Bird's-eye view
This section of Psalm 90, a prayer attributed to Moses, pivots from the grandeur of God's eternity to the grim reality of man's mortality under the curse of sin. Moses, writing likely in the context of the wilderness wanderings where an entire generation was perishing, provides a theological diagnosis for the brevity and misery of human life. It is not a random accident of biology or a neutral fact of nature. Our lives are short and full of trouble because we are sinners living under the holy displeasure of a righteous God. The central argument is that God's anger is the direct cause of our frailty and fleeting existence. Our iniquities, even the ones we think are hidden, are set in the full glare of His holy countenance, and this divine scrutiny is what consumes us. The passage is a stark and unflinching look at the human condition east of Eden, designed to strip us of all self-righteousness and prepare us to cry out for mercy.
Moses argues that our days are not just short; they are spent under the fury of God. Our years conclude not with a bang, but with a sigh, a groan of futility. The allotted lifespan of seventy or eighty years is not a proud achievement but is characterized by "labor and wickedness." The psalm then culminates in a crucial question: who truly understands the power of God's anger? The implication is that no one does, at least not adequately. Our fear of God does not begin to match the reality of His holy wrath against sin. This is not meant to drive us to despair, but to a right-sizing of our sin and a right-sizing of our need for a savior. It is the necessary dark backdrop against which the glorious mercy of God, requested later in the psalm, can truly shine.
Outline
- 1. The Divine Cause of Human Frailty (Ps 90:7-11)
- a. Consumed by Divine Anger (Ps 90:7)
- b. Scrutinized by Divine Holiness (Ps 90:8)
- c. A Life Spent Under Wrath (Ps 90:9)
- d. The Vanity of Our Allotted Years (Ps 90:10)
- e. The Underestimated Power of God's Fury (Ps 90:11)
Context In Psalms
Psalm 90 is unique as the only psalm explicitly attributed to Moses, making it likely the oldest composition in the Psalter. It serves as the introduction to Book IV of the Psalms (Psalms 90-106). This book is thematically distinct, often wrestling with the questions of Israel's failure, the exile, and God's covenant faithfulness in the midst of national disaster. By placing this sober reflection by Moses at the head of this section, the editor of the Psalms grounds Israel's later historical troubles in the foundational reality of their sin, which was so evident during the wilderness wanderings. The psalm's stark contrast between God's eternal nature (vv. 1-2) and man's transient, sin-cursed life (vv. 3-11) sets the stage for the prayers of renewal and cries for God's mercy that characterize not only the end of this psalm (vv. 12-17) but also much of the rest of Book IV. It reminds the reader that before there was a failed monarchy or a destroyed temple, there was a fundamental problem between God and man, a problem of sin and divine wrath.
Key Issues
- The Relationship Between Sin and Death
- The Nature of God's Wrath
- The Doctrine of Secret Sins
- The Brevity and Vanity of Life
- The Proper Fear of God
Life Under the Gaze of God
We moderns, particularly in the West, have a difficult time with a passage like this. We are conditioned to think of death as a natural process and life's hardships as unfortunate but ultimately meaningless circumstances. We want a God who is a benevolent grandfather, always affirming and never angry. But Moses, speaking by the Holy Spirit, will have none of it. He connects the dots for us with brutal honesty: our lives are short, hard, and end in dust precisely because we are a rebellious race living under the judicial sentence of a holy God.
The central image here is that of being exposed. Our sins, particularly the "secret" ones we cherish and cultivate in the dark corners of our hearts, are not secret at all. Moses says God has set them "in the light of Your presence." Imagine your most shameful thought or deed not just known by God, but placed on a display stand in the throne room of the universe, illuminated by the blazing, uncreated light of God's own holiness. That is the reality. This is not cosmic paranoia; it is biblical realism. God's wrath is not an irrational tantrum; it is the settled, righteous, and holy opposition of a perfect being to all that is evil. And because that evil is in us, His wrath is upon us. Understanding this is the first step toward understanding the gospel. Until we see the true nature of our predicament, we will never appreciate the true nature of our salvation.
Verse by Verse Commentary
7 For we have been consumed by Your anger And by Your wrath we have been dismayed.
Moses begins the diagnosis with a direct causal link. The reason for the frailty and brevity of life described in the previous verses is stated plainly: it is God's anger. The word for "consumed" speaks of an end, a finishing, a complete destruction. Our lives are not just lived in the presence of God's anger; they are actively brought to an end by it. The second clause reinforces the first. "Dismayed" here carries the sense of being terrified, thrown into confusion and terror. God's wrath is not a passive attitude but an active force that rightly terrifies those who are its object. This is covenant language. Israel was in a covenant relationship with God, and the curses for disobedience were severe. Moses and his generation were living out the reality of those covenant curses in the wilderness.
8 You have set our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
This verse explains why God's anger is so justly kindled. It is because of our sin. Notice the parallelism. "Our iniquities" are placed "before You." This is a courtroom scene; the evidence is being presented to the judge. The second line intensifies the thought. It is not just our public, known sins. It is our "secret sins," the ones we think no one sees, the sins of the heart and mind, the lustful glance, the envious thought, the proud imagination. These are the ones we hide from our spouses, our friends, and even from ourselves. But God takes these hidden things and places them in the full, unshielded, Klieg light of His holy presence, His countenance. Nothing is hidden. There is no darkness, no shadow where we can conceal our rebellion. The light of His holiness exposes everything for what it is. This is a terrifying thought for the unrepentant, but it is a necessary prelude to grace.
9 For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh.
Because our sins are ever before Him, our entire lives are lived out under the shadow of His displeasure. Our days do not just pass; they "decline," they turn away and fade under His fury. It is a constant, pressing reality. The end of this life is not portrayed as a noble completion or a peaceful rest. We finish our years "like a sigh," or a groan, or a murmur. It is a picture of futility. A sigh is a breath, here and then gone, and it often expresses sorrow, weariness, or regret. That, Moses says, is the sum total of a life lived under the curse. It is a brief, sorrowful exhalation, and then it is over. The striving, the building, the accumulating, it all amounts to a puff of air.
10 As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to might, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and wickedness; For soon it is gone and we fly away.
Moses quantifies the brevity. The standard lifespan is seventy years. For those who are particularly strong, it might be eighty. But this is not presented as a great blessing. The "pride" of these years, the best they have to offer, their very substance, is "labor and wickedness." The word for labor is toil, misery, trouble. The word for wickedness is vanity, emptiness, iniquity. So even a long life, from a purely earthly perspective, is a long stretch of trouble and vanity. And it doesn't last. "Soon it is gone and we fly away." The speed is emphasized. Life is not a slow march; it is a flight. We are here for a moment, and then we are gone, like a bird startled from a branch.
11 Who knows the power of Your anger And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
This is the climactic and crucial question of the section. Having described the effects of God's anger, Moses now asks who truly comprehends its cause. The implied answer is, "no one." We do not grasp the full measure of God's wrath. The second line explains why. Our "fear" of God does not match His "fury." That is, our reverence, our awe, our terror before a holy God is always deficient. We consistently underestimate the holiness of God and therefore underestimate the sinfulness of our sin. If we truly feared God as He ought to be feared, we would have a much clearer understanding of the power of His anger. We would see that our short, troubled lives are exactly what our sin deserves. This verse is not a counsel of despair, but a call to repentance and right-thinking. It is a call to take God as seriously as He takes Himself.
Application
The immediate application of a passage like this is the cultivation of humility. We are not, as our culture tells us, basically good people who sometimes make mistakes. We are, as Moses teaches us, sinners whose lives are forfeit before a holy God. Our secret sins are not small peccadilloes; they are acts of high treason against the King of the universe, and they are fully exposed to His holy gaze. Our lives are not our own, and their brevity is a direct result of our rebellion. To read this and not be humbled is to not have read it at all.
But this profound humility is the only soil in which the gospel can take root. Why did Jesus Christ have to die? Because the power of God's anger is real. Why was He crushed for our iniquities? Because our iniquities were set before the face of God and demanded justice. On the cross, Jesus Christ stood in our place, under the full, unmitigated fury of God's wrath. All the consumption, all the terror, all the groaning futility of our lives was placed upon Him. He became the man of sorrows so that we could be satisfied with God's steadfast love (v. 14). He endured the full weight of God's anger so that we could be glad for all our days (v. 14).
Therefore, we must not domesticate the wrath of God. We must see it for what it is, as revealed in Scripture, so that we can see the cross for what it is: the most glorious rescue operation in the history of the world. The fear of God that this psalm calls for is not the cowering of a slave before a tyrant, but the awe-filled reverence of a pardoned criminal before a righteous and merciful Judge. We fear Him because He is holy and just, and we run to Him because in Christ, that very holiness and justice are now on our side.