Ps. 90.16 (works to vision)

Let your works / appear to your servants
and a majestic vision of you / to their children   

There is a question about what these ‘works of Yhwh’ refer to. Is it just a general category of ‘works’ that Yhwh performs (from creation to redemption to sustaining power)? Or, is it referring to something specific? I think it likely that it is specific. Often, the ‘works’ of Yhwh refers to those works he performed in the exodus (‘wonders’ and ‘works’). We have already seen the many allusions to Moses in the psalm (regardless of whether Moses actually wrote the psalm or not, it certainly appears that the psalmist wants the reader placed within that imaginative framework). It would seem that the psalm is then spoken from the ‘period of wandering’, that time when the people were living in the wrath of Yhwh in response to their faithlessness upon approaching the promised land. This ‘wandering’ was a type of ‘state of vanity’, in that they were moving, but heading nowhere. Notably, upon entering the land, the ‘works’ were again performed (the ‘river was parted’, etc…). My point here is not to suggest a strict type of parallel between this psalm and the wandering. Rather, it is to highlight that the request for ‘works to appear’ seems to be a request for a ‘re-ignition’ on Yhwh’s part toward his people. They have been ‘languishing’ in his wrath, where their lives are nothing but ‘toil and trouble’ (a type of vanity). 

This line of thinking may be confirmed by the second request: “let a majestic vision of you appear to their children”. I believe this refers to the ‘vision of Yhwh’ that is obtained in the Temple. It is there that Yhwh has created a home and where he resides. And, it is there that the revelation to the people, at Sinai, is now made permanent as an abiding presence. This sense of ‘exodus then vision’, again, tracks a type of progression from exodus to temple—where the ‘servants’ see the ‘works’ but only their ‘children’ see the vision of Yhwh in the Temple. 

At this juncture a deeper reality emerges. And that is this sense of ‘perpetuity’ that is now established generationally, by which I mean, once Yhwh ‘shows his works’, he is again re-engaged with his people in his life sustaining mercy. This ‘life’ that is granted by Yhwh’s mercy is one that becomes ex-pressed upon the world by and through the joyful fruitfulness of his people as they move ‘from glory to glory’ to the vision of Yhwh. We need to recall the opening verse: “you have been our help in every generation”. The psalmist, speaking for the community, sees Yhwh’s actions as most fully ‘enacted’ not within an individual lifetime, but over the entire lifetime of the community, precisely because it is the ongoing maintenance of the community that reveals Yhwh’s power—only he can lift up the ‘generations’ into his perpetuity, establishing them in his own life. In other words, what I might call the ‘resurrection power’ of Yhwh is displayed by and through his providing for a perpetuity to his people through their fruitfulness.