Question: What is the meaning behind Psalms 90:10, and is the verse referencing to rapture?
Profile: Male, Under 19
Answered by: Steve Husting, who has been a volunteer with us since February, 2010.
Answer: Before we interpret a psalm, we first read it with its historical viewpoint. A real person wrote this portion of Scripture a long time ago, before the church was founded. The idea of the church was a “mystery” that was hidden from the OT people (Colossians 1:26-27). So this was not a reference to the rapture of the church; it simply wasn’t known of back then.
Moses wrote this psalm, a prayer. It was written according to the Spirit, but Moses wrote what he knew at the time. In this verse, he noted that most people are living to seventy years, and some to eighty. But he notes that most of their days are in sorrow. “Fly away” is not a term about the rapture. He’s just using a poetical way to talk about how fleeting life is. It just flies away; it’s gone too soon.
Moses himself lived to be 120 years old (Deuteronomy 34:7), so these fewer years of living bothered him, especially when he saw the people laboring hard to eke out a living. Read it again and see if you see it this way.
Psalm 90:10 (ESV):
The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
This is a prayer, and Moses prays that we’ll learn something in our brief life here:
Psalm 90:12 (ESV):
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
His prayer is that we’ll grow wise during the years we have left. It’s a good request. I’m adding it to my prayer list. Read verses 13-17 for more requests Moses makes. Maybe we should be praying for those as well, as a personal application.
