hence (the ox's head being the first letter of the alph… · noun, common both genders singular construct
years
שָׁנִ֡יםsha.Nim
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
sight
בְּֽעֵינֶ֗יךָbe.'ei.Nei.kha
H5869
an eye (literally or figuratively) · preposition + noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
as
כְּי֣וֹםke.Yom
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
yesterday
אֶ֭תְמוֹל'Et.mol
H865
heretofore · noun, common masculine singular absolute
past
יַעֲבֹ֑רya.'a.Vor
H5674
to cross over · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
watch
וְאַשְׁמוּרָ֥הve.'ash.mu.Rah
H821
a night watch · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
night
בַלָּֽיְלָהva.La.ye.lah
H3915
properly · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
2 Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Psalms 39:5 Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether v…
Matthew 24:43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suff…
Luke 12:38 And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.
Matthew 14:25 And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.
Exodus 14:24 And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the LORD looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, a…
Judges 7:19 So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 90:1-6
This psalm is entitled a prayer of Moses. Where, and in what volume, it was preserved from Moses's time till the collection of psalms was begun to be made, is uncertain; but, being divinely inspired, it was under a special protection: perhaps it was written in the book of Jasher, or the book of the wars of the Lord. Moses taught the people of Israel to pray, and put words into their mouths which they might make use of in turning to the Lord. Moses is here called the man of God, because he was a prophet, the father of prophets, and an eminent type of the great prophet. In these verses we are taught,
I. To give God the praise of his care concerning his people at all times, and concerning us in…
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday,.... Which may be said to obviate the difficulty in man's return, or resurrection, from the dead, taken from the length of time in which some have continued in the grave; which vanishes, when it is observed, that in thy sight, esteem, and account of God, a thousand years are but as one day; and therefore, should a man lie in the grave six or seven thousand years, it would be but as so many days with God; wherefore, if the resurrection is not incredible, as it is not, length of time can be no objection to it. Just in the same manner is this phrase used by the Apostle Peter, and who is thought to refer to this passage, to remove an objecti…
Psalm 90:3-8
3. Thou shalt turn man to destruction, and shalt say, Return, ye sons of Adam. 4. For a thousand years in thy sight are as yesterday when it is gone, and as a watch in the night. 5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood, they will be a sleep: in the morning he shall grow as grass: 6. In the morning it shall flourish and grow: at the evening it shall be cut down, and shall wither. 7. For we fail by thy anger, and are affrighted by thy indignation. 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
3 Thou shalt turn man to destruction. Moses, in the first place, mentions how frail and transitory is the life of man, and bewails its…
The Church Fathers
For a thousand years before your eyes are as yesterday's day, which has passed. Compared to the eternity of God, all the time of man is short: although it seems long to us, yet in comparison with eternity, because it is bounded by an end, it is reckoned as nothing.
And as a watch in the night. The night has four watches, marked off in periods of three hours each, as it is said in the Gospel, "In the fourth watch of the night" Jesus "came to them," which is understood to be about cockcrow. This, then, is what he says: a thousand years with you are to be compared not only to the shortness of a day, but to the span of three hours.
"For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday, which is past by" [Psalm 90:4]: hence we ought to turn to Your refuge, where You are without any change, from the fleeting scenes around us; since however long a time may be wished for for this life, "a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday:" not as tomorrow, which is to come: for all limited periods of time are reckoned as having already passed. Hence the Apostle's choice is rather to aim at what is before, [Philippians 3:13] that is, to desire things eternal, and to forget things behind, by which temporal matters should be understood. But that no one may imagine a thousand years are reckoned by God as one day, as if with God days were so long, when this is only said in contempt of the extent of time: he adds, "and as a watch in the night:" which only lasts three hours. Nevertheless men have ventured to assert their knowledge of times, to the pretenders to which our Lord said, "It is not for you to know the times or seasons, which the Father has put in His own power:" [Acts 1:7] and they allege that this period may be defined six thousand years, as of six days. Nor have they heeded the words, "are but as one day which is past by:" for, when this was uttered, not a thousand years only had passed, and the expression, "as a watch in the night," ought to have warned them that they might not be deceived by the uncertainty of the seasons: for even if the six first days in which God finished His works seemed to give some plausibility to their opinion, six watches, which amount to eighteen hours, will not consist with that opinion.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Day — The Jews reckoned the day from sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32). It was originally divided into three parts (Ps. 55:17). “The heat of the day” (1 Sam. 11:11; Neh. 7:3) was at our nine o’clock, and “the…
Psalms, Book Of — The present Hebrew name of the book is Tehill’im, “Praises;” but in the actual superscriptions of the psalms the word Tehillah is applied only to one, (Psalms 145:1) ... which is indeed emphatically…
Year · A thousand, with the Lord is like one day — A thousand, with the Lord is like one day
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The poet begins with the confession that the Lord has proved Himself to His own, in all periods of human history, as that which He was before the world was and will be for evermore. God is designedly appealed to by the name אדני, which frequently occurs in the mouth of Moses in the middle books of the Pentateuch, and also in the Song at the Sea, Exo 15:17 and in Deu 3:24. He is so named here as the Lord ruling over human history with an exaltation ever the same. Human history runs on in דּר ודר, so that one period (περίοδος) with the men living contemporaneous with it goes and another comes; the expression is deuteronomic (Deu 32:7). Such a course of generations lies behind the poet; and in…
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
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…
