Psalm 90:8-10

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Psalm 90:8 tn Heb “you set our sins in front of you.”
2. Psalm 90:8 tn Heb “what we have hidden to the light of your face.” God’s face is compared to a light or lamp that exposes the darkness around it.
3. Psalm 90:9 tn Or “for.”
4. Psalm 90:9 tn Heb “all our days pass by in your anger.”
5. Psalm 90:9 tn Heb “we finish our years like a sigh.” In Ezek 2:10 the word הֶגֶה (hegeh) elsewhere refers to a grumbling or moaning sound. Here a brief sigh or moan is probably in view. If so, the simile pictures one’s lifetime as transient. Another option is that the simile alludes to the weakness that characteristically overtakes a person at the end of one’s lifetime. In this case the phrase could be translated, “we end our lives with a painful moan.”
6. Psalm 90:10 tn Heb “the days of our years, in them [are] seventy years.”
7. Psalm 90:10 tn Heb “or if [there is] strength, eighty years.”
8. Psalm 90:10 tn Heb “and their pride [is] destruction and wickedness.” The Hebrew noun רֹהַב (rohav) occurs only here. BDB 923 s.v. assigns the meaning “pride,” deriving the noun from the verbal root רָהַב (rahav, “to act stormily [boisterously, arrogantly]”). Here the “pride” of one’s days (see v. 9) probably refers to one’s most productive years in the prime of life. The words translated “destruction and wickedness” are also paired in Ps 10:7. They also appear in proximity in Pss 7:14 and 55:10. The oppressive and abusive actions of evil men are probably in view (see Job 4:8; 5:6; 15:35; Isa 10:1; 59:4).
9. Psalm 90:10 tn or “for.”
10. Psalm 90:10 tn Heb “it passes quickly.” The subject of the verb is probably “their pride” (see the preceding line). The verb גּוּז (guz) means “to pass” here; it occurs only here and in Num 11:31.
11. Psalm 90:10 sn We fly away. The psalmist compares life to a bird that quickly flies off (see Job 20:8).