Psalms 90:10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The days of our years Of the generality of mankind, in that and all following ages, some few persons excepted, are threescore years and ten Which time the ancient heathen writers also fixed as the usual space of men's lives. And if by reason of strength That is, more than ordinary strength of constitution, which is the common cause of longer life; they be In some individuals; fourscore years At which age few indeed arrive; yet is their strength Their strongest and most vigorous old age; labour and sorrow Filled with troubles and griefs from the infirmities of age, the approach of death, and the contingencies of human life. For it is soon cut off Our strength doth not then decline by slow degrees, as it doth in our flourishing age, but decays apace; we do not then go, nor run toward death, as we do from our very birth, but we fly swiftly toward it, or, fly away like a bird, as the word נעפה, nagnupha, here used, signifies. “If the time here specified by Moses be thought too short a term for the general standard of human life in those early ages, yet it suits well with the particular case of the Israelites in the wilderness, whose lives were shortened by an express decree, so that a great number of them could not possibly reach the age of seventy; and those who did, probably soon felt a swift decay.” Dodd.