Ps. 90.4 (Yhwh and time-as-past)

For a thousand years / in your eyes
are like a day / that is past
like a night watch / when it is over. 

It is important to note what the psalmist is not saying here: he is not saying that a thousand years are like a day to Yhwh or that they are like the ‘night watch’. Rather, he is saying that a thousand years are like a day that is past, and a night watch when it is over. Yhwh stands in such utter mastery over time that this impossibly long stretch is as if it is already gone. This fact is crucial because what we see here is that this verse continues along the exact same lines as verse 2 and 3, except now it is in the mode of ‘time itself’. What I mean is this: verse 2 focused on the ultimate form of creation (mountains), verse 3 focused on the ultimate form of living things (man), now, in verse 4, the psalmist focuses on the ultimate stretch of time (thousand years). In all of them we find a way in which Yhwh is ‘from everlasting to everlasting’. As to the mountains, he was before them; as to humans, he is after them (in their death); and now, as to time, it is as if something past. In all of these Yhwh stands in a position of such utter transcendence and dominance that the psalmist has to resort to strange images (giving birth; time-as-already-past). Here, there is no ‘time-that-Yhwh-is-not’ because all time is already, to Yhwh, ‘in the past’. This observation will lead to a great impact when we get to verses 9 and 15. 

In verse 9 the ‘days and years’ of man, lived in the wrath of Yhwh, are ‘toil and trouble’ (they are, I would argue, vanity). In verse 15, when Yhwh shows his people his mercy, the ‘days and years’ are ‘balanced’ by ‘joy’. What we can gather from this is the following: today’s verse establishes Yhwh’s utter and complete mastery over time. Verse 9, however, describes man-in­-time; verse 15 shows man living-in-Yhwh’s-time (i.e., joy). In other words, verse 4 establishes the power by which Yhwh will ‘redeem’ man out of his own time and place him in his (Yhwh’s) presence—take him from the ‘common-time’ of vanity to the ‘sacred’ time of his presence.