The Book of Psalms

Word Study

"dwelling place," Hebrew ma'on (מָעוֹן), habitation, home, refuge. Moses names God the home of the homeless: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." A people with no settled land of their own are told that their address is a Person.

"brought forth," yulladu (יֻלָּדוּ), were born. "Before the mountains were brought forth." Even the mountains, the oldest and most immovable things men know, had a birth; God was already there before they had one.

"from everlasting to everlasting," me'olam ad-olam (מֵעוֹלָם עַד־עוֹלָם). The phrase reaches back past the beginning and forward past the end. There is no stretch of time at either edge in which God was not or will not be.

"thou art God," attah El (אַתָּה אֵל). "Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." The sentence lands on the present tense; He simply is, and always in the same way.

"turnest man to destruction," tashev enosh ad-dakka (תָּשֵׁב אֱנוֹשׁ עַד־דַּכָּא), back to dust. Against that eternity Moses sets man's brief course: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men." A word from God sends us back to the dust we came from.

"a watch in the night," ashmurah (אַשְׁמוּרָה). The eternal One is He before whom a thousand years are "but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night" -- a few hours of standing guard in the dark, over before they are well begun.

Explanation

Consider first who is praying, for it deepens the opening line. Moses spent forty years leading a homeless nation through a wilderness, living in tents, owning no land, and he himself would die on a mountain and be buried in an unmarked grave, never entering the promised home. And this is the man who says, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." The man who never had a house on earth found his home in God Himself. When you have no settled place, God becomes your place; the homeless pilgrim's true address is the eternal God. Then, second, feel the great contrast that runs through the whole psalm and is stated here at the start: God's eternity against man's frailty. "Before the mountains were brought forth... even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." God has no birth and no death; He was before the oldest mountain and will outlast the youngest star, and in the middle of that sentence stands the unshakable anchor of the whole psalm: "thou art God." Set against that, verse 3: "Thou turnest man to destruction", back to the dust he came from. And time itself, which feels so long to us, is nothing to Him: "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past" (already gone), "and as a watch in the night" (a few hours' broken sleep). The whole psalm will measure our little lives against this everlasting God, not to crush us, but to drive us to make our home, as Moses did, in the One who never passes away.

Gospel Focus

"From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God", the eternal God of Moses' prayer is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8), and who said of Himself, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). He is the everlasting One before whom a thousand years are as a day. And here is the wonder of the gospel: this eternal God entered the very frailty the psalm laments. He who is "from everlasting" took our dust; He who "turnest man to destruction" was Himself turned to destruction on the cross, tasting the death of "the children of men," so that dust might be raised to glory. Now He is the believer's true "dwelling place," for He says, "Abide in me, and I in you" (John 15:4), and in Him our life is hid, safe beyond the reach of time and death. Make Him your home as Moses did: whatever house or homeland you lack on earth, the eternal God in Christ is a dwelling place that no flood of years can sweep away.

Word Study

"threescore years and ten," Hebrew shiv'im shanah (שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה), seventy years. Life is short: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." Moses puts a number on it, and the number is small set beside the everlasting God of the opening verses.

"fourscore," shemonim (שְׁמוֹנִים), eighty. "And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years." Even the strongest constitution buys only another decade; strength changes the total a little and the outcome not at all.

"labour and sorrow," amal va'aven (עָמָל וָאָוֶן). Life is not only short but heavy: "yet is their strength labour and sorrow." The extra years bought by strength are themselves filled with toil and grief.

"we fly away," vanna'ufah (וַנָּעֻפָה). "For it is soon cut off, and we fly away." The end comes suddenly and the going is swift, like a bird that lifts off the ground and is gone before it is well noticed.

"number our days," limnot yameinu (לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ). So the psalm prays: "So teach us to number our days." Counting is the right response to a short supply; a man who knows how few his days are will spend them differently.

"apply our hearts unto wisdom," navi levav chokhmah (נָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה), bring in a heart of wisdom. The counting has a purpose: "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Moses does not ask for longer life but for a wiser heart to live the life he has.

Explanation

Here is the famous prayer, and its wisdom is easy to misread. To "number our days" does not mean to count how many we have left, we cannot know that, but to reckon each day as numbered, finite, and therefore precious; to live as one who truly knows his time is limited. And notice the surprising result God attaches to it: not gloom, but wisdom. "That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." One might expect that dwelling on death would make a person morbid or reckless, "let us eat and drink, for to morrow we die." But rightly done, the opposite happens: the person who honestly faces that life is short and God is eternal becomes wise, weighing what matters, refusing to waste his few days on trifles. A funeral, Solomon said, teaches more than a feast; so does an honest accounting of our years. And mark two things about how the psalm frames it. First, it links our short life to God's holiness: "Who knoweth the power of thine anger?" We underestimate both, how brief life is, and how weighty God is, and numbering our days corrects both errors at once. Second, and crucially, it asks God to teach us this: "So teach us to number our days." We will not learn it on our own; left to ourselves we push death out of mind and squander our time. Only God can make the plain fact of our mortality actually produce a heart of wisdom rather than despair. So the prayer is not "let us count our days" but "teach us", make the shortness of life do its wise work in us.

Gospel Focus

"So teach us to number our days", the wisdom this prayer seeks is found at last in Jesus Christ, "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). To number our days rightly is to feel the urgency the gospel presses: "boast not thyself of to morrow" (Proverbs 27:1), for God may say, "this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke 12:20). The wise, knowing life is short, do not delay to be reconciled to God, but heed the apostle's call, "redeeming the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:16). And consider the Lord Jesus Himself: His earthly life was short, barely more than thirty years, "soon cut off", yet in it He accomplished the eternal redemption of His people, proving that the worth of a life is measured not by its length but by its purpose. A long life spent apart from God is wasted; a short life given to Him is full. So let the numbering of your days drive you to Christ, in whom the dying man receives a life that never ends, and learn the only wisdom that outlasts the grave.

Word Study

"satisfy us early," Hebrew sabbe'enu vabboqer (שַׂבְּעֵנוּ בַבֹּקֶר), satisfy us in the morning. After the sober weighing of mortality, the psalm turns to prayer: "O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days." If the day is short, let the filling come at its start.

"thy mercy," chasdekha (חַסְדֶּךָ). What is asked for is God's covenant love, and nothing else is named as able to satisfy. The remedy for a brief life is not more time but the kindness of God within it.

"the beauty of the LORD," no'am YHWH (נֹעַם יְהוָה), the delight, favour, pleasantness of the LORD. "And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us." They ask that God's own loveliness rest visibly on a frail and dying people.

"establish thou," konenah (כּוֹנְנָה), make firm, set fast. The last petition asks for permanence: "establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it." Twice repeated, it is the cry of people who know their own works will not last unless God fixes them in place.

"the work of our hands," ma'aseh yadeinu (מַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ). The prayer does not ask that the work be spared but that it be made to stand. Mortal men may still do work that outlives them, if God sets His hand under it.

Explanation

After facing death so honestly, the psalm does not sink into despair; it turns to prayer, and asks the eternal God for the two things a dying people most need. First, satisfaction, and satisfaction taken early: "O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days." The word is "in the morning", get God's mercy at the start, at the dawn of the day and of life, and the whole span will be glad. If our few days are to hold any lasting joy, that joy cannot come from the fleeting things that wither like grass; it must come from God's mercy, drunk in early and carried all the way through. Second, and most poignant of all, the psalm asks for permanence: "establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it." Feel the ache in that repeated plea. Moses has just spent the whole psalm saying that everything human passes, man returns to dust, our years fly away, our works are as short-lived as we are. His own generation would leave most of its labour buried in the wilderness sand. And yet he prays that God would give their fleeting work something it could never have on its own: lasting. Here is the deep truth: nothing our hands make will outlast us unless God establishes it. Left to itself, all our labour withers with the grass; but what the eternal God sets fast, endures. And crowning it, the request that gives a dying life its true dignity: "let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us", that God's own favour and loveliness would rest on frail, mortal people. That is the one splendour that does not fade.

Gospel Focus

"Establish thou the work of our hands", this prayer is answered in Jesus Christ, in whom alone our labour is given permanence. Apart from Him, all we build is "wood, hay, stubble" that the fire will burn; but what is built on Christ abides, and so Paul can promise, "your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15:58). Work done in Him, and He working in us, is the one work that lasts, for "he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). The plea "O satisfy us early with thy mercy" is met in the Lord Jesus, who says, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger" (John 6:35), the mercy that satisfies the soul for all its days. And "let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us" is fulfilled as His people are "changed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18), the beauty of Christ Himself resting upon them. So the psalm that most soberly declares all things human pass away ends by asking for the very things the gospel gives: mercy that satisfies, beauty that does not fade, and labour that outlasts the grave, all in Christ.