90:1 LORD, YOU have been our dwelling place {and} our refuge in all generations [says Moses]. |
90:2 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. |
90:3 You turn man back to dust {and} corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]! |
90:4 For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. |
90:5 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-- |
90:6 In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers. |
90:7 For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed, {and} frightened away. |
90:8 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. |
90:9 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]. |
90:10 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. |
90:11 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? |
90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. |
90:13 Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long--? Revoke Your sentence {and} be compassionate {and} at ease toward Your servants. |
90:14 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. |
90:15 Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us {and} to the years in which we have suffered evil. |
90:16 Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children. |
90:17 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. |