LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Psalms 90:1-17.-A meditation: the Lord our dwelling-place, the counterpoise to our transitory life: death, the wages of sin (Psalms 90:1-10); prayer: as men so little know the connection of our dying frailty with God's mighty anger against our sins, God teach us it so that we may apply our hearts to the wisdom which shrinks from sin (Psalms 90:11-12); return from thy wrath as the people turn to thee; comfort us according to the shortness of life wherein thou hast afflicted us (Psalms 90:13-17).
Title. - The man of God - implies that Moses' high character and office are a guarantee for the inspired authority of the psalm. His word is to be reverently heeded, as the Word of God Himself. It is a title applied also to David, Elijah, and Elisha in the Old Testament, and to Timothy in the New Testament. Compare Deuteronomy 33:1; Joshua 14:6. The time of the psalm was probably (Psalms 90:13-15) toward the close of the 40 years' wandering in the desert. The people, after long chastisement, beg mercy. God answered them in the triumphs miraculously vouchsafed at their entrance into Canaan. Here, as in Genesis 2:1-25; Genesis 3:1-24, death is set forth as the result of sin. The limitation of life to 70 or 80 years accords with the fact, that most of the generation that perished in the wilderness were from 20 to 40 years of age in leaving Eygpt, and 40 more years in the wilderness - i:e., in all, 70 or 80 years at death. Moses, the leader whom the prophets followed, gave also the first movement to psalm poetry, (Deuteronomy 32:1-52; Deuteronomy 33:1-29.)
Psalms 90:1-5.-The First division of the First part: meditation. The transitoriness of life points us to Yahweh as our only permanent abode.
Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. This verse contains the theme: Psalms 90:2-5, the ground on which it rest. Nowhere else is the term "dwelling place" х maa`own (H4583)] applied to God, except here and Psalms 91:9, and Deuteronomy 33:27: cf. Isaiah 4:6. How naturally was the image suggested by the sense of the value of a fixed habitation, which the homeless condition of the Israelites would force upon them in the wilderness!