| 1 | Lord, You have been our dwelling place
and
our refuge in all generations [says Moses]. |
| 2 | Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed
and
given birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God. |
| 3 | You turn man back to dust
and
corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]! |
| 4 | For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. |
| 5 | You carry away [these disobedient people, doomed to die within forty years] as with a flood; they are as a sleep [vague and forgotten as soon as they are gone]. In the morning they are like grass which grows up— |
| 6 | In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers. |
| 7 | For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed,
and
frightened away. |
| 8 | Our iniquities, our secret heart
and
its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance. |
| 9 | For all our days [out here in this wilderness, says Moses] pass away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told [for we adults know we are doomed to die soon, without reaching Canaan]. |
| 10 | The days of our years are
[a]threescore years and ten (seventy years)—or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years); yet is their pride [in additional years] only labor and sorrow, for it is soon gone, and we fly away. |
| 11 | Who knows the power of Your anger? [Who worthily connects this brevity of life with Your recognition of sin?] And Your wrath, who connects it with the reverent
and
worshipful fear that is due You? |
| 12 | So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. |
| 13 | Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long—? Revoke Your sentence
and
be compassionate
and
at ease toward Your servants. |
| 14 | O satisfy us with Your mercy
and
loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. |
| 15 | Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us
and
to the years in which we have suffered evil. |
| 16 | Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children. |
| 17 | And let the beauty
and
delightfulness
and
favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm
and
establish the work of our hands—yes, the work of our hands, confirm
and
establish it. |
Cross references:
-
Psalm 90:4 : II Pet. 3:8.
-
Psalm 90:9 : Num. 14:26-35.
|