Psalm 90:1-17

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