1 Lord, you have been our resting-place in all generations.
Athanasius of Alexandria · AD 373 It is plain then from the above that the Scriptures declare the Son's eternity; it is equally plain from what follows that the Arian phrases "he was not" and "before" and "when" are in the same Scriptures predicated of creatures.
Jerome · AD 420 A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. If all men were men of God, it would never have been added, A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Do you wish to know that not all men are men of God?
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 The resurrection of the Lord is our hope, the Lord's ascension our glorification. Today, you see, we are celebrating the feast of the ascension. So if we are to celebrate the Lord's ascension in the right way, with faith, with devotion, with reverence as God-fearing people, we must ascend with him and lift up our hearts. In ascending, however, we must not get above ourselves.
2 Before the mountains were made, before you had given birth to the earth and the world, before time was, and for ever, you are God.
Jerome · AD 420 Before the mountains were made, and the earth and the world were formed. At this place a heresy creeps in: If he was made a refuge for us before the mountains were made and the earth and the world were formed, then souls existed before the world came to be. For what does Scripture say?
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 He adds, how He became our refuge, since He began to be that, viz. a refuge, to us which He had not been before, not that He had not existed before He became our refuge: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: and from age even unto age You are" [Psalm 90:2].
3 You send man back to his dust; and say, Go back, you children of men.
Jerome · AD 420 Do not turn man away into humiliation. And you said: Turn back, sons of men. O Lord, that we might dare to ask this, that we might say, Do not turn man away into humiliation, you have given us confidence by saying: "Return to me, sons, as you turn back, and I will heal your afflictions." And you said: Turn back, sons of men.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 But as our life here is exposed to numerous and great temptations, and it is to be feared lest we may be turned aside by them from that refuge, let us see what in consequence of this the prayer of the man of God seeks for.
4 For to you a thousand years are no more than yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.
Jerome · AD 420 And as a watch in the night. The night has four watches, marked off in periods of three hours each, as it is said in the Gospel, "In the fourth watch of the night" Jesus "came to them," which is understood to be about cockcrow. This, then, is what he says: a thousand years with you are to be compared not only to the shortness of a day, but to the span of three hours.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday, which is past by" [Psalm 90:4]: hence we ought to turn to Your refuge, where You are without any change, from the fleeting scenes around us; since however long a time may be wished for for this life, "a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday:" not as tomorrow, which is to come: for all limited periods of time…
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Jerome · AD 420 Their years shall be counted as nothing. What he says is this: since man from the beginning of the world lived nearly a thousand years, and a thousand years before God are as a watch in the night. Nay, I have said enough: the ages of men are as nothing in comparison with the divine eternity. Do you wish to know more fully how human life is nothing? Hear what follows.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 Next, the man of God, or rather the Prophetic spirit, seems to be reciting some law written in the secret wisdom of God, in which He has fixed a limit to the sinful life of mortals, and determined the troubles of mortality, in the following words: "Their years are as things which are nothing worth: in the morning let it fade away like the grass" [Psalm 90:5].
6 In the morning it is green; in the evening it is cut down, and becomes dry.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "In the evening," it means after they come, "let it fall, and be dried up, and withered" [Psalm 90:6]. It is "to fall" in death, be "dried up" in the corpse, "withered" in the dust. What is this but flesh, wherein is the accursed lust of fleshly things?
Bonaventure · AD 1257 Adam passed over from truth to vanity. "A phantom only, man goes his ways; like vapor only are his restless pursuits; he heaps up stores, and knows not who will use them.
7 We are burned up by the heat of your passion, and troubled by your wrath.
Jerome · AD 420 In your anger we have failed. Because through our sins we have earned your anger, we have lost in Adam the immortality you had given, from whom sin has been handed down to us, as it were naturally, by hereditary right. And in your fury we have been troubled.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 Making no secret that this fate is a penalty inflicted for sin, he adds at once, "For we consume away in Thy displeasure, and are troubled at Thy wrathful indignation" [Psalm 90:7]: we consume away in our weakness, and are troubled from the fear of death; for we are become weak, and yet fearful to end that weakness.
8 You have put our evil doings before you, our secret sins in the light of your face.
Jerome · AD 420 You have set our iniquities in your sight. Nothing is hidden from you: that is, neither does night hide our sins, nor do shadows envelop them: all things shine bright before you. Our age in the illumination of your countenance.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "You have set our misdeeds before You" [Psalm 90:8]: that is, You have not dissembled Your anger: "and our age in the light of Your countenance." "The light of Your countenance" answers to "before You," and to "our misdeeds," as above.
9 For all our days have gone by in your wrath; our years come to an end like a breath.
Dionysius of Alexandria · AD 264 For in the most general sense it holds good that it is apparently not possible for any person to remain altogether without experience of ill.
Jerome · AD 420 For all our days have failed. Our lifetime has run its course: and while we are unaware, it slips away, we perish; and this very thing that we are speaking is part of death, and we do not understand. Our years will be pondered like a spider. See what he says.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "For all our days are failed, and in Thine anger we have failed" [Psalm 90:9]. These words sufficiently prove that our subjection to death is a punishment.
10 The measure of our life is seventy years; and if through strength it may be eighty years, its pride is only trouble and sorrow, for it comes to an end and we are quickly gone.
Jerome · AD 420 The days of our years in themselves are seventy years. Where are the thousand years? We have been contracted into seventy years: but if more, eighty. But if we live longer, it is no longer life, but death. But if among the powerful, eighty years. For whom will you find to be an eighty-year-old and to be healthy?
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is more of them but labour and sorrow" [Psalm 90:10]. These words appear to express the shortness and misery of this life: since those who have reached their seventieth year are styled old men.
11 Who has knowledge of the power of your wrath, or who takes note of the weight of your passion?
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "For who knows the power of Your wrath: and for the fear of You to number Your anger?" [Psalm 90:11]. It belongs to very few men, he says, to know the power of Your wrath; for when Thou dost spare, Your anger is so far heavier against most men; that we may know that labour and sorrow belong not to wrath, but rather to Your mercy, when You chasten and teachest those whom You lov…
12 So give us knowledge of the number of our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Jerome · AD 420 Make known your right hand, and those fettered in heart in wisdom. In some manuscripts it says "the learned," in others it says "the fettered." "Learned" means one thing, "fettered" means another. What then does he say: Make known your right hand? Why so long do you draw back your right hand, O God? "Why do you turn away your hand into your bosom?" it says in another psalm.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "Make Your right hand so well known" [Psalm 90:12]. This is the reading of most of the Greek copies: not of some in Latin, which is thus, "Make Your right hand well known to me." What is, "Your right hand," but Your Christ, of whom it is said, And to whom is the Arm of the Lord revealed?
Desert Fathers · AD 500 A hermit said, 'If you lose gold or silver, you can find something as good as you lost. But the man who loses time can never make up what he has lost.'
13 Come back, O Lord; how long? let your purpose for your servants be changed.
Jerome · AD 420 Turn back, Lord, how long? Turn back, Lord, and look upon your image: do not show us your back, but your face. Turn back, how long? He who says how long shows that he desires, and cannot bear the delays of his desire.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 And as when they became so well known, as to despise these things, and by setting their affections on things eternal, gave a testimony through their sufferings (whence they are called witnesses or martyrs in the Greek), they endured for a long while many bitter temporal afflictions.
14 In the morning give us your mercy in full measure; so that we may have joy and delight all our days.
Jerome · AD 420 And we have exulted and been delighted. After the joy of the resurrection of our Lord, by which we now believe both that we have been redeemed and that we shall rise again, for the remaining days of our life, rejoicing in this confidence, we exult, and with hymns and spiritual songs we render praise to God through Jesus Christ our Lord: to whom is glory unto the ages of ages.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 Next, in anticipation of future blessings, of which he speaks as already vouchsafed, he says, "We are satisfied with Your mercy in the morning" [Psalm 90:14]. Prophecy has thus been kindled for us, in the midst of these toils and sorrows of the night, like a lamp in the darkness, until day dawn, and the Day-star arise in our hearts.
15 Make us glad in reward for the days of our sorrow, and for the years in which we have seen evil.
16 Make your work clear to your servants, and your glory to their children.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 But now in days that are as yet evil, let us speak as follows. "Look upon Thy servants, and upon Thy works" [Psalm 90:16]. For Thy servants themselves are Thy works, not only inasmuch as they are men, but as Thy servants, that is, obedient to Thy commands.
17 Let the pleasure of the Lord our God be on us: O Lord, give strength to the work of our hands.
Athanasius of Alexandria · AD 373 Thus, if Isaiah says, "The everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth"; and Susanna said, "O everlasting God";42 and Baruch wrote, "I will cry to the Everlasting in my days," and shortly after, "My hope is in the Everlasting, that he will have you, and joy is come to me from the holy One"; yet forasmuch as the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says, "Who being the rad…
Jerome · AD 420 This much we have said for the present about the psalter, and I reckon we have lingered longer than we should have. We realize that we have said much more than we ought to have said; but we cannot keep silent about the words of our Lord, we cannot leave a psalm we have begun. Whatever profits the soul is not too much; nothing is enough of what is good, if indeed it is good.
Augustine of Hippo · AD 430 "And let the brightness of the Lord our God be upon us" [Psalm 90:17]; whence the words, "O Lord, the light of Your countenance is marked upon us." And, "Make Thou straight the works of our hands upon us:" that we may do them not for hope of earthly reward: for then they are not straight, but crooked.