For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
Moses opens by anchoring the people to God's covenant favor before he addresses their misery and judgment. He means to say: yes, you die like all men, yes, God punishes sin, but He has adopted you, and that peculiar grace is your true dwelling place through all generations.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 90:1-17
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel; each halting place became a graveyard; they marked their march by the tombs they left behind them. Because of the penal sentence their days were dried up, and their lives wasted away. We spend our years as a tale that is told.
Moses had, in the foregoing verses, lamented the frailty of human life in general; the children of men are as a sleep and as the grass. But here he teaches the people of Israel to confess before God that righteous sentence of death which they were under in a special manner, and which by their sins they had brought upon themselves.
Commenting on Psalm 90:7-11