Ps. 90.1 (help and establishment)

O Yhwh / you are our help
our help / in every generation. 


There are several things we need to note about this opening verse. Without going into a lot of detail, it is important to note that this psalm is highly (highly) structured. The psalmist has clearly spent a great deal of time in constructing the psalm and ordering it in the way he has. One literary device he uses several times is he ‘envelope’ structure, whereby the beginning and the end of a certain unit correspond with each other. For example, the ‘every generation (or, generation to generation)’ corresponds to ‘from everlasting to everlasting’ as does the ‘O, Yhwh’ with ‘you are God’ (vs. 2). And, within that ‘envelope’ is the mirroring of ‘born’ and ‘travail with’. Because we can see these devices here, we should also assume that, as with many psalms, the opening line and the closing line are intimately related and in some fashion mirror each other. When we look to the closing line we read: “And let the approval of Yhwh our God be upon us; the work of our hands, establish it for us; the word of our hands, establish it!” I bring this up because the ‘help’ that the opening alludes to needs to be understood in light of the closing line and Yhwh’s ‘establishing’ the ‘work of our hands’.  In this psalm Yhwh’s ‘help’ will be one that ‘makes solid’ and enduring that which the psalmist and his people create. Without this ‘help’, the work will not be established and will be vain (as either fading away or not reaching its appointed purpose). 

This goes to the second point—the fact that Yhwh’s help is not merely momentary, but rather it itself is perpetual; it works “in every generation”. What we see here is important: it seems that in some sense the people’s procreation (their being ‘fruitful and multiplying’) is itself an aspect of Yhwh’s establishing help. They are the ‘work of Yhwh’s’ hands that he ‘establishes’ by making perpetual, generation after generation. Again, this idea is found in the closing lines: “let your works appear to your servants, and a majestic vision of you to their children.” (vs. 16). Here, the simultaneity of Yhwh and his people emerges: when Yhwh’s works appear, then their ‘works’ will be established. And this will find expression ‘to their children’. 

One final note, as we will see later the psalmist concentrates throughout most of the psalm on the instability and momentary nature of man in the face of Yhwh’s ‘everlasting’. An aspect of that ‘momentary’ nature will be on the brevity of life and, particularly, on the individual’s brevity of life. Here, by contrast, in the opening line, the psalmist speaks of ‘Yhwh being our help in every generation’. What is important to see is that the psalmist sees himself and ‘every generation’ as the ‘our’ of Yhwh’s help; they are sing entity (so to speak) in contrast to the dissolution of the individual we will encounter in the rest of the psalm. In the face of humankind’s dissolution, the ‘our’ of Yhwh will persist, and it will persist precisely because of Yhwh’s ‘establishing help’.