Commentary - Psalm 90:12-17

Bird's-eye view

This section of Psalm 90 marks a significant turn. The first eleven verses are a profound meditation on the eternality of God and the transience of man under His wrath. Moses has laid the theological groundwork, establishing that our lives are brief, like grass that withers, because of our sin which is ever before God's countenance. Now, having established the problem, he turns to the solution. This is not a turn to despair, but a turn to prayer. The second half of the psalm is a petition, a series of requests that flow directly from the hard realities laid out in the first half. If our days are few and full of trouble, then what is the proper response? It is to ask God for wisdom, for restoration, for joy, and for His favor upon our fleeting efforts. This is a prayer for grace in the wilderness, asking the eternal God to establish the work of temporary man.

The prayer builds in a logical sequence. It begins with a request for a wise heart to rightly reckon with our mortality (v. 12). From this internal posture, the prayer moves outward, asking God to "return" and show compassion (v. 13). This leads to a plea for satisfaction in God's steadfast love, which is the only true source of lasting joy (v. 14). The psalmist then boldly asks for a gladness that corresponds to the previous affliction (v. 15), for God's glorious work to be made manifest to His people (v. 16), and finally, for God's favor to rest upon them and establish the work of their hands (v. 17). It is a model prayer for a people who know they are sinners living in a fallen world, yet who also know they have a gracious and eternal God to whom they can appeal.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 90 is unique in the Psalter as it is explicitly attributed to Moses. This places it as perhaps the oldest of the psalms, rooted in the wilderness wanderings of Israel. The themes of God's wrath against sin, the brevity of life, and the futility of human existence apart from God's grace are all powerfully informed by Israel's experience of forty years of judgment in the desert. An entire generation, save two men, perished there because of their unbelief. The first part of the psalm reflects this grim reality. Our days are consumed by God's wrath (v. 9), and our years end with a moan (v. 9).

The second half, our text, is therefore the cry of a people who have learned the hard lesson of God's holiness and their own sinfulness. It is not the presumptuous prayer of a people who feel entitled to blessing, but the humble petition of those who know they deserve judgment. This prayer for restoration and blessing, coming after such a stark meditation on death, sets a pattern seen throughout Scripture: true hope is born out of a right understanding of our desperate condition. It is only when we see the gravity of the curse that we can truly appreciate the glory of the grace that overcomes it.

Verse by Verse Commentary

v. 12 So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

The prayer begins with a request for education. "So teach us." Given all that has been said about our fleeting lives, like a flood, like a dream, like withered grass, the logical conclusion is that we need divine instruction on how to live. The subject matter is "to number our days." This is not about morbidly counting down to our death. It is about weighing our days, not just counting them. Some men have many days that are as light and worthless as styrofoam packing peanuts; others have few, but they are heavy as gold. To number our days rightly is to understand their brevity and their purpose. It is to live in light of our own mortality. The goal of this spiritual arithmetic is a "heart of wisdom." Wisdom in Scripture is not abstract intellectual knowledge; it is the skill of godly living. A wise heart knows what matters because it knows that time is short. It doesn't waste time on trifles. It invests in eternity. This is the opposite of the fool who lives as though he will never die. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and a key part of that fear is recognizing our creaturely limits before our eternal Creator.

v. 13 Return, O Yahweh; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your slaves.

This is a raw, honest cry. "Return, O Yahweh." It implies a sense of distance, a sense that God has withdrawn His felt presence. During the wilderness wanderings, God was with Israel, but His presence was often a terrifying, judicial presence. This is a plea for the return of His favorable presence. "How long?" is the classic cry of God's people in affliction. It is a question born of faith, not unbelief. It assumes that God will act, but groans under the waiting. "And be sorry for Your slaves." The word for "be sorry" can also be translated as "have compassion" or "relent." It is a plea for God to relent from His judgment. Moses, speaking for the people, identifies them as God's "slaves" or servants. This is an appeal to the covenant. We are Yours. We belong to You. Even though we have sinned and deserve Your wrath, do not abandon Your own servants. It is an appeal to God's covenant faithfulness, the very foundation of any hope for sinners.

v. 14 O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

After the plea for God to return, there is a plea for what that return should bring: satisfaction. And what can satisfy the human soul? Only one thing: God's "lovingkindness." This is the great Hebrew word hesed, God's covenant loyalty, His steadfast, unfailing love. The request is to be satisfied with this "in the morning," which suggests a new beginning, a dawning of grace after a long night of judgment. The result of being satisfied in God is joy. Not a fleeting happiness based on circumstances, but a deep-seated gladness that results in singing. And this is not a temporary joy, but one that lasts "all our days." This is a profoundly gospel-centered request. The only antidote to a life that is brief and ends in a moan is a life that is satisfied early and continually with the steadfast love of God. This is what Christ purchased for us, a joy that outlasts the sorrows of this fleeting world.

v. 15 Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, And the years we have seen evil.

This is one of the boldest requests in all the Psalms. Moses asks for a divine balancing of the scales. He asks for a measure of gladness that is proportional to the measure of suffering they have endured. "Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us." He is not charging God with wrongdoing. He acknowledges that the affliction came from God. But he is asking that God's grace would be as deep and as long as His judgment has been. This is not a demand for compensation, but a faith-filled appeal to the character of a God who is not only just but also abundantly gracious. It is a prayer that God would show that His grace is more powerful than His wrath, that He is more eager to restore than He is to punish. For the Christian, this prayer finds its ultimate answer in Christ. The afflictions of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The joy of eternity will far outweigh the sorrows of our seventy or eighty years.

v. 16 Let Your work appear to Your slaves And Your majesty to their sons.

The prayer now shifts from the internal experience of joy to the external manifestation of God's glory. "Let Your work appear." What work? In the context of the wilderness, this would be the work of salvation, of bringing them into the promised land, of fulfilling His covenant promises. They had seen God's work of judgment; now they long to see His work of redemption. And this is not just for the current generation, but for the next. "And Your majesty to their sons." They desire a legacy of faith, that their children would not just hear about the God of their fathers, but would see His glory for themselves. This is a prayer for revival and for generational faithfulness. We want to see God move, to see His kingdom advance, to see His glorious power on display in our lives and in the lives of our children. We want more than just doctrinal correctness; we want to see the reality of God's majestic work in our midst.

v. 17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And establish for us the work of our hands; Establish the work of our hands.

The psalm concludes with a double plea for establishment. It begins with a request for God's "favor" to be upon them. The word can also be translated as "beauty" or "pleasantness." Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. This is a desire for God's own character to be reflected in His people. But it flows directly into the second part of the verse. Because our lives are fleeting and our works are like mist, we need something outside of ourselves to give them permanence. "Establish for us the work of our hands." All our labor, all our building, all our striving is ultimately transient. It is fog. Unless the eternal God puts His hand to it, it will all come to nothing. The repetition, "Establish the work of our hands," emphasizes the urgency and desperation of the request. We build the house, but unless the Lord builds it, we labor in vain. This is the cry of every true believer. We work, we strive, we build, but we know that any lasting significance, any eternal value, comes only when the favor of God descends upon our efforts and establishes them. This prayer is impossible for God to answer apart from the incarnate Messiah. Christ lived a perfect life, and the beauty of the Lord rested fully upon Him. He went to the cross to deal with our ugly, transient lives. In His resurrection, He laid the foundation for God to answer this prayer, to take our wispy, foggy works, done in His name, and establish them for eternity.

Application

The first and most obvious application is that we must learn to pray like this. We live in a culture that denies death and deifies distraction. This psalm forces us to confront our mortality, not to become morbid, but to become wise. We must ask God to teach us to weigh our days, to see time as the precious, non-renewable resource that it is. This means ruthlessly cutting out the trivial pursuits that consume so many of our hours and focusing on what has eternal weight.

Second, we must learn to ground our joy in the right place. Our satisfaction cannot come from our circumstances, our health, or our accomplishments. All of that is withering grass. True, lasting joy comes only from being satisfied in the hesed, the covenant love of God. We should pray every morning, "Satisfy me with Your lovingkindness." When that is our foundation, we can be glad and sing for joy even in a world full of affliction and evil.

Finally, this psalm teaches us the right way to think about our work. On the one hand, we must recognize its futility in itself. Our best efforts are but mist. This should produce humility. On the other hand, we are to work diligently and then ask the eternal God to establish that work. We are not paralyzed by our transience; we are motivated by it to depend on God's grace. We plant and water, but we pray earnestly for God to give the growth. Whether you are building a company, raising a family, writing a book, or laying bricks, do it with all your might, and then commit it to God, praying, "Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands." For it is only in Christ that our labor is not in vain.