the desert, and
then we shall see the primary meaning of each verse. Moses, in effect,
says—wanderers though we be in the howling wilderness, yet we find a home in
thee, even as our forefathers did when they came out of Ur of the Chaldees and
dwelt in tents among the Canaanites. To the saints the Lord Jehovah, the self
existent God, stands instead of mansion and rooftree; he shelters, comforts,
protects, preserves, and cherishes all his own. Foxes have holes and the birds
of the air have nests, but the saints dwell in their God, and have always done
so in all ages. Not in the tabernacle or the temple do we dwell, but in God
himself; and this we have always done since there was a church in the world. We
have not shifted our abode. Kings' palaces have vanished beneath the crumbling
hand of time—they have been burned with fire and buried beneath mountains of
ruins, but the imperial race of heaven has never lost its regal habitation. Go
to the Palatine and see how the Caesars are forgotten of the halls which echoed
to their despotic mandates, and resounded with the plaudits of the nations over
which they ruled, and then look upward and see in the ever living Jehovah the
divine home of the faithful, untouched by so much as the finger of decay. Where
dwelt our fathers a hundred generations since, there dwell we still. It is of
New Testament saints that the Holy Ghost has said, "He that keepeth his commandments
dwelleth in God and God in him!" It was a divine mouth which said,
"Abide in me", and then added, "he that abideth in me and I in
him the same bringeth forth much fruit." It is most sweet to speak with
the Lord as Moses did, saying, "Lord, thou art our dwelling place",
and it is wise to draw from the Lord's eternal condescension reasons for
expecting present and future mercies, as the Psalmist did in the next Psalm
wherein he describes the safety of those who dwell in God.
Verse
2. Before the mountains were brought forth. Before those
elder giants had struggled forth from nature's womb, as her dread firstborn,
the Lord was glorious and self sufficient. Mountains to him, though hoar with
the snows of ages, are but new born babes, young things whose birth was but
yesterday, mere novelties of an hour. Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world. Here too the allusion is to a birth. Earth was born but the other
day, and her solid land was delivered from the flood but a short while ago.
Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God, or, "thou art, O
God." God was, when nothing else was. He was God when the earth was not a
world but a chaos, when mountains were not upheaved, and the generation of the
heavens and the earth had not commenced. In this Eternal One there is a safe
abode for the successive generations of men. If God himself were of yesterday,
he would not be a suitable refuge for mortal men; if he could change and cease
to be God he would be but an uncertain dwelling place for his people. The
eternal existence of God is here mentioned to set forth, by contrast, the
brevity of human life.
Verse
3. Thou turnest man to destruction, or "to dust."
Man's body is resolved into its elements, and is as though it had been crushed
and ground to powder. And sayest, Return, ye children of men, i.e.,
return even to the dust out of which ye were taken. The frailty of man is thus
forcibly set forth; God creates him out of the dust, and back to dust he goes
at the word of his Creator. God resolves and man dissolves. A word created and
a word destroys. Observe how the action of God is recognised; man is not said
to die because of the decree of faith, or the action of inevitable law, but the
Lord is made the agent of all, his hand turns and his voice speaks; without
these we should not die, no power on earth or hell could kill us.
"An
angel's arm cannot save me from the grave,
Myriads of angels cannot confine me there."
Verse
4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is past. A thousand years! This is a long stretch of time. How much may be
crowded into it,—the rise and fall of empires, the glory and obliteration of
dynasties, the beginning and the end of elaborate systems of human philosophy,
and countless events, all important to household and individual, which elude
the pens of historians. Yet this period, which might even be called the limit
of modern history, and is in human language almost identical with an indefinite
length of time, is to the Lord as nothing, even as time already gone. A moment
yet to come is longer than "yesterday when it is past", for that no
longer exists at all, yet such is a chiliad to the eternal. In comparison with
eternity, the most lengthened reaches of time are mere points, there is in
fact, no possible comparison between them. And as a watch in the night, a time
which is no sooner come than gone. There is scarce time enough in a thousand
years for the angels to change watches; when their millennium of service is
almost over it seems as though the watch were newly set. We are dreaming
through the long night of time, but God is ever keeping watch, and a thousand
years are as nothing to him. A host of days and nights must be combined to make
up a thousand years to us, but to God, that space of time does not make up a
whole night, but only a brief portion of it. If a thousand years be to God as a
single night watch, what must be the life time of the Eternal!
Verse
5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. As when a torrent
rushes down the river bed and bears all before it, so does the Lord bear away
by death the succeeding generations of men. As the hurricane sweeps the clouds
from the sky, so time removes the children of men. They are as a sleep. Before
God men must appear as unreal as the dreams of the night, the phantoms of
sleep. Not only are our plans and devices like a sleep, but we ourselves are
such. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." In the morning they
are like grass which groweth up. As grass is green in the morning and hay at
night, so men are changed from health to corruption in a few hours. We are not
cedars, or oaks, but only poor grass, which is vigorous in the spring, but
lasts not a summer through. What is there upon earth more frail than we!
Verse
6. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up. Blooming
with abounding beauty till the meadows are all besprent with gems, the grass
has a golden hour, even as man in his youth has a heyday of flowery glory. In
the evening it is cut down, and withereth. The scythe ends the blossoming of
the field flowers, and the dews at flight weep their fall. Here is the history
of the grass—sown, grown, blown, mown, gone; and the history of man is not much
more. Natural decay would put an end both to us and the grass in due time; few,
however, are left to experience the full result of age, for death comes with
his scythe, and removes our life in the midst of its verdure. How great a
change in how short a time! The morning saw the blooming, and the evening sees
the withering.
Verse
7. This mortality is not accidental, neither was it inevitable in
the original of our nature, but sin has provoked the Lord to anger, and
therefore thus we die. For we are consumed by thine anger. This is the scythe
which mows and the scorching heat which withers. This was specially the case in
reference to the people in the wilderness, whose lives were cut short by
justice on account of their waywardness; they failed, not by a natural decline,
but through the blast of the well deserved judgments of God. It must have been
a very mournful sight to Moses to see the whole nation melt away during the
forty years of their pilgrimage, till none remained of all that came out of
Egypt. As God's favour is life, so his anger is death; as well might grass grow
in an oven as men flourish when the Lord is wroth with them. "And by thy
wrath are we troubled", or terror stricken. A sense of divine anger
confounded them, so that they lived as men who knew that they were doomed. This
is true of us in a measure, but not altogether, for now that immortality and
life are brought to light by the gospel, death has changed its aspect, and, to
believers in Jesus, it is no more a judicial execution. Anger and wrath are the
sting of death, and in these believers have no share; love and mercy now conduct
us to glory by the way of the tomb. It is not seemly to read these words at a
Christian's funeral without words of explanation, and a distinct endeavour to
shew how little they belong to believers in Jesus, and how far we are
privileged beyond those with whom he was not well pleased, "whose
carcasses fell in the wilderness." To apply an ode, written by the leader
of the legal dispensation under circumstances of peculiar judgment, in
reference to a people under penal censure, to those who fall asleep in Jesus,
seems to be the height of blundering. We may learn much from it, but we ought
not to misapply it by taking to ourselves, as the beloved of the Lord, that
which was chiefly true of those to whom God had sworn in his wrath that they
should not enter into his rest. When, however, a soul is under conviction of
sin, the language of this Psalm is highly appropriate to his case, and will
naturally suggest itself to the distracted mind. No fire consumes like God's
anger, and no anguish so troubles the heart as his wrath. Blessed be that dear
substitute,
"Who
bore that we might never
His Father's righteous ire."
Verse
8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee. Hence these
tears! Sin seen by God must work death; it is only by the covering blood of
atonement that life comes to any of us. When God was overthrowing the tribes in
the wilderness he had their iniquities before him, and therefore dealt with
them in severity. He could not have their iniquities before him and not smite
them. Our secret sins in the fight of thy countenance. There are no secrets
before God; he unearths man's hidden things, and exposes them to the light.
There can be no more powerful luminary than the face of God, yet, in that
strong light, the Lord set the hidden sins of Israel. Sunlight can never be
compared with the light of him who made the sun, of whom it is written,
"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." If by his
countenance is here meant his love and favour, it is not possible for the
heinousness of sin to be more clearly manifested than when it is seen to
involve ingratitude to one so infinitely good and kind. Rebellion in the light
of justice is black, but in the light of love it is devilish. How can we grieve
so good a God? The children of Israel had been brought out of Egypt with a high
hand, fed in the wilderness with a liberal hand, and guided with a tender hand,
and their sins were peculiarly atrocious. We, too, having been redeemed by the
blood of Jesus, and saved by abounding grace, will be verily guilty if we forsake
the Lord. What manner of persons ought we to be? How ought we to pray for
cleansing from secret faults? It is to us a wellspring of delights to remember
that our sins, as believers are now cast behind the Lord's back, and shall
never be brought to light again: therefore we live, because, the guilt being
removed, the death penalty is removed also.
Verse
9. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. Justice
shortened the days of rebellious Israel; each halting place became a graveyard;
they marked their march by the tombs they left behind them. Because of the
penal sentence their days were dried up, and their lives wasted away. We spend
our years as a tale that is told. Yea, not their days only, but their years
flew by them like a thought, swift as a meditation, rapid and idle as a
gossip's story. Sin had cast a shadow over all things, and made the lives of
the dying wanderers to be both vain and brief. The first sentence is not
intended for believers to quote, as though it applied to themselves, for our
days are all passed amid the lovingkindness of the Lord, even as David says in
the Ps 23:6 "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life." Neither is the life of the gracious man unsubstantial as a story
teller's tale; he lives in Jesus, he has the divine Spirit within him, and to
him "life is real, life is earnest"—the simile only holds good if we
consider that a holy life is rich in interest, full of wonders, chequered with
many changes, yet as easily ordered by providence as the improvisatore arranges
the details of the story with which he beguiles the hour. Our lives are
illustrations of heavenly goodness, parables of divine wisdom, poems of sacred
thought, and records of infinite love; happy are we whose lives are such tales.
Verse
10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Moses
himself lived longer than this, but his was the exception not the rule: in his
day life had come to be very much the same in duration as it is with us. This
is brevity itself compared with the men of the elder time; it is nothing when
contrasted with eternity. Yet is life long enough for virtue and piety, and all
too long for vice and blasphemy. Moses here in the original writes in a
disconnected manner, as if he would set forth the utter insignificance of man's
hurried existence. His words may be rendered, "The days of our years! In
them seventy years": as much as to say, "The days of our years? What
about them? Are they worth mentioning? The account is utterly insignificant,
their full tale is but seventy." And if by reason of strength they be
fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow. The unusual
strength which overleaps the bound of threescore and ten only lands the aged
man in a region where life is a weariness and a woe. The strength of old age,
its very prime and pride, are but labour and sorrow; what must its weakness be?
What panting for breath! What toiling to move! What a failing of the senses!
What a crushing sense of weakness! The evil days are come and the years wherein
a man cries, "I have no pleasure in them." The grasshopper has become
a burden and desire faileth. Such is old age. Yet mellowed by hallowed
experience, and solaced by immortal hopes, the latter days of aged Christians
are not so much to be pitied as envied. The sun is setting and the heat of the
day is over, but sweet is the calm and cool of the eventide: and the fair day
melts away, not into a dark and dreary night, but into a glorious, unclouded,
eternal day. The mortal fades to make room for the immortal; the old man falls
asleep to wake up in the region of perennial youth. For it is soon cut off, and
we fly away. The cable is broken and the vessel sails upon the sea of eternity;
the chain is snapped and the eagle mounts to its native air above the clouds.
Moses mourned for men as he thus sung: and well he might, as all his comrades
fell at his side. His words are more nearly rendered, "He drives us fast
and we fly away; "as the quails were blown along by the strong west wind,
so are men hurried before the tempests of death. To us, however, as believers,
the winds are favourable; they bear us as the gales bear the swallows away from
the wintry realms, to lands
"Where
everlasting spring abides
And never withering flowers."
Who
wishes it to be otherwise? Wherefore should we linger here? What has this poor
world to offer us that we should tarry on its shores? Away, away! This is not
our rest. Heavenward, Ho! Let the Lord's winds drive fast if so he ordains, for
they waft us the more swiftly to himself, and our own dear country.
Verse
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Moses saw men dying
all around him: he lived among funerals, and was overwhelmed at the terrible
results of the divine displeasure. He felt that none could measure the might of
the Lord's wrath. Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Good men dread
that wrath beyond conception, but they never ascribe too much terror to it: bad
men are dreadfully convulsed when they awake to a sense of it, but their horror
is not greater than it had need be, for it is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of an angry God. Holy Scripture when it depicts God's wrath against sin
never uses an hyperbole; it would be impossible to exaggerate it. Whatever
feelings of pious awe and holy trembling may move the tender heart, it is never
too much moved; apart from other considerations the great truth of the divine
anger, when most powerfully felt, never impresses the mind with a solemnity in
excess of the legitimate result of such a contemplation. What the power of
God's anger is in hell, and what it would be on earth, were it not in mercy
restrained, no man living can rightly conceive. Modern thinkers rail at Milton
and Dante, Bunyan and Baxter, for their terrible imagery; but the truth is that
no vision of poet, or denunciation of holy seer, can ever reach to the dread
height of this great argument, much less go beyond it. The wrath to come has
its horrors rather diminished than enhanced in description by the dark lines of
human fancy; it baffles words, it leaves imagination far behind. Beware ye that
forget God lest he tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. God is
terrible out of his holy places. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah! Remember Korah
and his company! Mark well the graves of lust in the wilderness! Nay, rather
bethink ye of the place where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not
quenched. Who is able to stand against this justly angry God? Who will dare to
rush upon the bosses of his buckler, or tempt the edge of his sword? Be it ours
to submit ourselves as dying sinners to this eternal God, who can, even at this
moment, command us to the dust, and thence to hell.
Verse
12. So teach us to number our days. Instruct us to set store
by time, mourning for that time past wherein we have wrought the will of the
flesh, using diligently the time present, which is the accepted hour and the
day of salvation, and reckoning the time which lieth in the future to be too
uncertain to allow us safely to delay any gracious work or prayer. Numeration
is a child's exercise in arithmetic, but in order to number their days aright
the best of men need the Lord's teaching. We are more anxious to count the
stars than our days, and yet the latter is by far more practical. That we may
apply our hearts unto wisdom. Men are led by reflections upon the brevity of
time to give their earnest attention to eternal things; they become humble as
they look into the grave which is so soon to be their bed, their passions cool
in the presence of mortality, and they yield themselves up to the dictates of
unerring wisdom; but this is only the case when the Lord himself is the
teacher; he alone can teach to real and lasting profit. Thus Moses prayed that
the dispensations of justice might be sanctified in mercy. "The law is our
school master to bring us to Christ", when the Lord himself speaks by the
law. It is most meet that the heart which will so soon cease to beat should
while it moves be regulated by wisdom's hand. A short life should be wisely
spent. We have not enough time at our disposal to justify us in misspending a
single quarter of an hour. Neither are we sure of enough life to justify us in
procrastinating for a moment. If we were wise in heart we should see this, but
mere head wisdom will not guide us aright.
Verse
13. Return, O LORD, how long? Come in mercy, to us again. Do
not leave us to perish. Suffer not our lives to be both brief and bitter. Thou
hast said to us, "Return, ye children of men", and now we humbly cry
to thee, "Return, thou preserver of men." Thy presence alone can
reconcile us to this transient existence; turn thou unto us. As sin drives God
from us, so repentance cries to the Lord to return to us. When men are under
chastisement they are allowed to expostulate, and ask "how long?" Our
faith in these times is not too great boldness with God, but too much
backwardness in pleading with him. And let it repent thee concerning thy
servants. Thus Moses acknowledges the Israelites to be God's servants still.
They had rebelled, but they had not utterly forsaken the Lord; they owned their
obligations to obey his will, and pleaded them as a reason for pity. Will not a
man spare his own servants? Though God smote Israel, yet they were his people,
and he had never disowned them, therefore is he entreated to deal favourably
with them. If they might not see the promised land, yet he is begged to cheer
them on the road with his mercy, and to turn his frown into a smile. The prayer
is like others which came from the meek lawgiver when he boldly pleaded with
God for the nation; it is Moses like. He here speaks with the Lord as a man
speaketh with his friend.
Verse
14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy. Since they must die,
and die so soon, the psalmist pleads for speedy mercy upon himself and his
brethren. Good men know how to turn the darkest trials into arguments at the
throne of grace. He who has but the heart to pray need never be without pleas
in prayer. The only satisfying food for the Lord's people is the favour of God;
this Moses earnestly seeks for, and as the manna fell in the morning he
beseeches the Lord to send at once his satisfying favour, that all through the
little day of life they might be filled therewith. Are we so soon to die? Then,
Lord, do not starve us while we live. Satisfy us at once, we pray thee. Our day
is short and the night hastens on, O give us in the early morning of our days
to be satisfied with thy favour, that all through our little day we may be
happy. That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Being filled with divine
love, their brief life on earth would become a joyful festival, and would
continue so as long as it lasted. When the Lord refreshes us with his presence,
our joy is such that no man can take it from us. Apprehensions of speedy death
are not able to distress those who enjoy the present favour of God; though they
know that the night cometh they see nothing to fear in it, but continue to live
while they live, triumphing in the present favour of God and leaving the future
in his loving hands. Since the whole generation which came out of Egypt had
been doomed to die in the wilderness, they would naturally feel despondent, and
therefore their great leader seeks for them that blessing which, beyond all
others, consoles the heart, namely, the presence and favour of the Lord.
Verse
15. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted
us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. None can gladden the heart as
thou canst, O Lord, therefore as thou hast made us sad be pleased to make us
glad. Fill the other scale. Proportion thy dispensations. Give us the lamb,
since thou has sent us the bitter herbs. Make our days as long as our nights.
The prayer is original, childlike, and full of meaning; it is moreover based
upon a great principle in providential goodness, by which the Lord puts the
good over against the evil in due measure. Great trial enables us to bear great
joy, and may be regarded as the herald of extraordinary grace. God's dealings
are according to scale; small lives are small throughout; and great histories
are great both in sorrow and happiness. Where there are high hills there are
also deep valleys. As God provides the sea for leviathan, so does he find a
pool for the minnow; in the sea all things are in fit proportion for the mighty
monster, while in the little brook all things befit the tiny fish. If we have
fierce afflictions we may look for overflowing delights, and our faith may
boldly ask for them. God who is great in justice when he chastens will not be
little in mercy when he blesses, he will be great all through: let us appeal to
him with unstaggering faith.
Verse
16. Let thy work appear unto thy servants. See how he dwells
upon that word servants. It is as far as the law can go, and Moses goes to the
full length permitted him henceforth Jesus calls us not servants but friends,
and if we are wise we shall make full use of our wider liberty. Moses asks for
displays of divine power and providence conspicuously wrought, that all the
people might be cheered thereby. They could find no solace in their own faulty
works, but in the work of God they would find comfort. And thy glory unto their
children. While their sons were growing up around them, they desired to see
some outshinings of the promised glory gleaming upon them. Their Sons were to
inherit the land which had been given them by covenant, and therefore they
sought on their behalf some tokens of the coming good, some morning dawnings of
the approaching noonday. How eagerly do good men plead for their children. They
can bear very much personal affliction if they may but be sure that their
children will know the glory of God, and thereby be led to serve him. We are
content with the work if our children may but see the glory which will result
from it: we sow joyfully if they may reap.
Verse
17. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Even
upon us who must not see thy glory in the land of Canaan; it shall suffice us
if in our characters the holiness of God is reflected, and if over all our camp
the lovely excellences of our God shall cast a sacred beauty. Sanctification
should be the daily object of our petitions. And establish thou the work of our
hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. Let what we
do be done in truth, and last when we are in the grave; may the work of the
present generation minister permanently to the building tip of the nation. Good
men are anxious not to work in vain. They know that without the Lord they can
do nothing, and therefore they cry to him for help in the work, for acceptance
of their efforts, and for the establishment of their designs. The church as a
whole earnestly desires that the hand of the Lord may so work with the hand of
his people, that a substantial, yea, an eternal edifice to the praise and glory
of God may be the result. We come and go, but the Lord's work abides. We are
content to die so long as Jesus lives and his kingdom grows. Since the Lord
abides for ever the same, we trust our work in his hands, and feel that since
it is far more his work than ours he will secure it immortality. When we have
withered like grass our holy service, like gold, silver, and precious stones,
will survive the fire.
EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
TITLE. The
correctness of the title which ascribes the Psalm to Moses is confirmed by its
unique simplicity and grandeur; its appropriateness to his times and
circumstances; its resemblance to the Law in urging the connection between sin
and death; its similarity of diction to the poetical portions of the
Pentateuch, without the slightest trace of imitation or quotation; its marked
unlikeness to the Psalms of David, and still more to those of later date; and
finally, the proved impossibility of plausibly assigning it to any other age or
author.—J.A. Alexander.
Title. A prayer of
Moses. Moses may be considered as the first composer of sacred hymns.—Samuel
Burder.
Title. The Psalm is
described in the title as a prayer. This description shows, as Amyraldus
saw, that the kernel of the Psalm in the second part, and that the
design of the first is to prepare the way for the second, and lay down a basis
on which it may rest.—E.W. Hengstenberg.
Title. A prayer of
Moses. Moses was an old and much tried man, but age and experience had taught
him that, amidst the perpetual changes which are taking place in the universe,
one thing at least remains immutable, even the faithfulness of him who is
"from everlasting to everlasting God." How far back into the past may
the patriarch have been looking when he spake these words? The burning bush,
the fiery furnace of Egypt, the Red Sea, Pharaoh with his chariots of war, and
the weary march of Israel through the wilderness, were all before him; and in
all of them he had experienced that "God is the Rock, his work perfect,
all his ways judgment" (De 32:4). But Moses was looking beyond these
scenes of his personal history when he said, "Remember the days of old,
consider the years of many generations." (De 32:7), and we may be sure
that he was also looking beyond them when he indited the song, Thou hast
been our dwelling place in all generations. Yes; he was casting in his mind
how God had been the refuge of Jacob and Isaac, of Abraham, Noah, and all the
patriarchs. Moses could take a retrospect of above a thousand years, which had
all confirmed the truth. I can do no more. At this point of time I can look
back to the days of Moses and Joshua and David, and descending thence to the
days of the Son of God upon earth, and of Paul and Peter, and all the saints of
the Church down to the present hour; and what a thousand years avouched to Moses,
three thousand now avouch to me: the Lord is the dwelling place of those that
trust in him from generation to generation. Yes; and to him who was the refuge
of a Moses and an Abraham, I too in the day of trouble can lift my hands.
Delightful thought! That great Being who, during the lapse of three thousand
years, amidst the countless changes of the universe, has to this day remained
unchanged, is MY God.—Augustus F. Theluck, in "Hours of Christian
Devotion", 1870.
Whole
Psalm. Although some difficulties have been started, there seems no
reason to doubt that this Psalm is the composition of Moses. From the remotest
period his name has been attached to it, and almost every Biblical scholar,
from Jerome down to Hengstenberg, has agreed to accept it as a prayer of that
"man of God" whose name it has always carried. If so, it is one of
the oldest poems in the world. Compared with it Homer and Pindar are (so to
speak) modern, and even King David is of recent date. That is to say, compared
with this ancient hymn the other Psalms are as much more modern as Tennyson and
Longfellow are more modern than Chaucer. In either case there are nearly five
centuries between.—James Hamilton.
Whole
Psalm. The 90th Psalm might be cited as perhaps the most sublime of
human compositions—the deepest in feeling—the loftiest in theologic
conception—the most magnificent in its imagery. True is it in its report of
human life—as troubled, transitory, and sinful. True in its conception of the
Eternal—the Sovereign and the Judge; and yet the refuge and hope of men, who,
notwithstanding, the most severe trials of their faith, lose not their
confidence in him; but who, in the firmness of faith, pray for, as if they were
predicting, a near at hand season of refreshment. Wrapped, one might say, in
mystery, until the distant day of revelation should come, there is here
conveyed the doctrine of Immortality; for in the very complaint of the brevity
of the life of man, and of the sadness of these, his few years of trouble, and
their brevity, and their gloom, there is brought into contrast the Divine
immutability; and yet it is in terms of a submissive piety: the thought of a
life eternal is here in embryo. No taint is there in this Psalm of the pride
and petulance—the half uttered blasphemy—the malign disputing or arraignment of
the justice or goodness of God, which have so often shed a venomous colour upon
the language of those who have writhed in anguish, personal or relative. There
are few probably among those who have passed through times of bitter and
distracting woe, or who have stood—the helpless spectators of the miseries of
others, that have not fallen into moods of mind violently in contrast with the
devout and hopeful melancholy which breathes throughout this ode. Rightly
attributed to the Hebrew Lawgiver or not, it bespeaks its remote antiquity, not
merely by the majestic simplicity of its style, but negatively, by the entire
avoidance of those sophisticated turns of thought which belong to a late—a lost
age in a people's intellectual and moral history. This Psalm, undoubtedly, is
centuries older than the moralizing of that time when the Jewish mind had
listened to what it could never bring into a true assimilation with its own
mind—the abstractions of the Greek Philosophy.
With
this one Psalm only in view—if it were required of us to say, in brief, what we
mean by the phrase—"The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry"—we find our
answer well condensed in this sample. This magnificent composition gives
evidence, not merely as to the mental qualities of the writer, but as to the
tastes and habits of the writer's contemporaries, his hearers, and his readers;
on these several points—first, the free and customary command of a
poetic diction, and its facile imagery, so that whatever the poetic soul would utter,
the poet's material is near at hand for his use. There is then that depth of
feeling—mournful, reflective, and yet hopeful and trustful, apart from which
poetry can win for itself no higher esteem than what we bestow upon other
decorative arts, which minister to the demands of luxurious sloth. There
is, moreover, as we might say, underlying this poem, from the first line to the
last, the substance of philosophic thought, apart from which, expressed or
understood, poetry is frivolous, and is not in harmony with the seriousness of
human life: this Psalm is of a sort which Plato would have written, or
Sophocles—if only the one or the other of these minds had possessed a heaven
descended Theology.—Isaac Taylor.
Verse
1. Lord. Observe the change of the divine names in this
Psalm. Moses begins with the declaration of the Majesty of the Lord (Adonai)
but when he arrives at Ps 90:13, he opens his prayer with the Name of grace and
covenanted mercy to Israel—JEHOVAH; and he sums up all in Ps 90:17, with a
supplication for the manifestation of the beauty Men of "the Lord
our God" (JEHOVAH, ELOHIM).—Christopher Wordsworth.
Verse
1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place. Many seem to beg
God's help in prayer, but are not protected by him: they seek it only in a storm,
and when all other means and refuges fail them. But a Christian must maintain
constant communication with God; must dwell in God, not run to him now and
then.—Thomas Manton.
Verse
1. This exordium breathes life, and pertains to a certain hope of the
resurrection and of eternal life. Since he calls God, who is eternal, our
habitation, or to speak more clearly, our place of refuge, to whom fleeing we
may be in safety. For if God is our dwelling place, and God is life, and we
dwellers in him, it necessarily follows, that we are in life, and shall live
for ever... For who will call God the dwelling place of the dead? Who shall
regard him as a sepulchre? He is life; and therefore they also live to whom he
is a dwelling place. After this fashion Moses, in the very introduction, before
he lets loose his horrible thunderings and lightnings, fortifies the trembling,
that they may firmly hold God to be the living dwelling place of the living, of
those that pray to him, and put their trust in him. It is a remarkable
expression, the like of which is nowhere in Sacred Scripture, that God is a dwelling
place. Scripture in other places says the very opposite, it calls men
temples of God, in whom God dwells; "the temple of God is holy", says
Paul, "which temple ye are." Moses inverts this, and affirms, we are
inhabitants and masters in this house. For the Hebrew word Nwem properly
signifies a dwelling place, as when the Scripture says, "In Zion is his
dwelling place", where this word (Maon) is used. But because a house is
for the purpose of safety, it results, that this word has the meaning of a
refuge or place of refuge. But Moses wishes to speak with such great care that
he may shew that all our hopes have been placed most securely in God, and that
they who are about to pray to this God may be assured that they are not
afflicted in this work in vain, nor die, since they have God as a place of
refuge, and the divine Majesty as a dwelling place, in which they may rest
secure for ever. Almost in the same strain Paul speaks, when he says to the
Colossians, "Your life is hid with Christ in God." For it is a much
clearer and more luminous expression to say, Believers dwell in God, than that
God dwells in them. He dwelt also visibly in Zion, but the place is changed.
But because he (the believer), is in God, it is manifest, that he cannot be
moved nor transferred, for God is a habitation of a kind that cannot perish.
Moses therefore wished to exhibit the most certain life, when he said, God is
our dwelling place, not the earth, not heaven, not paradise, but simply God
himself. If after this manner you take this Psalm it will become sweet, and
seem in all respects most useful. When a monk, it often happened to me when I
read this Psalm, that I was compelled to lay the book out of my hand. But I
knew not that these terrors were not addressed to an awakened mind. I knew not
that Moses was speaking to a most obdurate and proud multitude, which neither
understood nor cared for the anger of God, nor were humbled by their
calamities, or even in prospect of death.—Martin Luther.
Verse
1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place, etc. In this
first part the prophet acknowledgeth that God in all times, and in all ages
hath had a special care of his saints and servants, to provide for them all
things necessary for this life; for under the name of "dwelling
place", or mansion house, the prophet understandeth all helps
and comforts necessary for this life, both for maintenance and protection. For
the use of such houses was wont to be not only to defend men from the injury of
the weather, and to keep safely, within the walls and under the roof all other
things necessary for this life, and to be a place of abode, wherein men might
the more commodiously provide for all other things necessary, and walk in some
calling profitable to their neighbour and to the glory of God; but also to
protect them from the violence of brute beasts and rage of enemies. Now the
prophet herein seems to note a special and more immediate providence of God:
(for of all kind of people they seemed to be most forsaken and forlorn); that
whereas the rest of the world seemed to have their habitations and mansions
rooted in the earth, and so to dwell upon the earth; to live in cities and
walled towns in all wealth and state; God's people were as it were without
house and home. Abraham was called out of his own country, from his father's
house, where no doubt he had goodly buildings, and large revenues, and was
commanded by God to live as a foreigner in a strange country, amongst savage
people, that he knew not; and to abide in tents, booths, and cabins, having
little hope to live a settled and comfortable life in any place. In like manner
lived his posterity, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve patriarchs, wandering from
place to place in the land of Canaan; from thence translated into the land of
Egypt, there living at courtesy, and as it were tenants at will, and in such
slavery and bondage, that it had been better for them to have been without
house and home. After this for forty years together (at which time this Psalm
was penned) they wandered up and down in a desolate wilderness, removing from
place to place, and wandering, as it were in a maze. So that of all the people
of the earth, God's own people had hitherto lived as pilgrims and banished
persons, without house or home; and therefore the prophet here professes that
God himself more immediately by his extraordinary providence, for many ages
together had protected them, and been as it were a mansion house unto them;
that is, the more they were deprived of these ordinary comforts of this life,
the more was God present with them, supplying by his extraordinary and
immediate providence what they wanted in regard of ordinary means. The due
consideration of this point may minister matter of great joy and comfort to
such children of God as are thoroughly humbled with the consideration of man's
mortality in general, or of theirs whom they rely and depend upon in special.—William
Bradshaw, 1621.
Verse
1. Our dwelling place. God created the earth for beasts to
inhabit, the sea for fishes, the air for fowls, and heaven for angels and
stars, so that man hath no place to dwell and abide in but God alone.—Giovanni
della Mirandola Pico, 1463-1494.
Verses
1-2. The comfort of the believer against the miseries of this short
life is taken from the decree of their election, and the eternal covenant of
redemption settled in the purpose and counsel of the blessed Trinity for their
behoof, wherein it was agreed before the world was, that the Word to be incarnate,
should be the Saviour of the elect: for here the asserting of the eternity of
God is with relation to his own chosen people; for Thou hast been our
dwelling place in all generations, and thou art God from everlasting to
everlasting, is in substance thus much:—Thou art from everlasting to
everlasting the same unchangeable God in purpose and affection toward us thy
people, and so thou art our God from everlasting, in regard of thy
eternal purpose of love, electing us, and in regard of thy appointing redemption
for us by the Redeemer.—David Dickson.
Verses
1-2. If man be ephemeral, God is eternal.—James Hamilton.
Verses
1-6.
O
Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly,
and so hast always been, from age to age;
Before the hills did intercept the eye,
Or that the frame was up of earthly stage,
One God thou wert, and art, and still shall be;
The line of time, it doth not measure thee.
Both
death and life obey thy holy lore,
And visit in their turns as they are sent;
A thousand years with thee they are no more
Than yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent:
Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep,
And goes and comes, unawares to them that sleep.
Thou
carriest man away as with a tide:
Then down swim all his thoughts that mounted high;
Much like a mocking dream, that will not bide,
But flies before the sight of waking eye;
Or as the grass, that cannot term obtain,
To see the summer come about again.
At
morning, fair it musters on the ground;
At even it is cut down and laid along:
And though it shared were and favour found,
The weather would perform the mower's wrong:
Thus hast thou hanged our life on brittle pins,
To let us know it will not bear our sins.—Francis Bacon.
Verse
2. The earth and the world. The word earth here is
used to denote the world as distinguished either from heaven (Ge 1:1), or from
the sea (Ge 1:10). The term "world" in the original is
commonly employed to denote the earth considered as inhabited, or as
capable of being inhabited, a dwelling place for living beings.—Albert
Barnes.
Verse
2. From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. The
everlastingness of which Moses speaks is to be referred not only to the essence
of God, but also to his providence, by which he governs the world. He intends
not merely that he is, but that he is God.—John Calvin.
Verse
2. Such a God (he says) have we, such a God do we worship, to such a
God do we pray, at whose command all created things sprang into being. Why then
should we fear if this God favours us? Why should we tremble at the anger of
the whole world? If He is our dwelling place, shall we not be safe though the
heavens should go to wrack? For we have a Lord greater than all the world. We
have a Lord so mighty that at his word all things sprang into being. And yet we
are so fainthearted that if the anger of a single prince or king, nay, even of
a single neighbour, is to be borne, we tremble and droop in spirit. Yet in
comparison with this King, all things beside in the whole world are but as the
lightest dust which a slight breath moves from its place, and suffers not to be
still. In this way this description of God is consolatory, and trembling
spirits ought to look to this consolation in their temptations and dangers.—Martin
Luther.
Verse
3. Thou turnest man to destruction, etc. The prophet conceives
of God as of a potter, that having of dust tempered a mass, and framed it into
a vessel, and dried it, doth presently, within a minute or an hour after, dash
it again in pieces, and beat it to dust, in passion as it were speaking unto
it, "Get thee to dust again." The word here translated "destruction",
signifies a beating, or grinding, or pounding of a thing to powder. And the
prophet seems to allude to the third of Genesis, where God speaks of Adam,
"Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return", as if he should say,
O Lord, thou that hast made and framed man of the dust of the earth, thou
beatest him to dust again; and as thou madest him by thy word alone, so with
thy word thou suddenly turnest, and beatest him against to dust; as a man that
makes a thing, and presently mars it again...He doth it with a word, against
which is no resistance, when that word is once come out of his mouth; it is not
all the diet, physic, and help, and prayers in the world that can save the
life. And this he can do suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye. And therefore we
should, as we love our lives, fear him, and take heed how we offend and
displease him that can with a word turn the strongest man into dust.—William
Bradshaw.
Verse
3. Thou turnest man to destruction, etc. The first word for "man",
signifies a man full of misery, full of sickness and infirmities, a miserable
man, vwna. And the other word here used in the end of the verse, signifies a
man made of clay, or of the very slime of the earth. From hence we learn
what is the nature of all men, of all the sons of Adam, viz., a piece of
living clay, a little piece of red earth. And besides that man is
subject to breaking and crushing, every way a miserable man; so
is he of a brittle mould, a piece of red clay, that hath in it for a time a
living soul, which must return to God that gave it; and the body, this piece of
earth, return to the earth from whence it came: and if we had no Scripture at
all to prove this, daily experience before our eyes makes it clear how all men,
even the wisest, the strongest, the greatest and the mightiest monarchs and
princes in the world, be but miserable men, made of red earth, and quickly turn
again to dust.—Samuel Smith, in "Moses his Prayer", 1656.
Verse
3. Thou turnest man to destruction. Augustine says, We walk
amid perils. If we were glass vases we might fear less dangers. What is there
more fragile than a vase of glass? And vet it is preserved, and lasts for
centuries: we therefore are more frail and infirm.—Le Blanc.
Verse
3. Return ye. One being asked what life was? made an answer
answerless, for he presently turned his back and went his way.—John Trapp.
Verse
4. A thousand years, etc. As to a very rich man a thousand
sovereigns are as one penny; so, to the eternal God, a thousand years are as
one day.—John Albert Bengel, 1687-1752.
Verse
4. The Holy Ghost expresses himself according to the manner of men,
to give us some notion of an infinite duration, by a resemblance suited to our
capacity. If a thousand years be but as a day to the life of God, then as a
year is to the life of man, so are three hundred and sixty-five thousand years
to the life of God; and as seventy years are to the life of man, so are
twenty-five millions five hundred and fifty thousand years to the life of God.
Yet still, since there is no proportion between time and eternity, we must dart
our thoughts beyond all these, for years and days measure only the duration of
created things, and of those only that are material and corporeal, subject to
the motion of the heavens, which makes days and years.—Stephen Charnock.
Verse
4. As yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
He corrects the previous clause with an extraordinary abbreviation. For he says
that the whole space of human life, although it may be very long, and reach a
thousand years, yet with God it is esteemed not only as one day, which has
already gone, but is scarcely equal to the fourth part of a night. For the
nights were divided into four watches, which lasted three hours each. And indeed
by the word night, it is meant that human affairs in this life are
involved in much darkness, many errors, dangers, terrors, and sorrows.—Mollerus.
Verse
4. As a watch in the night. The night is wont to appear
shorter than the day, and to pass more swiftly, because those who sleep, says
Euthymius, notice not the lapse of time. On account of the darkness also, it is
less observed; and to those at work the time seems longer, than to those who
have their work done.—Lorinus.
Verse
4. A watch in the night. Sir John Chardin observes in a note
on this verse, that as the people of the East have no clocks, the several parts
of the day and of the night, which are eight in all, are given notice of. In
the Indies, the parts of the night are made known as well by instruments of
music in great cities, as by the rounds of the watchmen, who with cries, and
small drums, give them notice that a fourth part of the night is passed. Now as
these cries awaked those who had slept, all that quarter part of the night, it
appeared to them but as a moment.—Harmer's Observations.
Verse
4.—The ages and the dispensations, the promise to Adam, the
engagement with Noah, the oath to Abraham, the covenant with Moses—these were
but watches, through which the children of men had to wait amid the darkness of
things created, until the morning should dawn of things uncreated. Now is
"the right far spent, and the day at hand."—Plain Commentary.
Verse
5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. Mtmrz (zeram-tam)
thou hast inundated them, namely, the years of man, i.e., thou hast
hurried them away with a flood, thou hast made them to glide away as water, they
will be sleep.—Bythner's "Lyre of David."
Verse
5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. Let us meditate
seriously upon the swift passage of our days, how our life runs away like a
stream of waters, and carrieth us with it. Our condition in the eyes of God in
regard of our life in this world is as if a man that knows not how to swim,
should be cast into a great stream of water, and be carried down with it, so
that he may sometimes lift up his head or his hands, and cry for help, or catch
hold of this thing and that, for a time, but his end will be drowning, and it
is but a small time that he can hold out, for the flood which carries him away
will soon swallow him up. And surely our life here if it be rightly considered,
is but like the life of a person thus violently carried down a stream. All the
actions and motions of our life are but like unto the strivings and struggles
of a man in that case: our eating, our drinking, our physic, our sports, and
all other actions are but like the motions of the sinking man. When we have
done all that we can, die we must, and be drowned in this deluge.—William
Bradshaw.
Verse
5. Away as with a flood. "A man is a bubble", said
the Greek proverb, which Lucian represents to this purpose, saying, "All
the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations like
bubbles. Some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent,
and are hidden in a sheet of water, having no other business in the world but
to be born, that they might be able to die; others float up and down two or
three turns, and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others: and they
that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion, restless
and uneasy, and being crushed in by a great drop from a cloud, sink into
flatness and a froth; the change not being great; it being hardly possible that
a bubble should be more a nothing than it was before."—Jeremy Taylor.
Verse
5. (first clause). The most ancient mode of measuring small
portions of time was by water flowing out of a vessel the clepsydra of the
Greeks and Romans; and Ovid has compared the lapse of time to the flowing of a
river (Metam. 15, 180.)—Stephen Street.
Verse
5. They are as a sleep. For as in the visions of sleep, we
seeing, see not, hearing we hear not, tasting or touching we neither taste nor
touch, speaking we speak not, walking we walk not; but when we seem to employ
movements and gestures, in no respect do we employ them, since the mind vainly
forms without any real objects images of things that exist not, as if they
existed. In this very way, the imaginations of those who are awake closely
resemble dreams; they come, they go, they confront us and flee from us; before
they are seized, they fly away.—Philo, in Le Blanc.
Verse
5. They are as a sleep. Our life may be compared to sleep in
four respects.
1.
In regard of the shortness of it.
2. In regard of the easiness of being put out of it.
3. In regard of the many means to disquiet and break it off.
4. With regard to the many errors in it.
For
the first three. Sleep is but short, and the sweeter it is, the shorter it
seems to be. And as it is but short of itself, though it should last the full
swing of nature; so the soundest sleep is easily broken; the least knock, the
lowest call puts men out of it; and a number of means and occasions there be to
interrupt and break it off. And is it not so with the life of man? Is not the
longest life short? Is it not the shorter, the sweeter and fuller of contents
it is? And is it not easily taken away? Are there not many means to bring us
unto our end? even as many as there are to waken us out of sleep. For the
fourth. How many errors are we subject to in sleep? In sleep the prisoner many
times dreams that he is at liberty; he that is at liberty, that he is in
prison; he that is hungry, that he is feeding daintily; he that is in want,
that he is in great abundance; he that abounds, that he is in great want. How
many in their sleep have thought they have gotten that which they shall be
better for for ever, and when they are even in the hope of present possessing
some such goodly matter, or beginning to enjoy it, or in the midst of their
joy, they are suddenly awaked, and then all is gone with them, and their golden
fancies vanish away in an instant. So for evil and sorrow as well. And is it
not just so in the life of man?—William Bradshaw.
Verse
5. They are like grass. In this last similitude, the prophet
compares men to grass, that as grass hath a time of growing and a time of
withering, even so has man. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up.
In which words Moses compares the former part of man's life, which is the space
of thirty-three years, to the time of growing of grass, and that is accounted
the time of the perfection of man's strength and age; at which age, according
to the course of nature, man flourisheth as grass doth; that is the time of a
man's prime and flourishing estate. But in the evening; that is, when
the grass is ripe, and ready to be cut down, it withereth. Even so man,
being once at his strength, and ripest age, doth not stand at a stay, nor
continueth long so; but presently begins to decay, and to wither away, till old
age comes, and he is cut down by the scythe of death. Now, in that Moses useth
so many similitudes, and all to show how frail this life of man is, we are
taught, that the frailty, vanity, and shortness of man's life is such, that
examples will scarcely shew it. Death comes as a flood, violently and
suddenly; we are as a sleep; we are as grass; our life is like a
dream; we spend our days as a tale that is told, Ps 90:9. All these
similitudes Moses hath in this Psalm, as if he wanted words and examples, how
to express the vanity, frailty, and shortness thereof.—Samuel Smith.
Verse
6. In the morning. This can hardly mean "in early
youth", as some of the Rabbis explain. The words, strictly speaking, are a
part of the comparison ("they are as grass which springeth afresh in the
morning"), and are only thus placed first to give emphasis to the figure.
In the East, one night's rain works a change as if by magic. The field at
evening was brown, parched, arid as a desert; in the morning it is green with
the blades of grass. The scorching hot wind (Jas 1:11) blows upon it, and again
before evening it is withered.—J.J.S. Perowne.
Verse
6. Cut down.
Stout
and strong today,
Tomorrow turned to clay.
This day in his bloom,
The next, in the tomb.
It
is true that to some Death sends his grey harbingers before, and gives them
timely warning of his approach. But in how many cases does he arrive
unannounced, and, lifting up his scythe, mows down the lofty! On shipboard
there is but a plank between us and death; on horseback, but a fall. As we walk
along the streets, death stretches a threatening finger from every tile upon
the roofs! "He comes up into our windows, and enters into our palaces; he
cuts off the children from without, and the young men from the streets."
Jer 9:21. Our life is less than an handbreadth. How soon and how insensibly we
slip into the grave!—Augustus F. Tholuck.
Verse
7. For we are consumed by thine anger. This is a point
disputed by philosophers. They seek for the cause of death, since indeed proofs
of immortality that cannot be despised exist in nature. The prophet replies,
that the chief cause must not be sought in the material, either in a defect of
the fluids, or in a failure of the natural heat; but that God being offended at
the sins of men, hath subjected this nature to death and other infinite
calamities. Therefore, our sins are the causes which have brought down this
destruction. Henee he says, In thine anger we vanish away.—Mollerus.
Verse
7. For we are consumed by thine anger, etc. Whence we may first
of all observe, how they compare their present estate in the wilderness, with
the estate of other nations and people, and shew that their estate was far
worse than theirs: for others died now one, and then one, and so they were
diminished; but for them, they were hastily consumed and suddenly swept away by
the plague and pestilence which raged amongst them. Hence we may observe, first
of all—That it is a ground of humiliation to God's people when their estate is
worse than God's enemies'.Moses gathers this as an argument to humble them, and
to move them to repentance and to seek unto God; viz., that because of their
sins they were in a far worse case and condition than the very enemies of God
were. For though their lives were short, yet they confess that theirs was far
worse than the very heathen themselves, for they were suddenly consumed by
his anger. When God is worse to his own church and people than he is to his
enemies; when the Lord sends wars in a nation called by his name, and peace in
other kingdoms that are anti Christian; sends famine in his church, and plenty
to the wicked; sends the plague and pestilence in his church, and health and
prosperity to the wicked; oh, here is matter of mourning and humiliation; and
it is that which hath touched God's people to the quick, and wounded them to
the heart, to see the enemies of the church in better condition than the church
itself.—Samuel Smith.
Verse
7. By thy wrath are we troubled. The word used by Moses is
much stronger than merely "troubled." It implies being cut off,
destroyed—in forms moreover of overwhelming terror.—Henry Cowles, in
"The Psalms; with Notes." New York, 1872.
Verse
8. God needs no other light to discern our sins by but the light of
his own face. It pierceth through the darkest places; the brightness thereof
enlightens all things, discovers all things. So that the sins that are
committed in deepest darkness are all one to him as if they were done in the
face of the sun. For they are done in his face, that shines more, and from which
proceeds more light than from the face of the sun. So that this ought to make
us the more fearful to offend; he sees us when we see not him, and the light of
his countenance shines about us when we think ourselves hidden in darkness. Our
sins are not only then in his sight when they are a committing and whilst the
deed is doing; but ever after, when the act is past and gone and forgotten, yet
then is it before the face of God, even as if it were in committing: and how
should this make us afraid to sin! When our sins are not only in his sight
while they are a committing, but so continue still for ever after they are past
and done. God sets our sins before him; this shows he is so affected
with them, he takes them so to heart, that he doth in a special manner continue
the remembrance of them. As those that having had great wrong will store it up,
or register it, or keep some remembrance of it or other, lest they should
forget, when time shall serve, to be quit with those that have wronged them: so
doth God, and his so doing is a sign that he takes our sins deeply to heart;
which should teach us to fear the more how we offend him. When God in any
judgment of death, or sickness, or loss of friends, shows his wrath, we should
think and meditate of this; especially when he comes nearest us: Now the Lord
looks upon my sins, they are now before him; and we should never rest till we
have by repentance moved him to blot them out. Yea, to this end we should
ourselves call them to remembrance. For the more we remember them, the more God
forgets them; the more we forget them, the more God remembers them; the more we
look upon them ourselves, the more he turneth his eyes from them.—William
Bradshaw.
Verse
8. It is a well known fact that the appearance of objects, and the ideas
which we form of them, are very much affected by the situation in which they
are placed in respect to us, and by the light in which they are seen. Objects
seen at a distance, for example, appear much smaller than they really are. The
same object, viewed through different mediums, will often exhibit different
appearances. A lighted candle, or a star, appears bright during the absence of
the sun; but when that luminary returns, their brightness is eclipsed. Since
the appearance of objects, and the ideas which we form of them, are thus
affected by extraneous circumstances, it follows, that no two persons will form
precisely the same ideas of any object, unless they view it in the same light,
or are placed with respect to it in the same situation.
Apply
these remarks to the case before us. The psalmist addressing God, says, Thou
hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy
countenance. That is, our iniquities or open transgressions, and our secret
sins, the sins of our hearts, are placed, as it were, full before God's face,
immediately under his eye; and he sees them in the pure, clear, all disclosing
light of his own holiness and glory. Now if we would see our sins as they
appear to him, that is, as they really are, if we would see their number,
blackness and criminality, and the malignity and desert of every sin, we must
place ourselves, as nearly as is possible, in his situation, and look at sin,
as it were, through his eyes. We must place ourselves and our sins in the
centre of that circle which is irradiated by the light of his countenance where
all his infinite perfections are clearly displayed, where his awful majesty is
seen, where his concentrated glories blaze, and burn and dazzle, with
insufferable brightness. And in order to this, we must, in thought, leave our
dark and sinful world, where God is unseen and almost forgotten, and where
consequently, the evil of sinning against him cannot be fully perceived—and
mount up to heaven, the peculiar habitation of his holiness and glory, where he
does not, as here, conceal himself behind the veil of his works, and of second
causes, but shines forth the unveiled God, and is seen as he is.
My
hearers, if you are willing to see your sins in their true colours; if you
would rightly estimate their number, magnitude and criminality, bring them into
the hallowed place, where nothing is seen but the brightness of unsullied
purity, and the splendours of uncreated glory; where the sun itself would
appear only as a dark spot; and there, in the midst of this circle of seraphic
intelligences, with the infinite God pouring all the light of his countenance
round you, review your lives, contemplate your offences, and see how they
appear. Recollect that the God, in whose presence you are, is the Being who
forbids sin, the Being of whose eternal law sin is the transgression, and
against whom every sin is committed.—Edward Payson.
Verse
9. For all our days go back again (wnp) in thy wrath. Hitherto he
has spoken of the cause of that wrath of God which moveth him to smite the
world with such mortality. Now here he further sets forth the same by the
effects thereof in reference to that present argument he hath in hand. 1. That
our days do as it were go backward in his wrath: that whereas God gave us being
to live, our life and our being are nothing else but a going backward, as it
were, to death and to nothing. Even as if a stranger being suddenly rapt and
carried midway to his home, where are all his comforts, he should spend all the
time that is behind, not in going forward to his home, but in going backward to
the place from which he was suddenly brought. All the sons of Adam as soon as
they have being and live are brought suddenly a great part of their way: and
whereas they should go forward and live longer and longer, they from their
first beginning to live go backward again to death and to nothing. This is the
sum in effect of that which the Lord saith in the beginning of the Psalm, (Ps
90:3:) Thou bringest men to destruction; saying, Return again, ye sons of
Adam: as if he should say, Thou makest a man, and when he is made, he in
thy wrath doth haste to nothing else but destruction and to be marred again.
Thus do our days as it were go backward, and we in them return from whence we
came.—William Bradshaw.
Verse
9. When I was in Egypt, three or four years ago, I saw what Moses
himself might have seen, and what the Israelites, no doubt, very often
witnessed:—a crowd of people surrounding a professed story teller, who was
going through some tale, riveting the attention and exciting the feelings of
those who listened to him. This is one of the customs of the East. It naturally
springs up among any people who have few books, or none; where the masses are
unable to read, and where, therefore, they are dependent for excitement or
information on those who can address the ear, and who recite, in prose or
verse, traditionary tales and popular legends. I dare say this sort of thing
would be much in repute among the Israelites themselves during their detention
in the wilderness, and that it served to beguile for them many a tedious hour.
It is by this custom, then, that we venture to illustrate the statement of the
text. The hearing of a story is attended by a rapid and passing interest—it
leaves behind it a vague impression, beyond which comparatively but few
incidents may stand out distinctly in the after thought. In our own day even,
when tales are put into printed books, and run through three or four volumes,
we feel when we have finished one, how short it appears after all, or how short
the time it seemed to take for its perusal. If full of incident, it may seem
sometimes long to remember, but we generally come to the close with a sort of
feeling that says, "And so that's all." But this must have been much
more the case with the tales "that were told." These had to be
compressed into what could be repeated at one time, or of which three or four
might be given in an evening or an hour. The story ended; and then came the
sense of shortness, brevity, the rapid flight of the period employed by it,
with something like a feeling of wonder and dissatisfaction at the discovery of
this. "For what is your life? It is even as a vapour, that appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away."—Thomas Binney.
Verse
9. As a tale. The grace whereof is brevity.—John
Trapp.
Verse
9. As a tale that is told. The Chaldee has it, like the
breath of our mouth in winter.—Daniel Cresswell.
Verse
9. The thirty-eight years, which after this they were away in the
wilderness, were not the subject of the sacred history, for little or nothing
is recorded of that which happened to them from the second year to the
fortieth. After they came out of Egypt, their time was perfectly trifled away,
and was not worthy to be the subject of a history, but only of a tale that
is told; for it was only to pass away time like telling stories, that they
spent those years in the wilderness; all that while they were in the consuming,
and another generation was in the rising...The spending of our years is like the
telling of a tale. A year when it is past is like a tale when it is told. Some
of our years are as a pleasant story, others as a tragical one; most mixed, but
all short and transient; that which was long in the doing may be told in a
short time.—Matthew Henry.
Verse
9. We spend our year as a tale that is told, or, as a
meditation (so some translate) suddenly or swiftly: a discourse is quickly
over, whether it be a discourse from the mouth, or in the mind; and of the two
the latter is far the more swift and nimble of foot. A discourse in our
thoughts outruns the sun, as much as the sun outruns a snail; the thoughts of a
man will travel the world over in a moment; he that now sits in this place, may
be at the world's end in his thoughts, before I can speak another word.—Joseph
Caryl.
Verse
9. We spend our years as a tale that is told. This seems to
express both a necessary fact and a censure. The rapid consumption of our
years—their speedy passing away, is inevitable. But they may be spent also in a
trifling manner to little valuable purpose, which would complete the
disconsolate reflection on them, by the addition of guilt and censure.—John
Foster, 1768-1843.
Verse
9. As a tale that is told. In the Hebrew it is hgx-wmk, sicut
meditatio, (as a meditation) and so we read it in the margin, as if
all our years were little else than a continual meditation upon the things of
this world. Indeed, much of man's time is spent in this kind of vain
meditation, as how to deceive and play fast and loose for advantage; such a
meditation had they, Isa 59:13, or meditating with the heart lying words; the
same word in the Hebrew as in my text; or how to heap up riches, such a
meditation had that covetous man in the gospel, Lu 12:17; or how to violate the
sacred bonds of religion and laws of God, such a meditation had they, Ps 2:1-3;
and in such vain meditations as these do men spend their years "as a tale
that is told." . . . To close this point with Gregory Nazianzen. What are
we but a vain dream that hath no existence or being, a mere phantasm or
apparition that cannot be held, a ship sailing in the sea which leaves no
impression or trace behind it, a dust, a vapour, a morning dew, a flower
flourishing one day and fading another, yea, the same day behold it springing
and withered, but my text adds another metaphor from the flying of a bird, and
we fly away, not go and run but fly, the quickest motion that any corporeal
creature hath. Our life is like the fight of a bird, it is here now and it is
gone out of sight suddenly. The Prophet therefore speaking of the speedy
departure of Ephraim's glory expresses it thus, "It shall flee away like a
bird", Ho 9:11; and Solomon saith the like of riches, "they make
themselves wings and flee away like an eagle toward heaven": Pr 23:5. David
wished for the wings of a dove that he might flee away and be at rest and good
cause he had for it, for this life is not more short than miserable. . . . Be
it our care then not to come creeping and coughing to God with a load of
diseases and infirmities about us, when we are at death's door and not before,
but to consecrate the first fruits of our life to his service. It is in the
spending our time (as one compares it) as in the distilling of waters, the
thinnest and purest part runs out first and only the lees at last: what an
unworthy thing will it be to offer the prime of our time to the world, the
flesh, and the devil, and the dregs of it to God. He that forbade the lame and
the blind in beasts to be sacrificed, will not surely allow it in men; if they
come not to present their bodies a living sacrifice, while they are living and
lively too, ere they be lame or blind or deformed with extremity of age, it is
even a miracle if it prove then a holy, acceptable, or reasonable service.—Thomas
Washbourne, 1655.
Verse
9. (second clause). The Hebrew is different from all the
Versions. We consume our years (hgx-wmk kemo hegeh) like a
groan. We live a dying, whining, complaining life, and at last a groan
is its termination!—Adam Clarke.
Verse
9. The Vulgate translation has, Our years pass away like those of
a spider. It implies that our life is as frail as the thread of a spider's
web. Constituted most curiously the spider's web is; but what more fragile? In
what is there more wisdom than in the complicated frame of the human body; and
what more easily destroyed? Glass is granite compared with flesh; and vapours
are rocks compared with life.—C.H.S.
Verse
10. It is soon cut off, and we fly away. At the Witan or
council assembled at Edwin of Northumbria at Godmundingham (modern name
Godmanham), to debate on the mission of Paulinus, the King was thus addressed
by a heathen Thane, one of his chief men:—"The present life of man, O
King, may be likened to what often happens when thou art sitting at supper with
thy thanes and nobles in winter time. A fire blazes on the hearth, and warms
the chamber; outside rages a storm of wind and snow; a sparrow flies in at one
door of thy hall, and quickly passes out at the other. For a moment and while
it is within, it is unharmed by the wintry blast, but this brief season of
happiness over, it returns to that wintry blast whence it came, and vanishes
from thy sight. Such is the brief life of man; we know not what went before it,
and we are utterly ignorant as to what shall follow it. If, therefore, this new
doctrine contain anything more certain, it justly deserves to be
followed."—Bede's Chronicle.
Verse
10. The time of our life is threescore years and ten (saith
Moses), or set it upon the tenters, and rack it to fourscore, though not
one in every fourscore arrives to that account, yet can we not be said to live
so long; for take out, first, ten years for infancy and childhood, which
Solomon calls the time of wantonness and vanity (Ec 11:1-10.), wherein we
scarce remember what we did, or whether we lived or no; and how short it is
then? Take out of the remainder a third part for sleep, wherein like blocks we
lie senseless, and how short is it then? Take out yet besides the time of our
carking and worldly care, wherein we seem both dead and buried in the affairs
of the world, and how short is it then? And take out yet besides, our times of
wilful sinning and rebellion, for while we sin, we live not, but we are
"dead in sin", and what remaineth of life? Yea, how short is it then?
So short is that life which nature allows, and yet we sleep away part, and play
away part, and the cares of the world have a great part, so that the true
spiritual and Christian life hath little or nothing in the end.—From a
Sermon by Robert Wilkinson, entitled "A Meditation of Mortalitie, preached
to the late Price Henry, some few daies before his death", 1612.
Verse
10. Threescore years and ten. It may at first seem surprising
that Moses should describe the days of man as "Threescore years and
ten." But when it is remembered, that, in the second year of the
pilgrimage in the wilderness, as related in Nu 14:28-39, God declared that all
those who had been recently numbered at Sinai should die in the wilderness,
before the expiration of forty years, the lamentation of Moses on the brevity
of human life becomes very intelligible and appropriate; and the Psalm itself
acquires a solemn and affecting interest, as a penitential confession of the
sins which had entailed such melancholy consequences on the Hebrew nation; and
as a humble deprecation of God's wrath; and as a funeral dirge upon those whose
death had been preannounced by the awful voice of God.—Christopher
Wordsworth.
Verse
10. There have been several gradual abbreviations of man's
life. Death hath been coming nearer and nearer to us, as you may see in the
several ages and periods of the world. Adam, the first of human kind, lived
nine hundred and thirty years. And seven or eight hundred years was a usual
period of man's life before the Flood. But the Sacred History (which hath the
advantage and preeminence of all other histories whatsoever, by reason of its
antiquity) acquaints us that immediately after the Flood the years of man's
life were shortened by no less than half...After the Flood man's life
was apparently shorter than it was before, for they fell from nine hundred,
eight hundred, and seven hundred years to four hundred and three hundred, as we
see in the age of Arphaxad, Salah, Heber: yea, they fell to two hundred and odd
years, as we read of Peleg, Reu, Serug, and Tharah; yea, they came down to less
than two hundred years. In the space of a few years man's life was again cut
shorter by almost half, if not a full half. We read that Abraham lived but one
hundred and seventy-five years, so that man's age ran very low then. See the
account given in Scripture of Nahor, Sarah, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph (who
died at a hundred) which confirms the same. And again the third time,
man's life was shortened by almost another half, viz., about the year of
the World 2,500, in Moses' time. For he sets the bounds of man's life thus:
"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of
strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for
it is soon cut off, and we fly away." Ps 90:10. Eighty years is the utmost
limit he sets man's life at, i.e., in the most ordinary and common
account of man's life. Though some are of the opinion that these words do not
give an account of the duration of man's life in general, but refer to the
short lives of the Israelites in the wilderness, yet I do not see but it may
take in both; and Moses who composed the Psalm, lived a hundred and twenty
years himself, yet he might speak of the common term of man's life, and what
usually happened to the generality of men.—John Edwards.
Verse
10. Their strength is labour and sorrow. Most commonly old age
is a feeble estate; the very grasshopper is a burden to it. Ec 12:5. Even the
old man himself is a burden, to his wife, to his children, to himself. As
Barzillai said to David, "I am this day fourscore years old: and can I
discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat or what I
drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women?"
2Sa 19:35. Old age, we say, is a good guest, and should be made welcome, but
that he brings such a troop with him; blindness, aches, coughs, & c.; these
are troublesome, how should they be welcome? Their strength is labour and
sorrow. If their very strength, which is their best, be labour and grief,
what is their worst?—Thomas Adams.
Verse
10. Their strength is labour and sorrow.
Unnumbered
maladies his joints invade,
Lay siege to life, and press the dire blockade.
—Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784.
Verse
10. Their strength. Properly, the pride of the days of
our life is labour and sorrow—i.e., our days at their best.—Barth's
"Bible Manual".
Verse
10. We fly away.
Bird
of my breast, away!
The long wished hour is come.
On to the realms of cloudless day,
On to thy glorious home!
Long
has been thine to mourn
In banishment and pain.
Return, thou wandering dove, return,
And find thy ark again!
Away,
on joyous wing,
Immensity to range;
Around the throne to soar and sing,
And faith for sight exchange.
Flee,
then, from sin and woe,
To joys immortal flee;
Quit thy dark prison house below,
And be for ever free!
I
come, ye blessed throng,
Your tasks and joys to share;
O, fill my lips with holy song,
My drooping wing upbear.
—Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847.
Verse
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? We may take some
scantling, some measure of the wrath of man, and know how far it can go, and
what it can do, but we can take no measure of the wrath of God, for it is
unmeasurable.—Joseph Caryl.
Verse
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? None at all; and
unless the power of that can be known, it must abide as unspeakable as the love
of Christ which passeth knowledge.—John Bunyan.
Verse
11. Moses, I think, here means, that it is a holy awe of God, an that
alone, which makes us truly and deeply feel his anger. We see that the
reprobate, although they are severely punished, only chafe upon the bit, or
kick against God, or become exasperated, or are stupefied, as if they were
hardened against all calamities; so far are they from being subdued. And though
they are full of trouble, and cry aloud, yet the Divine anger does not so
penetrate their hearts as to abate their pride and fierceness. The minds of the
godly alone are wounded with the wrath of God; nor do they wait for his thunder
bolts, to which the reprobate hold out their hard and iron necks, but they
tremble the very moment when God moves only his little finger. This I consider
to be the true meaning of the prophet.—John Calvin.
Verse
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? etc. The meaning is,
What man doth truly know and acknowledge the power of thine anger, according to
that measure of fear wherewith thou oughtest to be feared? Note hence, how
Moses and the people of God, though they feared God, yet notwithstanding
confess that they failed in respect of that measure of the feat of God which
they ought to have had; for we must not think, but Moses and some of his people
did truly fear God. But yet in regard of the power of God's anger, which was
now very great and grievous, their fear of God was not answerable and
proportionable; then it is apparent that Moses and his people failed in respect
of the measure of the fear of God which they ought to have had, in regard of
the greatness and grievousness of the judgments of God upon them. See, that the
best of God's servants in this life fall short in their fear of God, and so in
all graces of the Spirit; in that love of God, in faith in repentance, and in
obedience, we come short all of us of that which the Lord requires at our
hands. For though we do know God, and that he is a just God, and righteous, and
cannot wink at sin; yet what man is there that so fears before him as he ought
to be feared? what man so quakes at his anger as he should; and is so afraid of
sin as he ought to be? We have no grace here in perfection, but the best faith
is mixed with infidelity; our hope with fear; our joy with sorrow. It is well
we can discern our wants and imperfections, and cry out with the man in the
gospel, "I believe; Lord, help my unbelief!"—Samuel Smith.
Verse
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? No man knows the
power of God's anger, because that power has never yet put itself forth to its
full stretch. Is there, then, no measure of God's wrath—no standard by which we
may estimate its intenseness? There is no fixed measure or standard, but there
is a variable one. The wicked man's fear of God is a measure of the wrath of
God. If we take the man as he may be sometime taken, when the angel of death is
upon him, when the sins of his youth and of his maturer years throng him like
an armed troop, and affright and afflict him—when with all his senses keenly
alive to the rapid strides of bodily decay, he feels that he must die, and yet
that he is not prepared—why, it may come to pass, it does occasionally, though
not always come to pass, that his anticipations of the future are literally
tremendous. There is such a fear and such a dread of that God into whose
immediate presence he feels himself about to be ushered, that even they who
love him best, and charm him most, shrink from the wildness of his gaze and the
fearfulness of his speech. And we cannot tell the man, though he may be just
delirious with apprehension, that his fear of God invests the wrath of God with
a darker than its actual colouring. On the contrary, we know that according to
the fear, so is the wrath. We know that if man's fear of God be wrought up to
the highest pitch, and the mind throb so vehemently that its framework threaten
to give way and crumble, we know that the wrath of the Almighty keeps pace with
this gigantic fear. . . .
If
it has happened to you—and there is not perhaps a man on the face of the earth
to whom it does not sometimes happen—if it has ever happened to you to be
crushed with the thought, that a life of ungodliness must issue in an eternity
of woe, and if amid the solitude of midnight and amid the dejections of
sickness there pass across the spirit the fitful figures of all avenging
ministry, then we have to tell you, it is not the roar of battle which is
powerful enough, nor the wail of orphans which is thrilling enough, to serve as
the vehicle of such a communication; we have to tell you, that you fly to a
refuge of lies, if you dare flatter yourselves that either the stillness of the
hour or the feebleness of disease has caused you to invest vengeance with too
much of the terrible. We have to tell you, that the picture was not overdrawn
which you drew in your agony. "According to thy fear, so is thy
wrath." Fear is but a mirror, which you may lengthen indefinitely, and
widen indefinitely, and wrath lengthens with the lengthening and widens with
the widening, still crowding the mirror with new and fierce forms of wasting
and woe. We caution you, then, against ever cherishing the flattering notion,
that fear can exaggerate God's wrath. We tell you, that when fear has done its
worst, it can in no degree come up to the wrath which it images...
Now,
it is easy to pass from this view of the text to another, which is in a certain
sense similar. You will always find, that men's apprehensions of God's wrath
are nicely proportioned to the fear and reverence which are excited in them by
the name and the attributes of God. He will have but light thoughts of future
vengeance, who has but low thoughts of the character and properties of his Creator:
and from this it comes to pass, that the great body of men betray a kind of
stupid insensibility to the wrath of Jehovah...Look at the crowd of the worldly
and the indifferent. There is no fear of God in that crowd; they are "of
the earth earthy." The soul is sepulchred in the body, and has never
wakened to a sense of its position with reference to a holy and avenging
Creator. Now, then, you may understand the absence of all knowledge of the
power of God's wrath. "Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even
according to thy fear, so is thy wrath."—Henry Melvill.
Verse
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? etc. This he utters,
1. By way of lamentation. He sighing forth a most doleful complaint against the
security and stupor he observed in that generation of men in his time, both in
those that had already died in their sins, as well as of that new generation
that had come up in their room, who still lived in their sins; oh, says he,
`Who of them knoweth the power of thine anger?' namely, of that wrath which
followeth after death, and seizes upon men's souls for ever; that is, who
considers it, or regards it, till it take hold upon them? He utters it, 2. In a
way of astonishment, out of the apprehension he had of the greatness of that
wrath. "Who knoweth the power of thine anger?" that is, who
hath or can take it in according to the greatness of it? which he endeavours to
set forth, as applying himself to our own apprehension, in this wise, Even
according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Where those words, "thy
fear" are taken objective, and so signify the fear of thee;
and so the meaning is, that according to whatever proportion our souls can take
in, in fears of thee and of thine anger, so great is thy wrath itself. You have
souls that are able to comprehend vast fears and terrors; they are as extensive
in their fears as in their desires, which are stretched beyond what this World
or the creatures can afford them, to an infinity. The soul of man is a dark
cell, which when it begets fears once, strange and fearful apparitions rise up
in it, which far exceed the ordinary proportion of worldly evils (which yet
also our fears usually make greater than they prove to be); but here, as to
that punishment which is the effect of God's own immediate wrath, let the soul
enlarge itself, says he, and widen its apprehension to the utmost; fear what
you can imagine, yet still God's wrath, and the punishment it inflicts, are not
only proportionable, but infinitely exceedingly all you can fear or imagine. "Who
knoweth the power of thine anger?" It passeth knowledge.—Thomas
Goodwin.
Verse
12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom. Moses who was learned in all the sciences of the Egyptians
(among which arithmetic was one) desireth to learn this point of arithmetic
only of thee, O Lord; and why? Is it because, as Job speaketh, thou hast
determined the number of his days? Would Moses have thee reveal to every man
the moment of his end? Such speculations may well beseem an Egyptian, an Israelite
they do not beseem. Thy children, O Lord, know that it is not for them so to
know times and seasons which thou keepest in thine own power, and are a secret
sealed up with thee: we should not pry into that counting house, nor curiously
inquire into that sum. It is not then a mathematical numbering of days that
Moses would be schooled in, but a moral; he would have God not simply to teach
him to number, but to number "so"; and "so"
points out a special manner, a manner that may be useful for the children of
God. And indeed our petitions must bear this mark of profitable desires, and we
should not ask aught of thee but that by which (if we speed) we may become the
better; he that so studies his mortality learns it as he should, and it is only
thou, O Lord, that takest him out such a lesson. But what is the use, O Moses,
that thou wouldst have man make of such a knowledge? "Even to apply his
heart unto wisdom." O happy knowledge, by which a man becomes wise;
for wisdom is the beauty of a reasonable soul. God created him therewith, but
sin hath divorced the soul and wisdom; so that a sinful man is indeed no better
than a fool, so the Scripture calleth him; and well it may call him so, seeing
all his carriage is vain, and the upshot of his endeavours but vexation of
spirit. But though sin have divorced wisdom and the soul, yet are they not so
severed but they may be reunited; and nothing is more powerful in furthering
this union than this feeling meditation—that we are mortal.—Arthur Lake.
Verse
12. So teach us, etc. Moses sends you to God for teaching.
"Teach Thou us; not as the world teacheth—teach Thou us." No meaner
Master; no inferior school; not Moses himself except as he speaks God's word
and becomes the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ; not the prophets, not
apostles themselves, neither "holy men of old", except as they
"spake and were moved by the Holy Ghost." This knowledge comes not
from flesh and blood, but from God. "So teach Thou us." And so David
says, "Teach me Thy way, O Lord, and I will walk in Thy truth." And
hence our Lord's promise to his disciples, "The Holy Ghost, He shall teach
you all things."—Charles Richard Summer, 1850.
Verse
12. Teach us to number our days. Mark what it is which Moses
here prays for, only to be taught to number his days. But did he not do this
already? Was it not his daily work this, his constant and continual employment?
Yes, doubtless it was; yea, and he did it carefully and conscientiously too.
But yet he thought he did it not well enough, and therefore prays here in the
text to be taught to do better. See a good man, how little he pleaseth himself
in any action of his life, in any performance of duty that he does. He can
never think that he does well enough whatever he does, but still desires to do
otherwise, and would fain do better. There is an affection of modesty and
humility which still accompanies real piety, and every pious man is an humble,
modest man, and never reckons himself a perfect proficient, or to be advanced
above a teaching, but is content and covetous to be a continual learner; to
know more than he knows and to do better than he does; yea, and thinks it no
disparagement to his graces at all to take advice, and to seek instruction
where it is to be had.—Edm. Barker's Funeral Sermon for Lady Capell, 1661.
Verse
12. Teach us to number our days.
"Improve
Time in time, while the Time doth last.
For all Time is no time, when the Time is past."
—From
Richard Pigot's "Life of Man, symbolised by the Months of the Year",
1866.
Verse
12. Teach us to number our days. The proverbial oracles of our
parsimonious ancestors have informed us that the fatal waste of fortune is by
small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our
caution, and which we never suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same
kind is prodigality of life: he that hopes to look back hereafter with
satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single
minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.
An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto that time was his estate; an
estate, indeed, that will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always
abundantly repay the labours of industry, and satisfy the most extensive
desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun
by noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.—Samuel Johnson.
Verse
12. To number our days, is not simply to take the reckoning
and admeasurement of human life. This has been done already in Holy Scripture, where
it is said, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if
by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and
sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." Nor yet is it, in
the world's phrase, to calculate the chances of survivorship, which any man may
do in the instance of the aggregate, but which no man can do in the case of the
individual. But it is to take the measure of our days as compared with the work
to be performed, with the provision to be laid up for eternity, with the
preparation to be made for death, with the precaution to be taken against
judgment. It is to estimate human life by the purposes to which it should be
applied, by the eternity to which it must conduct, and in which it shall at last
be absorbed. Under this aspect it is, that David contemplates man when he says,
"Thou hast made our days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing
before thee", Ps 39:5; and then proceeds to include in this
comprehensive estimate even those whose days have been the longest upon earth:
"Verily, every man at his best estate is altogether vanity."—Thomas
Dale, 1847.
Verse
12. To number our days. Number we our days by our daily
prayers—number we them by our daily obedience and daily acts of love—number we
them by the memories that they bring of holy men who have entered into their
Saviour's peace, and by the hopes which are woven with them of glory and of
grace won for us!—Plain Commentary.
Verse
12. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. Sir Thomas Smith, secretary
to Queen Elizabeth, some months before his death said, That it was a great pity
men know not to what end they were born into this world, until they were ready
to go out of it.—Charles Bradbury.
Verse
12. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. St. Austin says, "We
can never do that, except we number every day as our last day." Many put
far the evil day. They refuse to leave the earth, when the earth is about to
take its leave of them.—William Secker.
Verse
12. Apply our hearts unto wisdom. Moses speaketh of wisdom
as if it were physic, which doth no good before it be applied; and the part to
apply it to is the heart, where all man's affections are to love it and
to cherish it, like a kind of hostess. When the heart seeketh it findeth, as
though it were brought unto her, like Abraham's ram. Therefore God saith,
"They shall seek me and find me, because they shall seek me with their
hearts", Jer 29:13; as though they should not find him with all their
seeking unless they did seek him with their heart. Therefore the way to get
wisdom is to apply your hearts unto it, as if it were your calling and living,
to which you were bound aprentices. A man may apply his ears and his eyes as
many truants do to their books, and yet never prove scholars; but from that day
when a man begins to apply his heart unto wisdom, he learns more in a month
after than he did in a year before, nay, than ever he did in his life. Even as
you see the wicked, because they apply their hearts to wickedness, how fast
they proceed, how easily and how quickly they become perfect swearers, expert
drunkards, cunning deceivers, so if ye could apply your hearts as thoroughly to
knowledge and goodness, you might become like the apostle which teacheth you.
Therefore, when Solomon sheweth men the way how to come by wisdom, he speaks
often of the heart, as, "Give thine heart to wisdom", "let
wisdom enter into thine heart", "get wisdom", "keep
wisdom", "embrace wisdom", Pr 2:10 4:5 8:8, as though a man went
a wooing for wisdom. Wisdom is like God's daughter, that he gives to the man
that loves her, and sueth for her, and means to set her at his heart. Thus we
have learned how to apply knowledge that it may do us good; not to our ears,
like them which hear sermons only, nor to our tongues, like them which make table
talk of religion, but to our hearts, that we may say with the virgin, "My
heart doth magnify the Lord", Lu 1:46, and the heart will apply it to the
ear and to the tongue, as Christ saith, "Out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaketh," Mt 12:34.—Henry Smith.
Verse
12. Of all arithmetical rules this is the hardest—to number our
days. Men can number their herds and droves of oxen and of sheep, they can
estimate the revenues of their manors and farms, they can with a little pains
number and tell their coins, and yet they are persuaded that their days are
infinite and innumerable and therefore do never begin to number them. Who saith
not upon the view of another, surely yonder man looketh by his countenance as
if he would not live long, or yonder woman is old, her days cannot be many:
thus we can number other men's days and years, and utterly forget our own,
therefore this is the true wisdom of mortal men, to number their own days.—Thomas
Tymme.
Verse
12. Observe here, after that Moses had given us a description of the
wrath of God, presently his thoughts are taken up with the meditation of death.
The wrath of God thought on makes us think of death...Let us often think of the
wrath of God, and let the thought of it so far work upon us, as to keep us in a
constant awe and fear of God; and let this fear drive us to God by prayer, that
fearing as we ought, we may pray as we are commanded, and praying, we may
prevent the wrath of God. If our present sorrows do not move us, God will send
greater; and when our sorrows are grown too great for us, we shall have little
heart or comfort to pray. Let our fears then quicken our prayers; and let our
prayers be such as are able to overcome our fears; so both ways shall we be
happy, in that our fears have taught us to pray, and our prayers have made us
to fear no more.—Christopher Shute, in "Ars pie moriendi: or, The true
Accomptant. A Sermon", etc., 1658.
Verse
12. It is evident, that the great thing wanted to make men provide
for eternity, is the practical persuasion that they have but a short time to
live. They will not apply their hearts unto wisdom until they are brought to
the numbering of their days. And how are you to be brought, my brethren? The
most surprising thing in the text is, that it should be in the form of a
prayer. It is necessary that God should interfere to make men number their
days. We call this surprising. What! is there not enough to make us feel our
frailty, without an actual, supernatural impression? What! are there not
lessons enough of that frailty without any new teaching from above? Go into our
churchyards—all ages speak to all ranks. Can we need more to prove to us the
uncertainty of life? Go into mourning families, and where are they not to be
found?—in this it is the old, in that it is the young, whom death has
removed—and is there not eloquence in tears to persuade us that we are mortal?
Can it be that in treading every day on the dust of our fathers, and meeting
every day with funerals of our brethren, we shall not yet be practically taught
to number our days, unless God print the truth on our hearts, through some
special operation of his Spirit? It is not thus in other things. In other
things the frequency of the occurrence makes us expect it. The husbandman does
not pray to be made believe that the seed must be buried and die before it will
germinate. This has been the course of the grain of every one else, and where
there is so much experience what room is there for prayer. The mariner does not
pray to be taught that the needle of his compass points towards the north. The
needle of every compass has so pointed since the secret was discovered, and he
has not to ask when he is already so sure. The benighted man does not pray to
be made to feel that the sun will rise in a few hours. Morning has succeeded to
night since the world was made, and why should he ask what he knows too welt to
doubt? But in none of these things is there greater room for assurance than we
have each one for himself, in regard to its being appointed to him once to die.
Nevertheless, we must pray to be! made to know—to be made to feel—that we are
to die, in the face of an experience which is certainly not less than that of
the parties to whom we have referred. This is a petition that we may believe,
believe as they do: for they act on their belief in the fact which this
experience incontestably attests. And we may say of this, that it is amongst
the strangest of the strange things that may be affirmed of human nature, that
whilst, in regard to inferior concerns, we can carefully avail ourselves of
experience, taking care to register its decisions and to deduce from them rules
for our guidance—in the mightiest concern of all we can act as though
experience had furnished no evidence, and we were left without matter from which
to draw inferences. And, nevertheless, in regard to nothing else is the
experience so uniform. The grain does not always germinate—but every man dies.
The needle does not always point due north—but every man dies. The sun does not
cross the horizon in every place in every twenty-four hours—but every man dies.
Yet we must pray—pray as for the revelation of a mystery hidden from our
gaze—we must pray to be made to know—to be made to believe—that every man dies!
For I call it not belief, and our text calls it not belief, in the shortness of
life and the certainty of death, which allows men to live without thought of
eternity, without anxiety as to the soul, or without an effort to secure to
themselves salvation. I call it not belief—no, no, anything rather than belief.
Men are rational beings, beings of forethought, disposed to make provision for
what they feel to be inevitable; and if there were not a practical infidelity
as to their own mortality, they could not be practically reckless as to their
own safety.—Henry Melvill.
Verse
12. So teach us to number our days, etc. Five things I note in
these words: first, that death is the haven of every man; whether he sit on the
throne, or keep in a cottage, at last he must knock at death's door, as all his
fathers have done before him. Secondly, that man's time is set, and his bounds
appointed, which he cannot pass, no more than the Egyptians could pass the sea;
and therefore Moses saith, "Teach us to number our days", as
though there were a number of our days. Thirdly, that our days are few, as
though we were sent into this world but to see it; and therefore Moses,
speaking of our life, speaks of days, not of years, nor of months, nor of
weeks; but "Teach us to number our days", shewing that it is
an easy thing even for a man to number his days, they be so few. Fourthly, the
aptness of man to forget death rather than anything else; and therefore Moses
prayeth the Lord to teach him to number his days, as though they were still
slipping out of his mind. Lastly, that to remember how short a time we have to
live, will make us apply our hearts to that which is good.—Henry Smith.
Verse
12. Our hearts. In both the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament, the term "heart" is applied alike to the mind that
thinks, to the spirit that feels, and the will that acts. And it here stands
for the whole mental and moral nature of man, and implies that the whole soul
and spirit, with all their might, are to be applied in the service of wisdom.—William
Brown Keer, 1863.
Verse
12. Wisdom. I consider this "wisdom"
identical with the hypostatic wisdom described by Solomon, Pr 8:15-31,
and Pr 9:1,5, even Immanuel, the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption of his people. The chief pursuit of life should be the
attainment of an experimental knowledge of Christ, by whom "kings reign
and princes decree justice; whose delights are with the sons of men, and who
crieth, Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord;
come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled." David
in the Psalms, and Solomon, his son, in the Proverbs, have predictively
manifested Messiah as the hypostatic wisdom, "whose goings forth
have been from of old, from everlasting."—J.N. Coleman.
Verse
13. Let it repent thee. According to the not infrequent and
well known phraseology of Scripture, God is said to repent, when putting away
men's sorrow, and affording new ground of gladness, he appears as it were to be
changed.—John Calvin.
Verse
14. O satisfy us with thy mercy. A poor hungry soul lying
under sense of wrath, will promise to itself happiness for ever, if it can but
once again find what it hath sometime felt; that is, one sweet fill of God's
sensible mercy towards it.—David Dickson.
Verse
14. O satisfy us. That is everywhere and evermore the cry of
humanity. And what a strange cry it is, when you think of it, brethren! Man is
the offspring of God; the bearer of his image; he stands at the head of the
terrestrial creation; on earth he is peerless; he possesses wondrous capacities
of thought, and feeling, and action. The world, and all that is in it, has been
formed in a complete and beautiful adaptation to his being. Nature seems to be
ever calling to him with a thousand voices, to be glad and rejoice; and yet he
is unsatisfied, discontented, miserable! This is a most strange thing—strange,
that is, on any theory respecting man's character and condition, but that which
is supplied by the Bible; and it is not only a testimony to the ruin of his
nature, but also to the insufficiency of everything earthly to meet his
cravings.—Charles M. Merry, 1864.
Verse
14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be
glad all our days. We pass now to this particular prayer, and those limbs
that make up the body of it. They are many; as many as words in it: satisfy,
and satisfy us, and do that early, and do that with that which is thine, and
let that be mercy. So that first it is a prayer for fulness and satisfaction,—satisfy:
and then it is a prayer not only of appropriation to ourselves, satisfy me, but
of a charitable dilation and extension to others, satisfy us, all us,
all thy servants, all thy church; and then thirdly it is a prayer of despatch
and expedition, "Satisfy us early; "and after that, it is a
prayer of evidence and manifestation, satisfy us with that which is, and which
we may discern to be thine; and then lastly it is a prayer of limitation
even upon God himself, that God will take no other way herein but the way of "mercy."
"Satisfy us early with thy mercy."...There is a spiritual fulness
in this life of which St. Hierome speaks, Ebrietas felix, satietas
salutaris, A happy excess and a wholesome surfeit; quoe quanto copiosius
sumitur, majorem donat sobrietatem, In which the more we eat, the more
temperate we are, and the more we drink, the more sober. In which (as St.
Bernard also expresses it in his mellifluence) Mutua interminabili
inexplicabili generatione, desiderium generat satietatem, et satietas parit
desiderium, By a mutual and reciprocal, by an undeterminable and
inexpressible generation of one another, the desire of spiritual graces begets
a satiety, and then this satiety begets a farther desire. This is a holy
ambition, a sacred covetousness. Naphtali's blessing, "O Naphtali,
satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of the Lord", De
33:23; St. Stephen's blessing, "Full of faith and of the Holy
Ghost", Ac 6:5; the blessed Virgin's blessing, "Full of
grace"; Dorcas' blessing, "Full of good works and of alms
deeds", Ac 9:36; the blessing of him who is blessed above all, and who
blesseth all, even Christ Jesus, "Full of wisdom, full of the Holy
Ghost, full of grace and truth". Lu 2:40 4:1 Joh 1:14. ..."Satisfy
us early with" that which is thine, "thy mercy; "for
there are mercies (in a fair extent and accommodation of the word, that is
refreshing, eases, deliverances), that are not his mercies, nor his
satisfactions...It is not his mercy, except we go by good ways to good ends;
except our safety be established by alliance with his friends, except our peace
may be had with the perfect continuance of our religion, there is no safety,
there is no peace. But let me feel the effect of this prayer, as it is a prayer
of manifestation, let me discern that that which is done upon me is done by the
hand of God, and I care not what it be, I had rather have God's vinegar, than
man's oil, God's wormwood, than man's manna, God's justice, than any man's
mercy; for therefore did Gregory Nyssen call St. Basil in a holy sense,
Ambidextrum, because he took everything that came by the right handle, and with
the right hand, because he saw it come from God. Even afflictions are welcome
when we see them to be his: though the way that he would choose, and the way
that this prayer entreats, be only mercy, "Satisfy us early with thy
mercy."—John Donne.
Verse
16. And thy glory unto their children. That is to say, that
our children may see the glorious fruit of this affliction in us, that so they
may not be discouraged thereby to serve thee, but rather the more heartened,
when they shall see what a glorious work thou hast wrought in and upon us by
afflicting us.—William Bradshaw.
Verse
16-17. "Thy work." "The work of our hands." You will
observe a beautiful parallelism between two things which are sometimes
confounded and sometimes too jealously sundered: I mean God's agency and
man's instrumentality, between man's personal activity and that power of
God which actuates and animates, and gives it a vital efficacy. For forty years
it had been the business of Moses to bring Israel into a right state
politically, morally, religiously: that had been his work, And
yet, in so far as it was to have any success or enduringness, it must be God's
work. "The work of our hands" do thou establish; and this God does
when, in answer to prayer, he adopts the work of his servants, and makes it his
own "work", his own "glory", his own "beauty."—James
Hamilton.
Verse
16-17. There is a twofold Rabbinical tradition respecting this verse and
the preceding one; that they were the original prayer recited by Moses as a
blessing on the work of making the Tabernacle and its ornaments, and that
subsequently he employed them as the usual formula of benediction for any newly
undertaken task, whenever God's glorious Majesty was to be consulted for
an answer by Urim and Thummim.—Lyranus, R. Shelomo, and Genebrardus, quoted
by Neale.
Verses
16-17. They were content to live and to die as pilgrims, provided only
they could feel that in his sterner dealings with them, God was, however
slowly, preparing the way for that display of glorious blessedness which should
be the lot of their descendants. In a similar spirit they ask God to establish
the work of their hands, though they reckoned not that they should behold its
results. Their comfort in sowing was the belief that their children would
reap.—Joseph Francis Thrupp.
Verses
16-17. It is worthy of notice that this prayer was answered. Though the
first generation fell in the wilderness, yet the labours of Moses and his
companions were blessed to the second. These were the most devoted to God of
any generation that Israel ever saw. It was of them that the Lord said, "I
remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when
thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown. Israel
was holiness unto the Lord, and the first fruits of his increase." It was
then that Balaam could not curse, but, though desirous of the wages of
unrighteousness, was compelled to forego them, and his curse was turned into a
blessing. We are taught by this case, amidst temporal calamities and judgments,
in which our earthly hopes may be in a manner extinguished, to seek to have the
loss repaired by spiritual blessings. If God's work does but appear to us, and
our posterity after us, we need not be dismayed at the evils which afflict the
earth.—Andrew Fuller.
Verse
17. Let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us, etc. Let us
try to look at our life's work in relation to the Lord's beauty. Our work and
Divine Beauty, at first sight, how different; yet, on deeper insight, how truly
one, how inseparably united. There is light so beauty giving, that nothing it
touches is positively ugly. In our sea girt island, with our fickle climate and
grey atmosphere, we can only rarely imagine what magic power the serene skies,
the balmy air, the sunny atmosphere of the South have over even the least
interesting object in nature; but from certain hours, in certain places, I
think we may form an idea of the transforming faculty of light. There is also
spiritual light, so beauty inspiring, that the plainest face within which it is
born is illumined with singular loveliness, which wins its way into many a
heart. Who of us has not marvelled at an unexpected light, in what we had
always thought an uninteresting face? Who has not beheld a light divine
irradiate the human countenance, giving joy, and prophesying perfection, where
we had least thought to find beauty? May we not take these facts as emblems,
albeit faint and imperfect, of what the "Beauty of the Lord"
does for us, and our work? You know what the natural light can do for material
objects; you know what mental and moral light can work for human faces; rise
from these, and know what spiritual light, Divine Light, can do for immortal
beings and immortal works.—Jessie Coombs, in "Thoughts for the Inner
Life", 1867.
Verse
17. The beauty of the Lord. In the word Men (beauty) there is
something like a deluge of grace. Thus far, he says, we have sought thy work, O
Lord. There we do nothing, but are only spectators and recipients of thy gifts,
we are merely passive. There thou showest thyself to us, and makest us safe, by
thy work alone, which thou doest, when thou dost liberate us from that disease
which Satan inflicted on the whole human race in Adam, to wit, Sin and Eternal
death.—Martin Luther.
Verse
17. God is glorified and his work advances when his church is
beautiful. The beauty of the Lord is the beauty of holiness,—that beauty
which in the Lord Jesus himself shone with lustre so resplendent, and which
ought to be repeated or reflected by every disciple. And it is towards this
that all amongst us who love the Saviour, and who long for the extension of his
Kingdom, should very mainly direct their endeavours. Nothing can be sadder than
when preaching or personal effort is contradicted and neutralized by the low or
unlovely lives of those who pass for Christians; and nothing can go further to
insure success than when prayer is carried out and preaching is seconded by the
pure, holy, and benevolent lives of those who seek to follow the Lamb
whithersoever he goeth.—James Hamilton.
Verse
17. The work of our hands. Jarchi interprets this of the work
of the Tabernacle, in which the hands of the Israelites were employed in the
wilderness; so Arama of the Tabernacle of Bezaleel.—John Gill.
HINTS TO THE
VILLAGE PREACHER
Verse
1. The near and dear relation between God and his people, so that
they mutually dwell in each other.
Verse
1. The abode of the church the same in all ages; her relation to God
never changes.
Verse
1.
1.
The soul is at home in God. (a) Originally. Its birth place—its native air—home
of its thoughts, will, conscience, affections, desires. (b) Experimentally.
When it returns here it feels itself at home: "Return unto thy rest",
etc. (c) Eternally. The soul, once returned to this home, never leaves it:
"it shall go no more out for ever."
2.
The soul is not at home elsewhere. "Our dwelling place", etc. (a) For
all men. (b) At all times. He is ever the same, and the wants of the soul
substantially are over the same.—G.R.
Verse
2. A Discourse upon the Eternity of God. S. Charnock. Works pg
344-373, Nichol's Edition.
Verse
2. (last clause).—The consideration of God's eternity may
serve,
1.
For the support of our faith; in reference to our own condition for the future;
in reference to our posterity; and to the condition of God's church to the end
of the world.
2.
For the encouragement of our obedience. We serve the God who can give us an
everlasting reward.
3.
For the terror of wicked men.
—Tillotson's
Sermon on the Eternity of God.
Verse
3.
1.
The cause of death—"thou turnest."
2.
The nature of death—"return."
3.
The necessities of death—reconciliation with God, and preparation to return.
Verse
4.
1.
Contemplate the lengthened period with all its events.
2. Consider what He must be to whom all this is as nothing.
3. Consider how we stand towards Him.
Verse
5. Comparison of mortal life to sleep. See William Bradshaw's
remarks in our Notes on this verse.
Verses
5-6. The lesson of the Meadows.
1.
Grass growing the emblem of youth.
2. Grass flowering—or man in his prime.
3. The scythe.
4. Grass mown—or man at death.
Verse
7.
1.
Man's chief troubles are the effect of death. (a) His own death. (b) The death
of others.
2.
Death is the effect of Divine anger: "We are consumed by", etc.
3.
Divine anger is the effect of sin. Death by sin.—G.R.
Verse
8.
1.
The notice which God takes of sin. (a) Individual. "Our
iniquities." (b) Universal notice—"iniquities"—not one only, but
all. (c) Minute, even the most secret sins. (d) Constant: "Set them
before" him—"in the light", etc.
2.
The notice which we should take of them on that account. (a) In our thoughts.
Set them before us. (b) In our consciences. Condemn ourselves on account of
them. (c) In our wills. Turn from them by repentance—turn to a pardoning God by
faith.—G.R.
Verse
9.
1.
Every man has a history. His life is as a tale—a separate tale—to be told.
2.
Every man's history has some display of God in it. All our days, some may say,
are passed away in thy wrath—all, others may say, in thy love—and others, some
of our days in anger and some in love.
3.
Every man's history will be told. In death, at judgment, through eternity.—G.R.
Verse
10.
1.
What life is to most. It seldom reaches its natural limits. One half die
in childhood; more than half of the other half die in manhood; few attain to
old age.
2.
What life is at most. "Threescore years", etc.
3.
What it is to most beyond that limit. "If by reason", etc.
4.
What it is to all. "It is soon cut off", etc.—G.R.
Verse
11.
1.
The anger of God against sin is not fully known by its effects in this life.
"Who knoweth the power", etc. Here we see the hiding of its power.
2.
The anger of God against sin hereafter is equal to our greatest fears.
"According to thy fear", etc.; or, "the fear of thee",
etc.—G.R.
Verse
12.
1.
The Reckoning. (a) What their usual number. (b) How many of them are already
spent. (c) How uncertain the number that remains. (d) How much of them must be
occupied with the necessary duties of this life. (e) What afflictions and
helplessness may attend them.
2.
The use to be made of it. (a) To "seek wisdom"—not riches, worldly
honours, or pleasures—but wisdom; not the wisdom of the world, but of God. (b)
To "apply the heart" to it. Not mental merely, but moral wisdom; not
speculative merely, but experimental; not theoretical merely, but practical.
(c) To seek it at once—immediately. (d) To seek it constantly—"apply
our hearts", etc.
3.
The help to be sought in it. "So teach us", etc. (a) Our own ability
is insufficient through the perversion both of the mind and heart by sin. (b)
Divine help may be obtained. "If any man lack wisdom." etc.—G.R.
Verse
12.—The Sense of Mortality. Show the variety of blessings dispensed
to different classes by the right use of the sense of mortality.
1.
It may be an antidote for the sorrowful. Reflect, "there is an end."
2.
It should be a restorative to the labouring.
3.
It should be a remedy for the impatient.
4.
As a balm to the wounded in heart.
5.
As a corrective for the worldly.
6.
As a sedative to the frivolous.
—R.
Andrew Griffin, in "Stems and Twigs", 1872.
Verse
13. In what manner the Lord may be said to repent.
Verse
14. (first clause). See "Spurgeon's Sermons", No.
513: "The Young Man's Prayer."
Verse
14.
1.
The deepest yearning of man is for satisfaction.
2.
Satisfaction can only be found in the realization of Divine Mercy.
—C.M.
Merry, 1864.
Verse
14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy, etc. Learn,
1.
That our souls can have no solid satisfaction in earthly things.
2.
That the mercy of God alone can satisfy our souls.
3.
That nothing but satisfaction in God can fill our days with joy and gladness.
—John
Cawood, 1842.
Verse
14.
1.
The most cheerful days of earth are made more cheerful by thoughts of Divine
mercy.
2.
The most sorrowful days of earth are made glad by the consciousness of Divine
love.
—G.R.
Verse
15.
1.
The joy of faith is in proportion to the sorrow of repentance.
2.
The joy of consolation is in proportion to suffering in affliction.
3.
The joy of the returning smiles of God is in proportion to the terror of his
frowns.—G.R.
Verse
15. The Balance of life, or the manner in which our joys are set over
against our sorrows.
Verse
16.
1.
Our duty—"work", and our desire about it.
2.
Our children's portion—"glory", and our prayer in reference to it.
Verse
17. The Right Establishment, or the work which will endure—why it
will endure and should endure. Why we wish our work to be of such a nature, and
whether there are enduring elements in it.
WORKS UPON THE
NINETIETH PSALM
Enarratio
Psalmi 90. Per D. Doctorem Martinum Luth. In Schola Vuittembergensi, Anno,
1534, publice absoluta, edita vers Anno MD.
41.
(In Vol. 4 of the Jena edition of Luther's Works, 1712 and other years, folio.)
A
Meditation of Man's Mortalitie. Containing an Exposition of the Ninetieth
Psalme. By that Reverend and Religious Servant of God Mr. William Bradshaw,
sometime Fellow of Sidney Colledge in Cambridge. Published since his decease by
Thomas Gataker B. of D. and Pastor of Rotherhith. London...1621.
Moses
his Prayer. Or, An Exposition of the Ninetieth Psalme. In which is set forth,
the Frailty and Misery of Mankind: most needful for these Times.
Wherein:
1.
The Sum and Scope.
2. The Doctrines.
3. The Reasons.
4. The uses of most Texts are observed.
By Samuel
Smith, Minister of the Gospel, Author of David's Repentance and the Great
Assize, and yet Living...1656.
── C.H. Spurgeon《The Treasury of David》