Psalm 90:13 - Printer Friendly

ESV: Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants!

NIV: Relent, LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants.

NASB: Do return, Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants.

CSB: Lord--how long? Turn and have compassion on your servants.

NLT: O Lord, come back to us! How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants!

KJV: Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

NKJV: Return, O Lord! How long? And have compassion on Your servants.

Moses asks the Lord to turn from His justified anger and to have pity on His people. He wondered how long the Lord would direct judgment toward His sinning people.

The book of Jonah pictures both the Lord's anger and His pity. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and cry against its evil, but Jonah disobeyed the command. He boarded a ship bound for the opposite direction. But after Jonah repented from the belly of the great fish that swallowed him, the Lord graciously recommissioned him. When the city of Nineveh received Jonah's message, repentance broke out from the highest level of government to the lowest level of society. As a result, the Lord responded with pity and compassion. Jonah 3:10 reports: "When God saw what they [the people of Nineveh] did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it."

Micah 7:18–19 pictures God as pardoning iniquity, withholding His anger, delighting in steadfast love, compassionate, treading iniquities underfoot, and casting all Israel's sins into the depths of the sea. It was to this God that Moses appealed for pity.

Psalm 90:11–17 calls on the Lord to teach His people to number their days and gain wisdom. Moses, the author, prays for mercy and joy. Also, he asks the Lord to prosper His servants' work. Other Scriptures emphasize God's compassion, the joy He gives, and the blessing He pours out on those who serve Him (Psalm 100:5; Proverbs 22:4). The books of Ezra and Nehemiah demonstrate the truth that God grants these gifts to those who honor Him, even if those gifts aren't always in the form of an easy, prosperous life.

Psalm 90, likely the oldest psalm, opens with Moses addressing God as eternal and Israel's dwelling place, but quickly shifts to an acknowledgement of man's brief life on earth. Our iniquity is the reason God directs His wrath at us. In most cases, a person can expect to live somewhere around 70 or 80 years, barring disease or misfortune. Short or long, life is full of toil and trouble. In view of life's brevity, Moses asks the Lord to fill His people with wisdom. He also asks the Lord to reveal His work, demonstrate His power, grant His favor, and make Israel's labor successful.

Psalm 90, written by Moses, is most likely the oldest psalm, presuming it was written during Israel's wandering in the desert. This begins the fourth division of Psalms (90—106) and likely was written after Israel refused to heed the Lord's command to enter and occupy Canaan (Numbers 13—14). The background for Psalm 90 is Israel's wanderings for forty years in the desert and the perishing of a generation as a result of its disobedience. The psalm focuses on God's eternal nature and man's finite nature. It stresses God's anger against sin and appeals to His compassion to restore and bless His people.

The book of Psalms is composed of individual songs, hymns, or poems, each of which is a ''Psalm'' in and of itself. These works contain a wide variety of themes. Some Psalms focus on praising and worshipping God. Others cry out in anguish over the pain of life. Still other Psalms look forward to the coming of the Messiah. While some Psalms are related, each has its own historical and biblical context.