Psalm 90:4

Verse 4. As yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. He corrects the previous clause with an extraordinary abbreviation. For he says that the whole space of human life, although it may be very long, and reach a thousand years, yet with God it is esteemed not only as one day, which has already gone, but is scarcely equal to the fourth part of a night. For the nights were divided into four watches, which lasted three hours each. And indeed by the word night, it is meant that human affairs in this life are involved in much darkness, many errors, dangers, terrors, and sorrows. --Mollerus.

Verse 4. As a watch in the night. The night is wont to appear shorter than the day, and to pass more swiftly, because those who sleep, says Euthymius, notice not the lapse of time. On account of the darkness also, it is less observed; and to those at work the time seems longer, than to those who have their work done. --Lorinus.

Verse 4. A watch in the night. Sir John Chardin observes in a note on this verse, that as the people of the East have no clocks, the several parts of the day and of the night, which are eight in all, are given notice of. In the Indies, the parts of the night are made known as well by instruments of music in great cities, as by the rounds of the watchmen, who with cries, and small drums, give them notice that a fourth part of the night is passed. Now as these cries awaked those who had slept, all that quarter part of the night, it appeared to them but as a moment. --Harmer's Observations.

Verse 4. -- The ages and the dispensations, the promise to Adam, the engagement with Noah, the oath to Abraham, the covenant with Moses -- these were but watches, through which the children of men had to wait amid the darkness of things created, until the morning should dawn of things uncreated. Now is "the right far spent, and the day at hand." --Plain Commentary.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 4.