Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood - as one is unexpectedly and irresistibly wept away with a flood, the product of a storm of rain (cf. Isaiah 25:4). Hebrew, 'a rain torrent against a wall,' sweeping it away. Probably the deluge was in the Psalmist's mind: as the deluge swept every living thing away, so one generation after another is carried away.
They are as a sleep. There is a play upon sounds in the Hebrew of sleep and (Psalms 90:4), х shaaniym (H8141)
... sheenaah (H8142)]. 'Sleep ceases ere we can perceive it or mark it; because before we are aware that we have slept, sleep is gone ended.' So is our life: 'before we are rightly conscious of being alive, we cease to live' (Luther). (Psalms 73:20, "As a dream when one awaketh.")
In the morning they are like grass which groweth up, х chaalap (H2498)] - literally, 'to glide through,' as plants sprout up through the soil. The margin takes it, 'is change,' as in Psalms 102:26. So Hengstenberg translates, 'in the morning it vanishes like grass.' The 'it' is the figurative "sleep" - i:e., man. But thus a second image is heaped upon the first, which seems not so likely. In Job 14:7 the verb is translated "sprout again." Moreover, in Psalms 90:6, it would cause complete confusion to translate 'is vanished,' or 'changed.'