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But faith holds out, nay, realises the happy issue, (ver. 32)—

"Blessed be the Lord for ever!

Amen, and amen!”

Let it come, let it come? (yevoITO, YEVOITO! Sept.) or rather, testifying its assurance that all this shall come, not one thing failing; for the theme from beginning to end has been— The faithful covenant with Messiah and his Seed.

PSALM XC.

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.

1 LORD, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.

2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,

Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. 4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, And as a watch in the night.

5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep:

In the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;

In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.

8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten ;

And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

Yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. 13 Return, O Lord! how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. 14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

And the years wherein we have seen evil.

16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. 17 And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

And establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

The position of the Psalm.

The title.

The contents

Part IV. of the Book of Psalms, according to the Jewish division, begins here. It is, however, unsuitable in this way to separate the 90th from the 89th, inasmuch as the latter sets forth the abiding faithfulness of God the Lord, while the former shews the need of that faithful covenant, because of man's sin and frailty. Perhaps the reference in the close of Psa. lxxxix. to the words of Moses, in Num. xi. 12, may have in part led to the position of this Psalm next to it.

The title, "The prayer of Moses, the man of God," is a title, the genuineness of which we have no grounds for disputing, as all manuscripts have it. Some diminish the interest of this title by giving it a figurative turn, as if all that was meant was that the Psalm is a proper prayer for one who, like Moses, is a pilgrim in the world's wilderness. But it is far better to take it as it stands--a real prayer and psalm of Moses, perhaps written about the time of that awful event, Num. xi, or, in the 38th year of the desert-journey, when himself had so sinned as to be forbidden to enter the land. Some even fix on Pisgah as the spot where he sang so pensively.

Moses, bemoaning the sentence gone forth on Israel, and already in prospect seeing the sands of the desert covering the whitening bones of the thousands that had followed him, sings of these three themes

(a) From 1-10, Nothing found stable but Jehovah. He is , not a tent in the desert, but a fixed abode (ver. 1); and shall be so more gloriously still, (Horne).

"Thou turnest them even to brokenness, (i. e., crumbling down the mass of dust);

And sayest, Return, ye children of men," (q. d., let the sentence re-
corded in Gen. iii. 19, take its course).

Man fades though his sentence of death be deferred, and
even if he were, like those before the flood, to live onward
to a thousand years. All this because of sin,sin which God's
holy eye cannot overlook, for his countenance is spoken of (ver.
8) as "TIN, a luminary. And then the shortened period of
seventy years ever tells of the limit to man.
Our days pass
away as “a a tale,” or “ejaculation," or "sigh," or "thought"

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and if there be fourscore years, yet Da, that in which they prided themselves (their Rahab), becomes toil and suffering. (Hengst.)

(b) In verses 11, 12, he sings, Nothing able to stand before the wrath of the Lord

"Who knows the power of thine anger, (Ezra viii. 22)

And thy wrath, up to the measure of thy fear?

Who knows, or cares for, thy wrath in a manner suitable to what is demanded by thy perfection. O to know it so as to be led thereby to wisdom

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“ Cause us to know (it), numbering our days !
That we may bring our heart to wisdom.”

(c) But in verses 13-17, he sings of The days of the Restitution of all things--days when “the Lord returns,” that is, turns back from his wrath," and comforts his servants-days, when the dark night is past, and when "at morning" (paa, ver. 14) the Lord satiates his own, so that they are evermore rejoicing-days like what Jesus speaks of, John xvi. 20–22, that make anguish no more remembered-days when the Lord's work appears in power, and his glory is unveiled-days, when the "beau'y ( see Psa. xxvii. 4,*) of the Lord," his well-pleased look, rests on all his people, and on earth at large. Of such days the times of David and Solomon were a type, and the times of Immanuel on earth and his apostles were so far a specimen. But the fulness is still a thing hoped for, to be brought us at the Lord's appearing.

The meeker than Moses, Christ on earth, could use this Psalm Used by our in sympathy with us. As in Psa. cii. 3, 10, 11, he mourns over sin, and the results of sin, which he by imputation was made to share, so here he might speak as one of us throughout. This very ancient Psalm, "The prayer of Moses, the man of God," has for its burden

Man's sin and frailty leading to the cry for the better days.

*The Targum has here-"Let the sweetness of the garden of Eden be upon

us."

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This is the theme.

Christ the chief speaker.

PSALM XCI.

1 HE that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress:

My God; in him will I trust.

3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;

Nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness :

Nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; But it shall not come nigh thee.

8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold, and see the reward of the wicked. 9 Because thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation;

10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy

dwelling.

11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy

ways.

12 They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a

stone.

13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder :

The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him
I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him :

I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. 16 With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

"Incarnate God! the soul that knows

Thy name's mysterious power,
Shall dwell in undisturbed repose

And fear the trying hour."

THE Messiah, of whom former Psalms have sung, and to whom
every sweet singer of Israel had regard, is here prominently
before us.
In contrast to the utter failure of man in himself,
here is Messiah's safety in his God. Besides (in the wonted
manner of all these holy songs for the Church in all ages),
Messiah's seed are included, who, though as reeds in them-
selves, are as the cedars of God in their Head

Israel's history.

The imagery is taken from Israel's history. Thus, verse 1 Allusions to speaks of “the Almighty," the" Shaddai" who spoke to Abraham, Gen. xvii. 1; verse 5, the Passover night, and David's escape from the pestilence; and the same again, in another aspect, in verses 6, 7, 8. Not to speak of the reference in verse 2 to the Tabernacle and its Holy of Holies, verses 3, 4, allusion is made to Jehovah as the eagle (Deut. xxxiii. 12) who bore up Israel. Not less so verses 11-13, where the scorpions of the desert, and the beasts of "the waste, howling wilderness" are in view, as well as the flints and the pit-falls of the desert, needing an angel-hand to do the service done by the angel of the covenant in the Cloudy Pillar. Even verse 15 abounds in such references; the "calling" and "trouble" resemble Psa. lxxxi. 7, where Israel's distresses are the theme; the "delivering," too, and then the “glorifying” remind us of Israel made glorious in the eyes of the nations; while the "length of days” sends us back to such promises as Deut. xi. 21.

members.

The Psalm, then, may be viewed as gathering round Messiah Christ and his and his seed all the Lord's gracious and glorious interpositions in behalf of his own from the beginning; and all the Lord's promises. It is Christ who realises verse 1 to the full, (as Satan seems to have known when he used this Psalm in the temptation, Luke iv. 10, 11)

"He who sils in the covert of the Most High

Shall spend the night (i. e., his darkest hours) under the shade of the
Almighty;

Saying to Jehovah, 'He is my Refuge,' &c."

Let us simply notice that may very naturally be rendered as the present part, "He sits, saying to Jehovah." Christ's people, in their measure, may be thus described; for does not faith confidingly "sit in the covert of the Most High,” going in by the rent vail? And in the measure they so do, in the same measure they claim and they enjoy the blessings afterwards set forth. It is interesting to notice in verse 6 the 727 and the which Hosea xiii. 14 alludes to, when telling that at the resurrection morn he will be plague and destruction to death. The putrid plague-fever often comes on in the night while the patient is asleep; the solstitial disease seizes in heat of harvest upon a man in open air, and cuts him off, per

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