Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 90:9 - 90:9

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 90:9 - 90:9


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After the transitoriness of men has now been confirmed in Psa 90:6. out of the special experience of Israel, the fact that this particular experience has its ground in a divine decree of wrath is more definitely confirmed from the facts of this experience, which, as Psa 90:11. complain, unfortunately have done so little to urge them on to the fear of God, which is the condition and the beginning of wisdom. In Psa 90:9 we distinctly hear the Israel of the desert speaking. That was a generation that fell a prey to the wrath of God (דֹּור עֶבְרָתֹו, Jer 7:29). עֶבְרָה is wrath that passes over, breaks through the bounds of subjectivity. All their days (cf. Psa 103:15) are passed away (פָּנָה, to turn one's self, to turn, e.g., Deu 1:24) in such wrath, i.e., thoroughly pervaded by it. They have spent their years like a sound (כְּמֹו־הֶגֶה), which has hardly gone forth before it has passed away, leaving no trace behind it; the noun signifies a gentle dull sound, whether a murmur (Job 37:2) or a groan (Eze 2:10). With בָּהֶם in Psa 90:10 the sum is stated: there are comprehended therein seventy years; they include, run up to so many. Hitzig renders: the days wherein (בהם) our years consist are seventy years; but שׁנותינו side by side with ימי must be regarded as its more minute genitival definition, and the accentuation cannot be objected to. Beside the plural שָׁנִים the poetic plural שָׁנֹות appears here, and it also occurs in Deu 32:7 (and nowhere else in the Pentateuch). That of which the sum is to be stated stands first of all as a casus absol. Luther's rendering: Siebenzig Jar, wens hoch kompt so sinds achtzig (seventy years, or at the furthest eighty years), as Symmachus also meant by his ἐν παραδόξῳ (in Chrysostom), is confirmed by the Talmudic הגיע לגבורות, “to attain to extreme old age” (B. Moëd katan, 28a), and rightly approved of by Hitzig and Olshausen. גבוּרֹת signifies in Psa 71:16 full strength, here full measure. Seventy, or at most eighty years, were the average sum of the extreme term of life to which the generation dying out in the wilderness attained. וְרָהְבָּם the lxx renders τὸ πλεῖον αὐτῶν, but רָהְבָּם is not equivalent to רֻבָּם. The verb רָהַב signifies to behave violently, e.g., of importunate entreaty, Pro 6:3, of insolent treatment, Isa 3:5, whence רַהַב (here רֹהַב), violence, impetuosity, and more especially a boastful vaunting appearance or coming forward, Job 9:13; Isa 30:7. The poet means to say that everything of which our life is proud (riches, outward appearance, luxury, beauty, etc.), when regarded in the right light, is after all only עָמָל, inasmuch as it causes us trouble and toil, and אָוֶן, because without any true intrinsic merit and worth. To this second predicate is appended the confirmatory clause. חִישׁ is infin. adverb. from חוּשׁ, הִישׁ, Deu 32:35 : speedily, swiftly (Symmachus, the Quinta, and Jerome). The verb גּוּז signifies transire in all the Semitic dialects; and following this signification, which is applied transitively in Num 11:31, the Jewish expositors and Schultens correctly render: nam transit velocissime. Following upon the perfect גָּז, the modus consecutivus וַנָּעֻפָה maintains its retrospective signification. The strengthening of this mood by means of the intentional ah is more usual with the 1st pers. sing., e.g., Gen 32:6, than with the 1st pers. plur., as here and in Gen 41:11; Ew. §232, g. The poet glances back from the end of life to the course of life. And life, with all of which it had been proud, appears as an empty burden; for it passed swiftly by and we fled away, we were borne away with rapid flight upon the wings of the past.

Such experience as this ought to urge one on to the fear of God; but how rarely does this happen! and yet the fear of God is the condition (stipulation) and the beginning of wisdom. The verb יָדַע in Psa 90:11, just as it in general denotes not merely notional but practically living and efficient knowledge, is here used of a knowledge which makes that which is known conduce to salvation. The meaning of וּכְיִרְאָֽתְךָ is determined in accordance with this. The suffix is here either gen. subj.: according to Thy fearfulness (יִרְאָה as in Eze 1:18), or gen. obj.: according to the fear that is due to Thee, which in itself is at once (cf. Psa 5:8; Exo 20:20; Deu 2:25) more natural, and here designates the knowledge which is so rarely found, as that which is determined by the fear of God, as a truly religious knowledge. Such knowledge Moses supplicates for himself and for Israel: to number our days teach us rightly to understand. 1Sa 23:17, where כֵּן יֹדֵעַ signifies “he does not know it to be otherwise, he is well aware of it,” shows how כֵּן is meant. Hitzig, contrary to the accentuation, draws it to למנות ימינו; but “to number our days” is in itself equivalent to “hourly to contemplate the fleeting character and brevity of our lifetime;” and כֵּן הֹודַע prays for a true qualification for this, and one that accords with experience. The future that follows is well adapted to the call, as frequently aim and result. But הֵבִיא is not to be taken, with Ewald and Hitzig, in the signification of bringing as an offering, a meaning this verb cannot have of itself alone (why should it not have been וְנַקְרִיב?). Böttcher also erroneously renders it after the analogy of Pro 2:10 : “that we may bring wisdom into the heart,” which ought to be בְּלֵב. הֵבִיא, deriving its meaning from agriculture, signifies “to carry off, obtain, gain, prop. to bring in,” viz., into the barn, 2Sa 9:10, Hagg. Psa 1:6; the produce of the field, and in a general way gain or profit, is hence called תְּבוּאָה. A wise heart is the fruit which one reaps or garners in from such numbering of the days, the gain which one carries off from so constantly reminding one's self of the end. לְבַב חָכְמָה is a poetically intensified expression for לֵב חָכָם, just as לֵב מַרְפֵּא in Pro 14:30 signifies a calm easy heart.