Psalm 90:9

Verse 9. We spend our years as a tale that is told. This seems to express both a necessary fact and a censure. The rapid consumption of our years -- their speedy passing away, is inevitable. But they may be spent also in a trifling manner to little valuable purpose, which would complete the disconsolate reflection on them, by the addition of guilt and censure. --John Foster, 1768-1843.

Verse 9. As a tale that is told. In the Hebrew it is hgxwmk, sicut meditatio, (as a meditation) and so we read it in the margin, as if all our years were little else than a continual meditation upon the things of this world. Indeed, much of man's time is spent in this kind of vain meditation, as how to deceive and play fast and loose for advantage; such a meditation had they, Isaiah 59:13 , or meditating with the heart lying words; the same word in the Hebrew as in my text; or how to heap up riches, such a meditation had that covetous man in the gospel, Luke 12:17 ; or how to violate the sacred bonds of religion and laws of God, such a meditation had they, Psalms 2:1-3 ; and in such vain meditations as these do men spend their years "as a tale that is told" ...

To close this point with Gregory Nazianzen.

What are we but a vain dream that hath no existence or being, a mere phantasm or apparition that cannot be held, a ship sailing in the sea which leaves no impression or trace behind it, a dust, a vapour, a morning dew, a flower flourishing one day and fading another, yea, the same day behold it springing and withered, but my text adds another metaphor from the flying of a bird, and we fly away, not go and run but fly, the quickest motion that any corporeal creature hath. Our life is like the fight of a bird, it is here now and it is gone out of sight suddenly. The Prophet therefore speaking of the speedy departure of Ephraim's glory expresses it thus, "It shall flee away like a bird", Hosea 9:11 ; and Solomon saith the like of riches, "they make themselves wings and flee away like an eagle toward heaven": Proverbs 23:5 . David wished for the wings of a dove that he might flee away and be at rest and good cause he had for it, for this life is not more short than miserable ...

Be it our care then not to come creeping and coughing to God with a load of diseases and infirmities about us, when we are at death's door and not before, but to consecrate the first fruits of our life to his service. It is in the spending our time (as one compares it) as in the distilling of waters, the thinnest and purest part runs out first and only the lees at last: what an unworthy thing will it be to offer the prime of our time to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and the dregs of it to God. He that forbade the lame and the blind in beasts to be sacrificed, will not surely allow it in men; if they come not to present their bodies a living sacrifice, while they are living and lively too, ere they be lame or blind or deformed with extremity of age, it is even a miracle if it prove then a holy, acceptable, or reasonable service. --Thomas Washbourne, 1655.

Verse 9. (second clause). -- The Hebrew is different from all the Versions. We consume our years (hgxwmk kemo hegeh) like a groan. We live a dying, whining, complaining life, and at last a groan is its termination! -- Adam Clarke.

Verse 9. -- The Vulgate translation has, Our years pass away like those of a spider. It implies that our life is as frail as the thread of a spider's web. Constituted most curiously the spider's web is; but what more fragile? In what is there more wisdom than in the complicated frame of the human body; and what more easily destroyed? Glass is granite compared with flesh; and vapours are rocks compared with life. --C.H.S.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 9.

--G.R.