Psalms 90King James Version
The opening of Book Four. A prayer of Moses. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Moses's prayer: the only psalm attributed to him. Before the mountains existed, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Man is turned to destruction; a thousand years are a watch in the night. All our days pass in wrath; our years are a tale that is told. Seventy years, eighty if strong; yet labor and sorrow. The famous petition: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.' Let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us.
Human brevity set against divine eternity is not a cause for despair but an invitation to ask for wisdom, specifically the wisdom that comes from facing mortality honestly.
verse: "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Numbering days is not morbid accounting; it is the prerequisite for living them with the right weight.
Superscription: 'A Prayer of Moses the man of God.' One of five 'prayer' psalms and the only one attributed to Moses. The wilderness generation context is consistent with Moses's own life. Book 4 opens here, editorially placing the pre-monarchic Moses as the answer to the monarchic Psalms 88-89. The seventy or eighty years of v10 became the standard biblical lifespan reference.
Moses as the named psalmist, Israel's intercessor; God as the eternal dwelling place across all generations; the children of men described in their brief grass-like lives; the congregation addressed as 'us.'
Psalm 90 opens Book 4 (90-106) and functions as a theological response to the covenantal crisis of Psalms 88-89. By rooting worship in Moses rather than David, Book 4 says: even if the Davidic dynasty falls, God was the dwelling place before David, before the monarchy, before Sinai. The psalm is the most used in Christian funeral liturgy.
For when you are forced to face mortality, whether your own or someone you love. This psalm does not pretend life is not brief; it asks what brevity can teach you.
1[A Prayer of Moses the man of God.] Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
2Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
3Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
4For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
5Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
6In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
7For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
8Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
9For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
10The 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.
11Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
12So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
13Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
14O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
16Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.
17And 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.