The title tells us that the psalm is a prayer of Moses,
making it probably the oldest psalm in the book. But it gives us no direct
evidence of when in the life of Moses it was written. But the content itself
and the structure of the psalm can lead us to some consideration of a good
possibility for the context. This in turn can assist us in our reflections on
the psalm, and its application for us.
The psalm breaks down into three sections: 1-2, 3-11, and
12-17. The first section proclaims God and his eternality. The second section
portrays man in his brevity. The third section is a prayer that springs from
the first two sections, emphasizing a desire for God himself to establish our
work.
A further consideration of the second section is perhaps the
key to the entire psalm. It focuses on God’s wrath against our sin as the cause
for the brevity of our lives. We see this especially in vss 7-9. Verse 7 is
particularly acute here, as it is a little self-contained chiasm (an
X-structure). In this case, the English translations enable the reader to see
the chiasm that is in the original.
For we are brought to
an enda by your anger;b
And by your wrathb1
we are dismayed.a1
The center of the chiasm is the wrath/anger of God, and the
following verse emphasizes our sins as the cause of the wrath. The section ends
with a restatement of the incomprehensible wrath of God.
In reflecting particularly on this center section, it
appears to me likely that this prayer came out of the final months of Moses’
life. He has watched an entire generation of God’s people be swept away in his
wrath due to their rebellion, and refusal to enter the land of promise. Given
the count of the two censuses in Numbers (chs 1 and 26), it is likely that
Moses oversaw the death of some one to two million people during that forty
years. On average that would be seventy to one hundred forty people dying per
day; day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. No
wonder Moses speaks in terms of them being swept away like a flood (vs 5: the
word that the ESV translates as “sweep them away” occurs only here in the Old
Testament, so the meaning is not precisely clear; it may mean simply “to bring
to an end”).
That image of an entire generation brought to an end by the
wrath of God anchors the psalm. It is from that context that Moses’ plea comes
as the psalm ends. It is not just the generation lost in the wilderness, but
every generation of God’s people that comes on the scene, and then just as
quickly is swept away. Thus we are to number our days, to count them carefully,
to take the brevity of our lives seriously, and pray that God would establish
the work of our hands. Again here, I imagine Moses on the plains of Moab now
thinking about the generation to come, not the generation gone. His plea is
that the days of affliction and evil might not continue in the next generation,
but rather that they might be days of gladness; that God might so work among
his people that the labor of their years would stand. May that be our prayer as
well.
No comments:
Post a Comment