a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
away
פָּנ֣וּpa.Nu
H6437
to turn · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
wrath
בְעֶבְרָתֶ֑ךָve.'ev.ra.Te.kha
H5678
an outburst of passion · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
spend
כִּלִּ֖ינוּki.Li.nu
H3615
to end · verb, piel perfect, 1st person common plural
years
שָׁנֵ֣ינוּsha.Nei.nu
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
tale
הֶֽגֶהHe.geh
H1899
a muttering (in sighing · 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
Psalms 78:33 Therefore their days did he consume in vanity, and their years in trouble.
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…
Psalms 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 90:7-11
Moses had, in the foregoing verses, lamented the frailty of human life in general; the children of men are as a sleep and as the grass. But here he teaches the people of Israel to confess before God that righteous sentence of death which they were under in a special manner, and which by their sins they had brought upon themselves. Their share in the common lot of mortality was not enough, but they are, and must live and die, under peculiar tokens of God's displeasure. Here they speak of themselves: We Israelites are consumed and troubled, and our days have passed away.
I. They are here taught to acknowledge the wrath of God to be the cause of all their miseries. We are consumed, we are troub…
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath,.... The life of man is rather measured by days than by months or years; and these are but few, which pass away or "decline" (g) as the day does towards the evening; see Jeremiah 6:4 or "turn away their face", as the word (h) may be rendered: they turn their backs upon us, and not the face to us; so that it is a hard thing to get time by the forelock; and these, which is worst of all, pass away in the "wrath" of God. This has a particular reference to the people of Israel in the wilderness, when God had swore in his wrath they should not enter into the land of Canaan, but wander about all their days in the wilderness, and be consumed there; so th…
Psalm 90:9-10
9. For all our days are passed away in thy indignation: we have spent our years as it were a thought. [568] 10. In the days of our years there are threescore years and ten: and if through strength they are fourscore years, yet is their pride but labor and grief; for it [569] swiftly passes by, and we fly away.
9. For all our days are passed away in thy indignation. This might be viewed as a general confirmation of the preceding sentence, That the whole course of man's life is suddenly brought to an end, as soon as God shows himself displeased. But in my opinion Moses rather amplifies what he has said above concerning the rigour of God's wrath, and his strict examination of ev…
The Church Fathers
"For all our days are failed, and in Thine anger we have failed" [Psalm 90:9]. These words sufficiently prove that our subjection to death is a punishment. He speaks of our days failing, either because men fail in them from loving things that pass away, or because they are reduced to so small a number; which he asserts in the following lines: "our years are spent in thought like a spider."
Our years shall be pondered like a spider. He could have said nothing more beautiful than to describe human life and all our anxiety and pursuits, in which we run this way and that and lay up wealth, seek riches, build houses, beget children: and see to what a thing they are compared. Our years shall be pondered like a spider. For just as we see the spider draw out its threads on the walls and weave its webs, which are undone by a sudden wind; so every act of our life is scattered by the sudden onset of tribulation or of death.
For all our days have failed. So do the days pass and death draw near, that in a manner, while we know it not, our whole age and life itself is stolen away, scanty as it is. This very thing, which I now speak and you hear, is cut away from a part of our life; and although we believe there to be in it some advancing of the soul, yet because it uses up the span of hours, it is a loss of time and of age. And thus it comes about that where we think we have gain, there rather loss is brought upon us.
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
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…
Tale — (1.) Heb. tokhen, “a task,” as weighed and measured out = tally, i.e., the number told off; the full number (Ex. 5:18; see 1 Sam. 18:27; 1 Chr. 9:28). In Ezek. 45:11 rendered “measure.” (2.) Heb.…
Anger Of God, The · Against: Sin, in saints — Against: Sin, in saints
Death, Natural · Regard, as at hand — Regard, as at hand
Life · BREVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF — BREVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF
Life, Natural · Is compared to: A tale told — Is compared to: A tale told
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).
After the transitoriness of men has now been confirmed in Psa 90:6. out of the special experience of Israel, the fact that this particular experience has its ground in a divine decree of wrath is more definitely confirmed from the facts of this experience, which, as Psa 90:11. complain, unfortunately have done so little to urge them on to the fear of God, which is the condition and the beginning of wisdom. In Psa 90:9 we distinctly hear the Israel of the desert speaking. That was a generation that fell a prey to the wrath of God (דּור עברתו, Jer 7:29). עברה is wrath that passes over, breaks through the bounds of subjectivity. All their days (cf. Psa 103:15) are passed away (פּנה, to turn one…
A groan of sorrow (Ezek 2:10) sums up a life spent in facing the consequences of sin. • Humans cause trouble (see Ps 10:6) and receive pain in return.
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 90:9
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel; each halting place became a graveyard; they marked their march by the tombs they left behind them. Because of the penal sentence their days were dried up, and their lives wasted away. We spend our years as a tale that is told. Yea, not their days only, but their years flew by them like a thought, swift as a meditation, rapid and idle as a gossip's story. Sin had cast a shadow over all things, and made the lives of the dying wanderers to be both vain and brief. The first sentence is not intended for believers…
