Ps. 90.5-6 (asleep in the day)

When you pour sleep / on them
they become like nonlasting grass / in the morning
which springs up in the morning / but is not lasting
toward the evening / it withers and shrivels up. 

The ‘sleep’ spoken of here I do not take to be the normal type that one enters at nighttime. In this regard, it is fascinating that this ‘sleep’ only occurs during (or, is compared to acting like) the day and actually ends (withers the plant) at night. Further, it also has this strange quality of acting like the sun—it causes ‘them’ to ‘spring up’ in the morning and to ‘wither and shrivel’ them up at night. And yet, unlike the son, it is like liquid, or water that gives life (it does cause man to ‘spring up’), but does not give a sustaining (or, established) life. And again, rather than being a sleep that rejuvenates the body and provides rest, it enlivens (springs up) and then deadens. The question is what, then, is this verse speaking about? I think part of the answer lies in the fact that man is often compared to grass that sprouts quickly but then withers at night. In those passages, the stark transience of man’s life is in focus as it stands in contrast to Yhwh’s eternity and, usually, his judgment. This theme certainly coincides well with verses 1-4. And, the psalmist is at pains to point out that this is ‘non-lasting’ grass. This too coincides with the themes we have been tracking in that the opening and conclusion of the psalm seek and look forward to Yhwh ‘establishing’ his people in his favor. There is also the fact that often death is compared with sleep. 

I think what we see here is the view of man ‘in time’. Verses 2-4 have emphasized Yhwh’s relation to time (from beginning to end). Here, we are given a glimpse of man’s relation to time. And what we find is that man is not simply a ‘passing creature’. Rather, his life is starkly short. In order to convey this the psalmist, in his typical fashion, resorts to these strange inverted images of night-sleep/day-waking, light/darkness; and life/death. This, I think, is not because he is describing man’s life ‘in itself’ but rather in its relation to Yhwh. Compared to the vision of Yhwh’s eternity, which man is aware of, man’s life takes on a brevity all the more profound. In a way we might say this (and this applies to all of the images thus far): that the ‘vanity’ of creation and man within time is displayed in the ‘vanity’ of the images used to describe them. What I mean is—all of the images the psalmist deploys are very strange and seem to fight against themselves, never coming to rest in an identifiable, easy to perceive, way. The images themselves mirror the reality they are trying to convey.