Praying with Moses

Psalm 90 (The Amplified Bible)

A Prayer of Moses the man of God.

¹LORD, YOU have been our dwelling place and our refuge in all generations [says Moses].

²Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed and given birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

³You turn man back to dust and corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]!

⁴For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.

⁵You carry away [these disobedient people, doomed to die within forty years] as with a flood; they are as a sleep [vague and forgotten as soon as they are gone]. In the morning they are like grass which grows up--

⁶In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers.

⁷For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed, and frightened away.

⁸Our iniquities, our secret heart and its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance.

⁹For all our days [out here in this wilderness, says Moses] pass away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told [for we adults know we are doomed to die soon, without reaching Canaan].

¹⁰The days of our years are threescore years and ten (seventy years)--or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years); yet is their pride [in additional years] only labor and sorrow, for it is soon gone, and we fly away.

¹¹Who knows the power of Your anger? [Who worthily connects this brevity of life with Your recognition of sin?] And Your wrath, who connects it with the reverent and worshipful fear that is due You?

¹²So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.

¹³Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long--? Revoke Your sentence and be compassionate and at ease toward Your servants.

¹⁴O satisfy us with Your mercy and loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

¹⁵Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us and to the years in which we have suffered evil.

¹⁶Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children.

¹⁷And let the beauty and delightfulness and favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm and establish the work of our hands--yes, the work of our hands, confirm and establish it.

Psalm 91

¹HE WHO dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall remain stable and fixed under the shadow of the Almighty [Whose power no foe can withstand].

²I will say of the Lord, He is my Refuge and my Fortress, my God; on Him I lean and rely, and in Him I [confidently] trust!

³For [then] He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.

⁴[Then] He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings shall you trust and find refuge; His truth and His faithfulness are a shield and a buckler.

⁵You shall not be afraid of the terror of the night, nor of the arrow (the evil plots and slanders of the wicked) that flies by day,

⁶Nor of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor of the destruction and sudden death that surprise and lay waste at noonday.

⁷A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you.

⁸Only a spectator shall you be [yourself inaccessible in the secret place of the Most High] as you witness the reward of the wicked.

⁹Because you have made the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place,

¹⁰There shall no evil befall you, nor any plague or calamity come near your tent.

¹¹For He will give His angels [especial] charge over you to accompany and defend and preserve you in all your ways [of obedience and service].

¹²They shall bear you up on their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

¹³You shall tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the serpent shall you trample underfoot.

¹⁴Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him; I will set him on high, because he knows and understands My name [has a personal knowledge of My mercy, love, and kindness--trusts and relies on Me, knowing I will never forsake him, no, never].

¹⁵He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.

¹⁶With long life will I satisfy him and show him My salvation.