Psalms 90:7-17

Psalms 90:7

I. In this passage we find: (1) an exercise of penitential faith or believing repentance; (2) an exercise of believing appropriation and assurance.

II. The three petitions in Psalms 90:16 and Psalms 90:17 point to work or entering into work as being the peaceable fruit of righteousness. (1) The Lord's work comes first. These praying men of God, penitent and believing, ask Him to give them and their children a sight of that and an insight into its glory. (2) The second petition is a prayer for personal holiness. It represents that holiness as being intimately connected on the one hand with the Lord's causing His work and His glory in it to appear unto us, and on the other hand with our being enabled so to work ourselves as to warrant our asking God to establish the work of our hands. (3) In virtue of the Divine blessing, the work of these men acquires a character of stability, permanence, endurance, contrasting strangely with the vanity of their wilderness state.

R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 209.

Reference: Psalms 90:8. C. Short, Expositor,1st series, vol. ix., p. 150.