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AN OLD PSALM FOR A NEW YEAR

January 7, 2026

Psalm 90 is an old Psalm, perhaps the oldest. It is attributed to Moses, so is contemporaneous with the Pentateuch, the oldest of the Old Testament documents. While Moses does not offer a specific context for the psalm, it likely reflects his response to all he has heard by way of special revelation as well as observed throughout the entire period of the exodus. This makes the psalm at once both comforting and frightening. The song describes the gulf that exists between a holy God and his less-than-holy people, a breach that God himself would ultimately mend through the incarnation of his Son, Jesus Christ. Despite this predicament, Israel, for whose benefit the psalm is written, nevertheless remains a people that God loves and keeps by his own covenantal initiative.

The psalm consists of three sections; praise (Psalm 90:1-2), lament (Psalm 90:3-12), and prayer (Psalm 90:13-17). While Moses’ original audience is Israel during its forty years in the wilderness, the psalm has a universal “feel” to it in that it addresses the reality of all people everywhere, in the past, the present, and through the foreseeable future. The psalm’s difficulty is found in its subject matter, discussed below. However, it is here that an abiding value of this Word from God can be found. It is this that leads us to wisdom for living, and which makes Psalm 90 well worth studying as the new year begins.

As the psalm opens, Moses, in perhaps the most eloquent reflection on the eternality of God in all the Scriptures, praises God for that very characteristic. When Moses earlier asked God what his name is, how he might be known and proclaimed, God replied, “I Am Who I Am” (Exodus 3:13-14). The name is probably derived from the Hebrew verb meaning “to be.” In other words, God is the one who was, and is, and is to come, in all of his perfections and all of his glory. Before anything else came into being by God’s creative work, he already is. And Moses reminds us that Yahweh himself is our dwelling place, an “oasis of refreshment and encampment” (Van Gemeren, Psalms, 2008, 690). This would certainly have been important for a people on the move for forty years, and even before during the days of the nomadic patriarchs and their Egyptian captivity. For all the change we experience, whether welcomed or not, God is the one, fixed reference point provides a sense of security that is all too elusive to us.

Moses quickly moves to lament, which occupies the largest section of the psalm. In doing so he confronts us with the brevity of our own lives, conceived of as seventy or eighty years, and perhaps even less. The apostle Peter likens our life to a flower blossom (1 Peter 1:24); James to a breath on a cold morning (James 4:14); Paul to a tent (2 Corinthians 5:4). But our transitoriness is not our real problem. Our sinfulness is. As a result we live our lives under the wrath of God and threat of final judgment. Moses confesses, “For we have been consumed by Your anger and by Your wrath we have been terrified” (Psalm 90:7). How many died in the wilderness as a result of the failure at Kadesh-Barnea? Thousands and thousands, and Moses was a witness to each of them. These are frightening thoughts to every generation: death, judgment, wrath, and we work hard to suppress the thought of each; it is too painful to carry. But coming to grips with this reality is the beginning of our cure.

Finally, Moses concludes the psalm with prayer. It is a petition that God would reverse our current situation and restore us to his previous beneficence. Of course, God is always present with and faithful to his people: there is never a time he is not. But we do live under the effects of Adam’s and our own choices which at times renders our lives almost unbearable. So, Moses prays that Yahweh would restore his favor to his people, that he would restore the joy of our salvation, and that he would continuously pour out his love for us.

God continues to speak to us by way of Psalm 90. While the writer is human, its author is divine. The psalm reflects, in seventeen verses, exactly what we need to know and be convinced of in order to orientate our lives to the reality of which we are a part.