Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 90:7
For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
7. For &c.] This is the Psalmist’s reason for reminding God of the frailty of human life. We Israel have been consumed through thine anger, and through thy wrath have we been dismayed. He speaks of it not as a general truth but as an actual experience. Dismayed is a word specially used of the consternation inspired by Divine judgements. Cp. Psa 6:2-3; Psa 48:5; and the cognate subst. terror, Lev 26:16.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
7 12. Human life is at best brief and uncertain; and Israel’s life is being spent under the cloud of God’s wrath for the punishment of its sins.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For we are consumed by thine anger – That is, Death – the cutting off of the race of man – may be regarded as an expression of thy displeasure against mankind as a race of sinners. The death of man would not have occurred but for sin Gen 3:3, Gen 3:19; Rom 5:12; and all the circumstances connected with it – the fact of death, the dread of death, the pain that precedes death, the paleness and coldness and rigidity of the dead, and the slow and offensive returning to dust in the grave – all are adapted to be, and seem designed to be, illustrations of the anger of God against sin. We cannot, indeed, always say that death in a specific case is proof of the direct and special anger of God in that case; but we can say that death always, and death in its general features, may and should be regarded as an evidence of the divine displeasure against the sins of people.
And by thy wrath – As expressed in death.
Are we troubled – Are our plans confounded and broken up; our minds made sad and sorrowful; our habitations made abodes of grief.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 90:7-11
For we are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy wrath are we troubled.
Man under a consciousness of Divine displeasure
I. It arose from a sense of moral wrong. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, etc. True it is that all our iniquities, even the most secret, those wrought in the deepest concealment, stand out clearly evermore to the eye of God. Thus a sin-convicted conscience profoundly feels that man is consumed by His anger, and by His wrath is he troubled. When a sinful spirit becomes conscious of its sinfulness, it invests the Almighty with the most terrible attributes of vengeance.
II. It solved the unhappiness of life.
1. Life is sad. We are consumed by Thy wrath. The same trials of life which are regarded by the man who has a sense of Divine forgiveness as the disciplines of a loving Father, are regarded by the man who is impressed with a sense of guilt as the inflictions of an incensed Judge. Hence Providence is different to different men. One feels it a system of grace, another a system of rigorous severity.
2. Life is empty. We spend our years as a tale that is told. Some translate tale thought, and some, sound that dieth away. How soon the loudest sound, even the crash of thunder, dies away in the atmosphere!
3. Life is brief. The days of our years are threescore years and ten. (Homilist.)
A conception of Gods anger
Gods anger is His love thrown back upon itself from unreceptive and unloving hearts; just as a wave that would roll in smooth and unbroken green beauty into the open door of some sea cave is dashed back in spray and foam from some grim rock. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 7. We are consumed by thine anger] Death had not entered into the world, if men had not fallen from God.
By thy wrath are we troubled] Pain, disease, and sickness are so many proofs of our defection from original rectitude. The anger and wrath of God are moved against all sinners. Even in protracted life we consume away, and only seem to live in order to die.
“Our wasting lives grow shorter still,
As days and months increase;
And every beating pulse we tell
Leaves but the number less.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
We; either,
1. We men; or rather,
2. We Israelites in this wilderness.
Consumed; either naturally, by the frame of our bodies; or violently, by extraordinary judgments. Thou dost not suffer us to live so long as we might by the course of nature.
Thine anger, caused by our sinful state and lives.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
7, 8. ForA reason, this isthe infliction of God’s wrath.
troubledliterally,”confounded by terror” (Ps2:5). Death is by sin (Ro5:12). Though “secret,” the light of God’s countenance,as a candle, will bring sin to view (Pro 20:27;1Co 4:5).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For we are consumed by thine anger,…. Kimchi applies this to the Jews in captivity; but it is to be understood of the Israelites in the wilderness, who are here introduced by Moses as owning and acknowledging that they were wasting and consuming there, as it was threatened they should; and that as an effect of the divine anger and displeasure occasioned by their sins; see Nu 14:33. Death is a consumption of the body; in the grave worms destroy the flesh and skin, and the reins of a man are consumed within him; hell is a consumption or destruction of the soul and body, though both always continue: saints, though consumed in body by death, yet not in anger; for
when flesh and heart fail, or “is consumed”, “God is the strength of their hearts, and their portion for ever”, Ps 73:26, their souls are saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, and their bodies will rise glorious and incorruptible; but the wicked are consumed at death, and in hell, in anger and hot displeasure:
and by thy wrath are we troubled; the wrath of God produces trouble of mind, whenever it is apprehended, and especially in the views of death and eternity; and it is this which makes death the king of terrors, and men subject to bondage in life through fear of it, even the wrath to come, which follows upon it; nothing indeed, either in life or at death, or death itself, comes in wrath to the saints; nor is there any after it to them, though they have sometimes fearful apprehensions of it, and are troubled at it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| Penitent Submission. | |
7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. 8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. 9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. 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. 11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
Moses had, in the foregoing verses, lamented the frailty of human life in general; the children of men are as a sleep and as the grass. But here he teaches the people of Israel to confess before God that righteous sentence of death which they were under in a special manner, and which by their sins they had brought upon themselves. Their share in the common lot of mortality was not enough, but they are, and must live and die, under peculiar tokens of God’s displeasure. Here they speak of themselves: We Israelites are consumed and troubled, and our days have passed away.
I. They are here taught to acknowledge the wrath of God to be the cause of all their miseries. We are consumed, we are troubled, and it is by thy anger, by thy wrath (v. 7); our days have passed away in thy wrath, v. 9. The afflictions of the saints often come purely from God’s love, as Job’s; but the rebukes of sinners, and of good men for their sins, must be seen coming from the anger of God, who takes notice of, and is much displeased with, the sins of Israel. We are too apt to look upon death as no more than a debt owing to nature; whereas it is not so; if the nature of man had continued in its primitive purity and rectitude, there would have been no such debt owing to it. It is a debt to the justice of God, a debt to the law. Sin entered into the world, and death by sin. Are we consumed by decays of nature, the infirmities of age, or any chronic disease? We must ascribe it to God’s anger. Are we troubled by any sudden or surprising stroke? That also is the fruit of God’s wrath, which is thus revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
II. They are taught to confess their sins, which had provoked the wrath of God against them (v. 8): Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, even our secret sins. It was not without cause that God was angry with them. He had said, Provoke me not, and I will do you no hurt; but they had provoked him, and will own that, in passing this severe sentence upon them, he justly punished them, 1. For their open contempts of him and the daring affronts they had given him: Thou hast set our iniquities before thee. God had herein an eye to their unbelief and murmuring, their distrusting his power and their despising the pleasant land: these he set before them when he passed that sentence on them; these kindled the fire of God’s wrath against them and kept good things from them. 2. For their more secret departures from him: “Thou hast set our secret sins (those which go no further than the heart, and which are at the bottom of all the overt acts) in the light of thy countenance; that is, thou hast discovered these, and brought these also to the account, and made us to see them, who before overlooked them.” Secret sins are known to God and shall be reckoned for. Those who in heart return into Egypt, who set up idols in their heart, shall be dealt with as revolters or idolaters. See the folly of those who go about to cover their sins, for they cannot cover them.
III. They are taught to look upon themselves as dying and passing away, and not to think either of a long life or of a pleasant one; for the decree gone forth against them was irreversible (v. 9): All our days are likely to be passed away in thy wrath, under the tokens of thy displeasure; and, though we are not quite deprived of the residue of our years, yet we are likely to spend them as a tale that is told. The thirty-eight years which, after this, they wore 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 raising. When they came out of Egypt there was not one feeble person among their tribes (Ps. cv. 37); but now they were feeble. Their joyful prospect of a prosperous glorious life in Canaan was turned into the melancholy prospect of a tedious inglorious death in the wilderness; so that their whole life was now as impertinent a thing as ever any winter-tale was. That is applicable to the state of every one of us in the wilderness of this world: We spend our years, we bring them to an end, each year, and all at last, as a tale that is told–as the breath of our mouth in winter (so some), which soon disappears–as a thought (so some), than which nothing more quick–as a word, which is soon spoken, and then vanishes into air–or as a tale that is told. The spending of our years is like the telling of a tale. A year, when it past, is like a tale when it is told. Some of our years are 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. Our years, when they are gone, can no more be recalled than the word that we have spoken can. The loss and waste of our time, which are our fault and folly, may be thus complained of: we should spend our years like the despatch of business, with care and industry; but, alas! we do spend them like the telling of a tale, idle, and to little purpose, carelessly, and without regard. Every year passed as a tale that is told; but what was the number of them? As they were vain, so they were few (v. 10), seventy or eighty at most, which may be understood either, 1. Of the lives of the Israelites in the wilderness; all those that were numbered when they came out of Egypt, above twenty years old, were to die within thirty-eight years; they numbered those only that were able to go forth to war, most of whom, we may suppose, were between twenty and forty, who therefore must have all died before eighty years old, and many before sixty, and perhaps much sooner, which was far short of the years of the lives of their fathers. And those that lived to seventy or eighty, yet, being under a sentence of consumption and a melancholy despair of ever seeing through this wilderness-state, their strength, their life, was nothing but labour and sorrow, which otherwise would have been made a new life by the joys of Canaan. See what work sin made. Or, 2. Of the lives of men in general, ever since the days of Moses. Before the time of Moses it was usual for men to live about 100 years, or nearly 150; but, since, seventy or eighty is the common stint, which few exceed and multitudes never come near. We reckon those to have lived to the age of man, and to have had as large a share of life as they had reason to expect, who live to be seventy years old; and how short a time is that compared with eternity! Moses was the first that committed divine revelation to writing, which, before, had been transmitted by tradition; now also both the world and the church were pretty well peopled, and therefore there were not now the same reasons for men’s living long that there had been. If, by reason of a strong constitution, some reach to eighty years, yet their strength then is what they have little joy of; it does but serve to prolong their misery, and make their death the more tedious; for even their strength then is labour and sorrow, much more their weakness; for the years have come which they have no pleasure in. Or it may be taken thus: Our years are seventy, and the years of some, by reason of strength, are eighty; but the breadth of our years (for so the latter word signifies, rather than strength), the whole extent of them, from infancy to old age, is but labour and sorrow. In the sweat of our face we must eat bread; our whole life is toilsome and troublesome; and perhaps, in the midst of the years we count upon, it is soon cut off, and we fly away, and do not live out half our days.
IV. They are taught by all this to stand in awe of the wrath of God (v. 11): Who knows the power of thy anger? 1. None can perfectly comprehend it. The psalmist speaks as one afraid of God’s anger, and amazed at the greatness of the power of it; who knows how far the power of God’s anger can reach and how deeply it can wound? The angels that sinned knew experimentally the power of God’s anger; damned sinners in hell know it; but which of us can fully comprehend or describe it? 2. Few do seriously consider it as they ought. Who knows it, so as to improve the knowledge of it? Those who make a mock at sin, and make light of Christ, surely do not know the power of God’s anger. For, according to thy fear, so is thy wrath; God’s wrath is equal to the apprehensions which the most thoughtful serious people have of it; let men have ever so great a dread upon them of the wrath of God, it is not greater than there is cause for and than the nature of the thing deserves. God has not in his word represented his wrath as more terrible than really it is; nay, what is felt in the other world is infinitely worse than what is feared in this world. Who among us can dwell with that devouring fire?
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
7 For we fail by thy anger. Moses makes mention of the anger of God advisedly; for it is necessary that men be touched with the feeling of this, in order to their considering in good earnest, what experience constrains them to acknowledge, how soon they finish their course and pass away. He had, however, still another reason for joining together the brevity of human life and the anger of God. Whilst men are by nature so transitory, and, as it were, shadowy, the Israelites were afflicted by the hostile hand of God; and his anger is less supportable by our frail natures, which speedily vanish away, than it would be were we furnished with some tolerable degree of strength.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(7) We.The change to the first person plural shows that the poet was not merely moralising on the brevity of human life, but uttering a dirge over the departed glory of Israel. Instead of proving superior to vicissitude the covenant race had shared it.
Troubled.Comp. Psa. 48:6. Better here, frightened away.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
7. For we are consumed by thine anger We are wasting away under the effect of thy death-sentence. As applied by Moses to the Israelites, compare Num 14:28-35; as applied to the human race, compare Gen 3:19.
By thy wrath are we troubled We are terrified. Comp. Psa 104:29. Hab 3:2; Heb 10:31
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 90:7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Ver. 7. For we are consumed by thine anger ] Justly conceived for our sins, Psa 90:8 . This is a cause of death that philosophy discovereth not, as being blind, and not able to see far off, and therefore cannot prescribe any sufficient remedy against the tear of death, such as is here set down, Psa 90:12 , but such as made Cicero complain, that the disease was too hard for the medicine, and such as left men either doubtful (Socrates, for instance) or desperate, and devoid of sense, as Petronius in Tacitus, Qui in ipsis atriis morris delicias quaesivit, solaced himself with singing such light sonnets as this;
Vivamus men Lesbia atque amemus,
Rumoresque senum severiorum
Onmes unius aestimemus assis.
And by thy wrath are we troubled NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 90:7-12
7For we have been consumed by Your anger
And by Your wrath we have been dismayed.
8You have placed our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
9For all our days have declined in Your fury;
We have finished our years like a sigh.
10As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.
11Who understands the power of Your anger
And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
12So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
Psa 90:7-12 This strophe clearly admits that YHWH’s judgment on His people is the direct result of their sin. However, His people trust and hope in the basic character of Godmercy! To me, Psa 103:8-14 is a sure hope in the character of God (cf. Exo 34:6; Num 14:18; Deu 4:31; Neh 9:17; Psa 86:15; Psa 145:8).
Psa 90:7 anger Notice the variety of words used to describe YHWH’s reaction to covenant disobedience.
1. anger, Psa 90:7 a,11 – BDB 60 I
2. wrath, Psa 90:7 b – BDB 404
3. fury, Psa 90:9; Psa 90:11 – BDB 720
Remember, the Bible uses human vocabulary to describe God. It is always metaphorical and limited. See SPECIAL TOPIC: GOD DESCRIBED AS HUMAN (ANTHROPOMORPHISM) . Psalms 103 helps me balance His anger and love! Jesus is the ultimate expression of His character and promises!
NASB, NJBdismayed
NKJV, TEVterrified
NRSVoverwhelmed
JPSOAterror-struck
This verb (BDB 96, KB 111, Niphal perfect) denotes the fear of death and judgment (cf. Psa 30:7; Psa 104:29; NIDOTTE, vol. 1, pp. 610-611). Sin has temporal and eschatological consequences!
Psa 90:8 the light of Your presence Light is a biblical symbol of goodness, revelation, health. God is light (cf. 1Ti 6:16; Jas 1:17; 1Jn 1:5). His personal presence is expressed by the idiom of the light of His countenance (cf. Psa 4:6; Psa 31:16; Psa 44:3; Psa 67:1; Psa 80:3; Psa 80:7; Psa 80:19; Psa 89:15; Psa 104:2; Psa 119:135).
Psa 90:11 according to the fear that is due You The word fear (BDB 432) can be misunderstood. It denotes respect, reverence, piety (see Special Topic: Fear). The frail and transitory acknowledge the eternal, Holy One! Notice how Proverbs uses this concept (cf. Pro 10:27; Pro 14:26-27; Pro 15:16; Pro 19:23; Pro 22:4; Pro 23:17).
Psa 90:12 Once we realize our frailty and His permanence, then and only then, can we live a life of joy, peace, and trust. Our hope is completely in Him. Our service to Him brings meaning to life!
1. teach us – BDB 393, KB 390, Hiphil imperative
2. that we may present – BDB 97, KB 112, Hiphil imperfect used in a cohortative sense
heart See SPECIAL TOPIC: THE HEART .
Psa 90:7-11
Psa 90:7-11
“For we are consumed in thine anger,
And in try wrath we are troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,
Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:
We bring our years to an end as a sigh.
The days of our years are three-score years and ten,
Or even by reason of strength four-score years;
Yet is there pride, but labor and sorrow;
For it is soon gone, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger,
And thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto thee.”
“We are consumed in thine anger” (Psa 90:7). “Such expressions suit the time of the later wanderings in the wilderness,” in which the condemned generation which God forbade to enter Canaan, “Were being gradually consumed that they might not enter the Holy Land.
Addis observed on these verses that, “It is the sinfulness of man that makes his life so short. Also, there is the possibility that there is a divine limitation upon human life imposed by the will of God. We have already noted the possibility that Psa 90:10 here is a prophecy.
“Thou hast set our iniquities before thee” (Psa 90:8). This stresses the relationship between sin and death. As Barnes noted, “The fact that human life has been made so brief, is to be explained, only upon the basis that God has arrayed before his own mind the reality of human depravity.
“We bring our years to an end as a sigh” (Psa 90:9). The KJV reads this, “We spend our years as a tale that is told.” The implication regards the transitoriness, the fleeting nature, and the brevity of human life. “Here today, and gone tomorrow; yes I know; that is so”!
“Three-score and ten … four-score years” (Psa 90:10). See the chapter introduction for comments on this.
“Who knoweth the power of thine anger … thy wrath” (Psa 90:11). “The implication of this verse is that men do not generally take the anger and wrath of God seriously enough. This observation is profoundly true. The current conception of God in our American society regards him as a rather over-indulgent grandfather who pays little or no attention to the crimes of blood and lust that rage beneath his very nose, assuming that his wonderful loving grace and mercy will ignore and overlook anything that wicked men may do. It is against this background of human ignorance and misconception that the ultimate appearance of Almighty God in the Judgment of the Last Day will be an occasion when, “All the tribes of the earth shall mourn over him” (Rev 1:7).
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 90:7. These remarks are not directed against any particular person nor concerning any specific conduct of man. They are in consideration of the general situation of mankind since the sin of our first parents. The anger and wrath of God was provoked by the first sin which was induced by Satan. Because of that event, man was cast out of the garden and doomed to be consumed and troubled by the ills of creation.
Psa 90:8. This verse means that none of man’s actions are hidden from the Lord. Even the thoughts of the heart are seen by Him. (Heb 4:13.)
Psa 90:9. The fleeting shortness of human life is still the main subject. The wrath of God refers to the first sin and the attitude that was declared by the Lord against man over it. As a result of that circumstance, the human family passes through the days of its existence as something that is being spent. Tale that is told. The first word is the only one that is in the original. It is from HEGEH and Strong defines it, “a muttering.” In other words, our life is as transient as a momentary musing or meditation that ends with a sigh. I will quote from Edward Gibbon, author of the famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He was a skeptic as to the Bible, but was a master of English and a truthful writer as a historian and commentator on human life. He so forcefully agrees with the inspired writer as to the shortness of this life that I wish the reader to have his statement which is as follows: “A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment; the grave is ever beside the throne; the success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of his prize; and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy, may abate the surprise of a philosopher; but while he condemns the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion.” Chapter 48. I trust my reader will exercise the patience to study this quotation carefully until he has grasped the meaning of its statements. The question with me is how a man who could make such an observation on the facts and then write so majestically about them, could turn away from the Sacred Text and live and die as a skeptic.
Psa 90:10. All of the things which David says of man’s experiences pertain to his life as a human. They do not even consider, much less contradict the truths that refer to his spiritual life. The Psalmist was a great believer in God and said much about his joy and happiness in the divine service. But the frailty and uncertainty of everything that is not connected with a life for God is what is being considered generally in this and other verses. David did not make the statement here as a decree of God on the length of human life. It was rather an observation as to the rule, and the facts of history will bear out the statement of the verse.
Psa 90:11. This verse means that man generally underestimates the full effect of God’s anger against sin. Only in proportion as men fear or respect God will they recognize and fully acknowledge the divine wrath.
For we: Psa 90:9, Psa 90:11, Psa 39:11, Psa 59:13, Num 17:12, Num 17:13, Deu 2:14-16, Heb 3:10, Heb 3:11, Heb 3:17-19, Heb 4:1, Heb 4:2
are we: Exo 14:24, Rom 2:8, Rom 2:9
Reciprocal: Gen 3:17 – in sorrow Deu 2:15 – the hand of the Deu 6:15 – lest 1Ki 11:9 – angry 2Ch 19:2 – is wrath Job 5:6 – trouble Job 19:11 – kindled Job 21:17 – distributeth Psa 32:4 – moisture Psa 38:3 – because Psa 78:33 – days Psa 80:16 – perish Psa 88:7 – Thy wrath Psa 88:16 – fierce Psa 102:10 – Because Pro 15:15 – All Ecc 2:23 – all Ecc 5:17 – much Ecc 6:5 – this Ecc 11:10 – sorrow Isa 64:5 – thou art wroth Jer 30:14 – because Lam 1:5 – for Mat 11:28 – all Mar 2:5 – sins Luk 5:20 – Man Luk 7:21 – plagues 1Co 10:5 – General
Psa 90:7-9. We are consumed by thine anger Caused by our sinful state and lives. Thou dost not suffer us to live so long as we might do by the course of nature. And by thy wrath are we troubled The generations of men are troubled and consumed by divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death, through the displeasure of God, occasioned by their sins. The provocations and chastisements of Israel are here alluded to. But their case in the wilderness is the case of mankind in the world, and the same thing is true in them and in us. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee Thou observest them as a righteous judge, and art calling us to an account for them. Our secret sins, &c. Which, though hidden from the eyes of men, thou hast set before thine eyes, and brought to light by thy judgments. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath That is, under the tokens of thy displeasure. We spend our years as a tale that is told Which may a little affect us for the present, but is quickly ended, and gone out of mind. Hebrew, , chemo hege, as a sound, as the expression is rendered Job 32:2; or as a word, which is but air and breath, and vanishes into nothing as soon as spoken. Or, as the word more properly signifies, a meditation or thought, which is of a nature still more fleeting and transient.
90:7 For we are {g} consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
(g) You called us by the rods to consider the storms of our life and for our sins you shorten our days.
Humans only live a short time because God judges the sin in their lives (cf. Rom 6:23). God knows even our secret sins. They do not escape Him, and He judges us with physical death for our sins.
Assuming Moses did write this psalm, it is interesting that he said the normal human life span was 70 years. He lived to be 120, Aaron was 123 when he died, and Joshua died at 110. Their long lives testify to God’s faithfulness in providing long lives to the godly, as He promised under the Mosaic Covenant.
Since our lives are comparatively short we should number our days (Psa 90:12). Moses meant we should realize how few they are and use our time wisely (cf. Ecc 12:1-7). Notice how often Moses mentioned "our days" or the equivalent in this psalm (Psa 90:4-6; Psa 90:9-10; Psa 90:12; Psa 90:14-15).
"The pivotal point of the text, I suggest, is the goal of a ’heart of wisdom’ (Psa 90:12)." [Note: Brueggemann, p. 111. ]
A heart of wisdom refers to discernment of Yahweh’s purposes.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)