Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 90:15
Make us glad according to the days [wherein] thou hast afflicted us, [and] the years [wherein] we have seen evil.
15. Make us glad according to the days &c.] Let the joy of restoration to Thy favour be proportioned to the depth of our humiliation. Cp. Isa 61:7. The form of the word for ‘days’ ( y’mth) occurs elsewhere only in Deu 32:7; and the word for afflicted is the same as that rendered to humble thee in Deu 8:2-3; Deu 8:16.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us – Let the one correspond with the other. Let our occasions of joy be measured by the sorrows which have come upon us. As our sufferings have been great, so let our joys and triumphs be.
And the years wherein we have seen evil – Affliction and sorrow. They have been continued through many wearisome years; so let the years of peace and joy be many also.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 90:15-17
Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
Gladness for sadness
Our prayer should be for–
I. Proportionate gladness; that our God who has filled one scale with grief would fill the other scale with grace till they balance each other. I have been told on the Scotch lakes that the depth of the lake is almost always the same as the height of the surrounding hills; and I think I have heard that the same is true of the great ocean; so that the greatest depth is probably the same as the greatest height. Doubtless, the law of equilibrium is manifest in a thousand ways. Take an instance in the adjustment of days and nights. A long night reigns over the north of Norway; in these wintry months they do not even see the sun; but mark and admire their summer; then the day banishes the night altogether, and you may read your Bible by the light of the midnight sun. Long wintry nights find compensation in a perpetual summer day. There is a balance about the conditions of the peoples of differing lands: each country has its drawbacks and its advantages. I believe it is so with the life of Gods people: therein also the Lord maintains a balance. As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. The good Lord measures out the dark and the light in due proportions, and the result is life sad enough to be safe, and glad enough to be desirable. A step further, and we have it thus, sorrow often prepares for joy. It might not be safe that you should enjoy worldly prosperity at the outset of life. Your adversities in business are meant to teach you the worthlessness of earthly things, so that when you have them you may not be tempted to make idols of them. In the spiritual life God does not run us up with glittering virtues all of a sudden; but deep prostration of spirit and thorough humiliation prepare the under-courses; and then, afterwards, stone upon stone, as with rows of jewels, we are built up to be a palace for the indwelling of God. Sorrow furnishes the house for joy. Once again, let me say to you, there is such a connection between sorrow and joy that no saint ever has a sorrow but what it has a joy wrapped up in it. It is a rough oyster, but a pearl lies within those shells if you will but look for it. Once more: the day will come when all the sorrows of Gods sending will be looked upon as joys. Perhaps in heaven, among all the things which have happened to us that will excite our wonder and delight, our furnace experience, and the hammer and the file will take the lead. Sorrow will contribute rich stanzas to our everlasting psalm.
II. Peculiar gladness.
1. Gladness at the sight of Gods work. When we are in deep tribulation it is a sweet quietus to survey the handiwork of our Father in Heaven. His work in providence, also, is often a consolation to us. Let us but see what God has done for His people and for ourselves in years past, and we are cheered. Trouble itself, when we see it to be Gods work, has lost its terror. A certain Persian nobleman found himself surrounded by soldiers, who sought to take him prisoner; he drew his sword and fought right valiantly, and might have escaped had not one of the company said, The king has sent us to convey you to himself. He sheathed his sword at once. Yes, we can contend against what we call a misfortune; but when we learn that the Lord hath done it, our contest is ended, for we joy and rejoice in what the Lord doeth; or, if we cannot get the length of rejoicing in it, we acquiesce in His will.
2. Gladness at the revelation of God to our children. No better comfort can be found for bereaved mothers than to see their sons and daughters converted.
3. Gladness at beauty bestowed. Sorrow mars the countenance and clothes the body with sackcloth; but if the Lord will come to us and adorn us with His beauty, then the stains of mourning will speedily disappear.
4. Gladness at our own work being established. To build up the Church and win souls for Jesus is first of all Gods work, and then our work. Why should a Christian work to win souls? Answer: because God works in him to win souls. God works to set us working: our work is the result of His work.
(1) The text prays for our work that it may succeed: Establish Thou the work of our hands. Oh, if God will but prosper us in our work for Him, how happy we shall be! It is web weather just now, the damp of sorrow is on all things, and so the seed sown in tears is speedily reaped in joy. Is not this something to comfort us? Let us pray God to send us more of it, that by conversions our work may prosper.
(2) Then we pray that our work may be lasting,–that is the chief point. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 15. Make us glad according to the days] Let thy people have as many years of prosperity as they have had of adversity. We have now suffered seventy years of a most distressful captivity.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Our afflictions have been sharp and long, let not our prosperity be small and short.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. As have been our sorrows, solet our joys be great and long.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,…. The days of affliction are times of sorrow; and days of prosperity make glad and joyful; and the psalmist here seems to desire an equal number of the one as of the other; not that an exact precise number of the one with the other is intended; but that there might be a proper proportion of the one to the other; and commonly God does “set the one over against the other”: there is a mixture of both in the believer’s life, which is like unto a chequer of black and white, in which there is a proper proportion of both colours; and so prosperity and adversity are had in turns, “and work together for good” to them that love the Lord: and when it is said “make us glad”, that is, with thy favour and presence, it suggests, that these are a sufficient recompence for all affliction and trouble; and if so here, what must the enjoyment of these be in heaven! Between this and present afflictions there is no proportion, neither with respect to the things themselves, nor the duration of them; see Ro 8:18 and “the years” wherein “we have seen evil”; afflictions are evils; they flow from the evil of sin, and to some are the evil of punishment; and even chastisements are not joyous, but grievous: this may have respect to the forty years’ travel in the wilderness, in which the Israelites saw or had an experience of much affliction and trouble; and even to the four hundred years in which the seed of Abraham were afflicted in a land not their’s; see Nu 14:33. Hence the Jews i make the times of the Messiah to last four hundred years, answerable to those years of evil, and which they take to be the sense of the text; and so Jarchi’s note on it is,
“make us glad in the days of the Messiah, according to the number of the days in which thou hast afflicted us in the captivities, and according to the number of the years in which we have seen evil.”
i T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 99. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(15) A prayer that prosperity may follow, proportionate to the mercy that has been endured.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. According to the days the years The period of their sufferings seemed like endless years, and becomes the measurement of the gladness for which the psalmist prays. Let our consolations cause us to forget the length and severity of our sufferings. The symbolical day for a year is here hinted at in the parallelism. Compare Num 14:34
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 90:15 Make us glad according to the days [wherein] thou hast afflicted us, [and] the years [wherein] we have seen evil.
Ver. 15. Make us glad according ] Let us have a proportion at least.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
according to the days . . . years: i.e. the forty years in the wilderness.
evil. Hebrew. ra’a’. App-44.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Make: Psa 30:5, Psa 126:5, Psa 126:6, Isa 12:1, Isa 40:1, Isa 40:2, Isa 61:3, Isa 65:18, Isa 65:19, Jer 31:12, Jer 31:13, Mat 5:4, Joh 16:20, Rev 7:14-17
the years: Deu 2:14-16
Reciprocal: Gen 31:3 – Return Jdg 3:15 – cried unto Ecc 2:23 – all Isa 33:2 – our salvation