The early comment on Psalm 90, set as a header before the psalm actually starts, ascribes it to “Moses, the man of God” – and that could be right, though it is hard to see where to fit it within the chronology the Bible gives us regarding Moses’ leadership. Unless – could it perhaps come from the time before Moses was a leader: before God called Moses to return to Egypt to lead the people out of slavery?

The content of the psalm suggests that the people are suffering under the wrath of God (Psalm 90:7-8), and that the affliction they are feeling is specifically visited upon them by God (90:15): “You turn us back to dust” (90:4). Moreover, their suffering is not a new experience: “Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!” (90:13). But there’s no reason to suppose that God is in any kind of hurry: “a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past” (90:4).

This lament would fit pretty well with the situation in Babylon, during the Exile. It would not fit so well with the actual ministry of Moses during the Exodus, leading the people out of Egypt, when God was already having compassion on them and rescuing them from bondage. Yet it would also fit particularly well with the time when the people still were in Egypt, during the long years before “God remembered” the covenant and responded to the anguished cry of the Israelites in slavery (Exodus 2:23-24).

If Moses were praying this prayer during his own time of exile, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro in Midian and lamenting for the plight of his people still living in slavery in Egypt, then he might well pray, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil” (Psalm 90:14-15). He would be reckoning that seventy or eighty years would be the span of his life (90:10). And, in the midst of hard times, he would pray for his work to make a difference (90:17), and that he would learn to count his days so as to gain wisdom (90:12).

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Satisfy us, in our turn, with your steadfast love, O Lord, that we too may rejoice and be glad all our days. And teach us to count our days that we may gain wise hearts: that we may see your work and your glorious power for us and for our children. Let your favor be upon us, O Lord our God, and prosper the work of our hands!