Today’s Passage: Psalm 90
This psalm carries a heading, and the heading is part of the text: a prayer of Moses, the man of God. Moses was a real man, not a symbol to be explained away, and these are his words. Lord, he prays, You have been our dwelling place, and from everlasting to everlasting You are God. You return man to dust. Teach us to number our days, that we may present a heart of wisdom.
As you read, hold this: Teach us to number our days.
Context Moses, the man of God
This is the only psalm in the whole book handed down to us from Moses, and it opens Book IV of the Psalter, the stretch that runs from Psalm 90 through Psalm 106. What you are reading is a prayer, not a myth. The same man who led Israel through the long years of the wilderness is the man who now asks God to teach the people to count their days.
Psalm 90:1-6 (BSB)
A prayer of Moses the man of God.
¹ Lord, You have been our dwelling place through all generations. ² Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God. ³ You return man to dust, saying, “Return, O sons of mortals.” ⁴ For in Your sight a thousand years are but a day that passes, or a watch of the night. ⁵ You sweep them away in their sleep; they are like the new grass of the morning— ⁶ in the morning it springs up new, but by evening it fades and withers.
Our dwelling place, Moses calls Him, the home Israel lived in long before there was ever a house or a land to call their own. Before the mountains were born, before He brought forth the earth and the world, He was already God, and He will still be God when they are gone. Then the prayer turns to look at us. He returns man to dust, the very dust He first made us from. In His sight a thousand years pass like a single day, while we are like the grass that springs up green in the morning and by evening has already faded and withered.
Study notes A thousand years, a day
Peter reaches for the very same measure long after, and he uses it to explain God’s patience, not to draw a chart.
"With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." 2 Peter 3:8 (BSB)
Moses uses the line to humble our pride, and Peter uses it to say that what looks to us like delay is no delay at all from where God stands. The coming of Christ is sure. The timetable of the thousand years is not a scheme to be nailed down, and so we walk the line as it is given to us and do not close a chart that the text itself leaves open.
Psalm 90:7-11 (BSB)
⁷ For we are consumed by Your anger and terrified by Your wrath. ⁸ You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence. ⁹ For all our days decline in Your fury; we finish our years with a sigh. ¹⁰ The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty if we are strong—yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. ¹¹ Who knows the power of Your anger? Your wrath matches the fear You are due.
Notice that our dying is never treated here as something morally neutral. Our secret sins sit exposed in the light of His presence, and our years, seventy of them, or eighty if we are strong, are spent under His displeasure until we simply fly away. Who among us has ever truly weighed the power of His anger?
Psalm 90:12-17 (BSB)
¹² So teach us to number our days, that we may present a heart of wisdom. ¹³ Return, O LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on Your servants. ¹⁴ Satisfy us in the morning with Your loving devotion, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. ¹⁵ Make us glad for as many days as You have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil. ¹⁶ May Your work be shown to Your servants, and Your splendor to their children. ¹⁷ May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish for us the work of our hands—yes, establish the work of our hands!
Teach us to manah, pronounced mah-NAH. Strong's H4487, to count, number, reckon, appoint. This is not a request to be given more years. It is a request to count the days already handed to us, so that our own mortality becomes our teacher and leads us into wisdom. And then the prayer opens outward: satisfy us in the morning with Your loving devotion, and establish the work of our hands. Moses asks for that last thing twice over, longing for work that will outlast the grass. our days.