SPURGEON'S WRITINGS
"TREASURY OF DAVID
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
forever ...
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.
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PSALM
90 OVERVIEW.
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Verse
1.
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Verse
1.
The abode of the church the same in all ages; her relation to God never
changes.
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Verse
1.
The near and dear relation between God and his people, so that they mutually
dwell in each other.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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Verse
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. |
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Verse
1-2.
If man be ephemeral, God is eternal. --James Hamilton.
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Verse
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.
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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.
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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 !w[m 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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SUBJECT
AND DIVISIONS. -- 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 Psalms 90:1-
11 from the Psalms
90:12-17 there is indeed no need to make even this break, for the
unity is well preserved throughout.
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EXPOSITION
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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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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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 Psalms 90:17, with
a supplication for the manifestation of the beauty ~[n of "the Lord our
God" (JEHOVAH, ELOHIM). -- Christopher Wordsworth.
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Title. A prayer of Moses. Moses may be
considered as the first composer of sacred hymns. --Samuel Burder.
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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.
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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" (Deuteronomy
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." (Deuteronomy
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Verse
2.
A Discourse upon the Eternity of God. S. Charnock. Works
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--Tillotson's
Sermon on the Eternity of God.
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Verse
2.
(last clause). -- The consideration of God's eternity may serve,
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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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.
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EXPOSITION
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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.
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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.
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Verse
2.
The earth and the world. The word earth here is used to denote the
world as distinguished either from heaven (Genesis 1:1), or from the sea (Genesis 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.
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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.
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Verse
3.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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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.
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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, fwna. 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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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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." |
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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.
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EXPOSITION
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Verse
4.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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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.
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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.
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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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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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.
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EXPOSITION
|
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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.
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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.
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Verse
5-6.
-- The lesson of the Meadows.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, Psalms 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.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
|
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Verse
5.
Comparison of mortal life to sleep. See William Bradshaw's remarks in our
Notes on this verse.
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|
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Verse
5.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood. ~tmrz (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."
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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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."
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|
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!
|
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EXPOSITION
|
|
Verse
5.
They are as a sleep. Our life may be compared to sleep in four
respects.
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EXPOSITION
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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.
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Verse
6.
Cut down.
Stout
and strong today,
Tomorrow turned to clay. This day in his bloom, The next, in the tomb. |
|
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 (James 1:11) blows upon it, and again
before evening it is withered. --J.J.S. Perowne.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
|
|
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.
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|
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.
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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.
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EXPOSITION
|
|
--G.R.
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|
|
|
Verse
7.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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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.
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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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
|
|
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.
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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.
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.
|
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EXPOSITION
|
|
|
|
--G.R.
|
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Verse
8.
|
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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|
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.
|
|
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.
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|
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.
|
|
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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
|
|
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
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.
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|
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.
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|
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?
|
|
EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
|
|
To
close this point with Gregory Nazianzen.
|
|
Verse
9.
As a tale that is told. In the Hebrew it is hgxDwmk, 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,
Isaiah 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, Luke 12:17;
or how to violate the sacred bonds of religion and laws of God, such a
meditation had they, Psalms
2:1-3; and in such vain meditations as these do men spend their
years "as a tale that is told" ...
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|
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.
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|
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.
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.
As a tale that is told. The Chaldee has it, like the breath of our
mouth in winter. --Daniel Cresswell.
|
|
Verse
9.
As a tale. The grace whereof is brevity. --John Trapp.
|
|
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.
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.
|
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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 Psalms 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.
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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.
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EXPOSITION
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Verse
9.
(second clause). -- The Hebrew is different from all the Versions. We
consume our years (hgxDwmk kemo hegeh) like a groan. We live a dying,
whining, complaining life, and at last a groan is its termination! -- Adam
Clarke.
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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.
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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", Hosea 9:11;
and Solomon saith the like of riches, "they make themselves wings and
flee away like an eagle toward heaven": Proverbs 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 ...
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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.
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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.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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Verse
9.
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--G.R.
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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. |
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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".
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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. |
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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Verse
10.
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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." Psalms 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.
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--G.R.
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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 Numbers
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.
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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.
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Verse
10.
Their strength is labour and sorrow. Most commonly old age is a feeble
estate; the very grasshopper is a burden to it. Ecclesiastes 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.
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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."
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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." |
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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.
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EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
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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.
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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 (Ecclesiastes 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.
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--From
a Sermon by Robert Wilkinson, entitled "A Meditation of Mortalitie,
preached to the late Price Henry, some few daies before his death",
1612.
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EXPOSITION
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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.
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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 ...
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--G.R.
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Verse
11.
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HINTS
FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS
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Verse
11.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? etc. This he utters,
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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.
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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 ...
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EXPOSITION
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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.
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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 fear 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.
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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.
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SPURGEON'S WRITINGS on Psalm 90 in "TREASURY OF DAVID
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