Psalms
Psalms 90
Commentary
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3 commentators · 24 notes on this chapter
Matthew Henry3
Writes as a pastor rather than a critic. Expect devotional and practical application over historical or linguistic analysis, read through a Reformed covenantal frame — and expect the Old Testament to be read forward toward Christ throughout.
Why this voice is here: The most widely read English commentary for three centuries. Included as a baseline: where Henry and a modern voice diverge, the divergence itself is usually the interesting part.
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…
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…
These are the petitions of this prayer, grounded upon the foregoing meditations and acknowledgments. Is any afflicted? Let him learn thus to pray. Four things they are here directed to pray for: - I. For a sanctified use of the sad dispensation they were now…
John Gill17
The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.
Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations,.... Even when they had no certain dwelling place in the world; so their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, dwelt in tabernacles in the land of promise, as in a strange land; and their posterity…
Before the mountains were brought forth,.... Or "were born" (b), and came forth out of the womb and bowels of the earth, and were made to rise and stand up at the command of God, as they did when he first created the earth; and are mentioned not only because…
Thou turnest man to destruction,.... Or to death, as the Targum, which is the destruction of man; not an annihilation of body or soul, but a dissolution of the union between them; the words may be rendered, "thou turnest man until he is broken" (b); and…
Keil & Delitzsch4
The technical one, and Old Testament only. Expect Hebrew grammar, textual argument, and direct engagement with nineteenth-century critical scholarship — closer to a scholarly apparatus than a devotional read. Where a modern critic claims a text is late or composite, this is where the conservative counter-argument was made.
Why this voice is here: Old Testament only, and heavy going — but the place to look when someone asserts a passage cannot mean what it appears to.
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…
Psa 90:5-6 tell us how great is the distance between men and this eternal selfsameness of God. The suffix of זרמתּם, referred to the thousand years, produces a synallage (since שׁנה is feminine), which is to be avoided whenever it is possible to do so; the…
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…
World English Bible — Public domain