Ps. 90.10 (the quality of life)

The number of our years / may be seventy,
or eighty / if we are strong
yet their span / is toil and trouble
soon gone / and we fly away!   

This verse represents what I believe is the heart of the psalm; everything pivots around this verse. Its formal arrangement makes the argument. I will call the first two lines “A” and the second two lines “B”. “A” speaks about the length of man’s life. Or, perhaps more accurately said, the brevity of man’s life. This reality is something that has already been established in verses 2-6, particularly verses 5-6. This is simply a reality of man. His life is not ony ‘mortal’ but, compared to Yhwh, it is shockingly brief. “B” however places that brevity in the context of man’s life lived in the wrath of Yhwh. In other words, “B” focuses on the reality of verses 7-9 where Yhwh places man’s hidden sins in front of his face like some dark sun, perpetually igniting Yhwh’s wrath. Now, I do not believe that “B” causes “A”, meaning, I do not believe that, in this psalm, the brevity of man’s life is due to man’s sinfulness. Rather, it is the ‘toil and trouble’ that Yhwh’s people now live in that is the result of their sinfulness and Yhwh’s wrath. This is important as the petition section of the psalm is not going to ask for Yhwh to lengthen their lives but, rather, to ‘fill them’ with joy, or to ‘balance’ them as he says later in verse 15. Man’s mortality is not the ‘problem’; if that were the problem, the psalm would arguably be incoherent as verses 2-6 would not make any sense. In other words the verse contemplates not the quantitative aspect of man’s life (how long it lasts) but the qualitative aspect (how ‘good’ it is). And, when man’s hidden sins ignite Yhwh’s wrath, his life is ‘filled’ (or, “consumed” and “overwhelmed”; vs. 7) with toil and trouble. The reality of man’s life in the face of Yhwh’s wrath is one of vanity, or futility I understand that that term may not be precise, but I think what we see here is that the aim of man’s life is thwarted in and by Yhwh’s wrath. Time becomes ‘empty’ and drudgery (it feels similar in this way to Ecclesiastes although it clearly contemplates time being ‘filled’ when Yhwh shows mercy). 

There is a deeper level to this that confirms these insights. We saw in the opening verse how Yhwh’s “help” is one that ‘establishes the work of our hands’. Yhwh’s help, in other words, invests man’s work with the type of ‘perpetuity’ that is Yhwh’s; it lifts man’s work into the ‘forever’ of Yhwh and extends it ‘from generation to generation’. With that insight, what we can hypothesize here is that this ‘toil and trouble’ is the ‘work of man’s hands’ without Yhwh’s help (or, in his wrath)—it is the work of man’s hands as subjected to wrath and vanity; it doesn’t last and it doesn't 'hit its mark'. 

This points to a final point: man’s existence is either in ‘wrath’ or ‘joy’. There is no neutral middle-ground. I think this is why this psalm does not actually use the word ‘vanity’ to describe man’s situation but ‘wrath’. It is not that this is ‘man without God’. It is ‘man in Yhwh’s wrath’. ‘Toil and trouble’ is not the ‘natural state of creation’. It is not ‘creation on its own’. It is, rather, something more like ‘time as accursed’ or 'time-in-wrath'. It is something, in other words, very similar to the account in Genesis, following man's expulsion from Eden. This casts a light (or, shadow) over the psalm and brings up something we mentioned before--that the 'wrath' of Yhwh is ignited by the hidden sins of his people. It is precisely the sins they are not aware of that causes their lives to be full of 'toil and trouble'. What we see is that, unlike other writers in the Scriptures (for example, Ecclesiastes), attributes the futility and the 'toil' of man's existence to man's own sinfulness. There is the sense here of a deep, and deeply hidden, problem. The interesting thing to note, though, is that the psalmist places this reality 'in history'. What I mean is that as much as this may point to a general 'state of being' on man's part, it is something that is not constant. I get the impression from this psalm that man's life as 'toil and trouble' is one that is occurring in a particular time and that this psalm was composed for those 'times' (whether exile or not). 

And, to fully reveal my hand--I have wondered throughout, for various reasons, whether this psalm is most fully understood in the context of the rebuilt Temple, the Temple being the 'work of our hands' that they want Yhwh to 'establish' (the image of 'construction') and what will give their children the 'majestic vision' of Yhwh. If that is the case, then the rebuilt Temple will be the new Eden wherein they will 'walk with God' without 'toil and trouble'.