Psalm 90 speaks of time, permanence and impermanence, and the span of human life. It upholds the eternal nature of the Lord: "Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God."

A secondary but connected theme, especially from verses 7-12, is the Lord's apparent anger with us, and his affliction of our lives with troubles. The reason given for this is that we can then learn the true nature of our lives and of our dependence on Him.

The psalm ends with a prayer for the Lord's compassion on us, and for us to be glad all our days, according to the days of our affliction. We wish to know the work of the Lord. We hope that the work of our hands - our purpose and use - will be established.

This is a relatively profound psalm, covering many questions we have about life. It links our sense of our own frailty with the Lord's greater purposes. In the same way that 'time' is basically only an appearance to us, so our unthinking view of life is generally illusory. It can bring us to think of God as angry, and against us. But, nothing could be further from the truth. (See Heaven and Hell 165)

It's important to see that the first two verses are unambiguously true: First, "Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations", and second, "even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God". Spiritually, for us, holding this opening statement in our minds allows us to explore our whole relationship with the Lord. (See Arcana Caelestia 3913)

The next four verses bring out the frailty of our existence, that in a sense we are made from the dust of the earth. Spiritually, this is not said to condemn us, but to remind us that without the Lord, we are nothing. (See Arcana Caelestia 8995)

This humility allows us to come into spiritually positive territory. This is brought out in the context of time being as nothing - "a thousand years in God's sight are like yesterday" - they are carried away and temporary. (See Divine Providence 218-219)

From verse 7 onward come descriptions of the Lord's anger and wrath, along with the brevity and futility of our days in life. "We finish our years like a sigh." All of this is said in the language of appearance - of how it can seem to us - when we consider life only from our viewpoint and not from the Lord's purpose in it. (See Arcana Caelestia 1093 and Sacred Scripture 94.) In reality, the Lord does not ever have or hold anger and wrath.

Verse 12 provides a helpful clue to the verses which come before it. It is a prayer from us to the Lord to teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. This is a lesson learned from our experience in life, with its pitfalls and its speedy passing, when we realise our folly too late.

The last five verses are clearer and brighter, asking the Lord to gladden us in our lives, and for us to see the work of God in all that we go through, and finally for the Lord our God to establish the work of our hands. Note that this positive ending comes from having endured confusion and negative states which we have now worked through, and that they have gone from us. (See Apocalypse Explained 897.)

4901. 'So it was about three months later' means a new state. This is clear from the meaning of 'three' as that which is complete, and therefore the last and at the same time the first, or the end and at the same time the beginning, dealt with in 1825, 2788, 4495; and from the meaning of 'a month' as a state, dealt with in 3814. All periods of time in the internal sense mean states, such as an hour, day, week, month, year, or age. And states are likewise meant by the periods making up these, such as the times of day, which are midday, evening, night, and morning; the seasons of the year, which are summer, autumn, winter, and spring; and also the phases of life, which are infancy and childhood, adolescence, adult years, and old age. All these periods and many more have states as their meaning. What a state actually is, see 4850.

[2] The reason periods of time mean states is that in the next life such periods do not really exist. Spirits' and angels' lives do, it is true, seem to move forward within a time-sequence; but periods of time play no part in the formation of their thought, as those periods do in the formation of men's in the world. Rather, states of life contribute to the formation of their thought, without the help of any temporal notion. Also, a further reason why such periods of time mean states is that consecutive stages in the lives of spirits and angels are not distinguished as separate times of life. For those in the next life do not age; nor are there any days or years there because the Sun there - the Lord - is always rising and never sets. Consequently no temporal notion can enter their thinking, only the notion of a state and of the stages by which this moves forward It is the things present and taking place before people's senses that are the source of the notions gained by them.

[3] These matters are bound to look like a paradox, but the reason they do so is that every single idea present in a person's thought has something of time and space attached to it. These are the source of what is in his memory and of what he recollects, and they are the source of his lower level of thought, consisting of ideas called material ones. But the memory from which such ideas are recollected is quiescent in the next life. Those who are in the next life use their interior memory and the ideas present in the thought there. Thought flowing from this interior memory does not have any temporal or spatial content, but instead of this states and the stages by which those states move forward. Consequently periods of time correspond to these, and because they correspond periods of time are used in the Word to mean states. For details about man's possession of an exterior memory which belongs properly to him while in the body, and also of an interior memory which belongs properly to his spirit, see 2469-2494.

[4] The reason 'about three months later' means a new state is that 'months', into which periods of time in the world are also divided, means state, and that, as mentioned above, 'three' means the last and at the same time the first, or the end and at the same time the beginning. Because in the spiritual world states are constantly moving forward from one into another, and as a consequence the last phase or end of each state includes the first phase or beginning of the next, resulting in a continuous sequence, 'about three months later' therefore means a new state. The same applies within the Church too, which is the spiritual world or the Lord's kingdom on earth. The last phase of the Church among one nation is always the first phase of the Church among another. Because a last phase is in this way continued into a first, the Lord is spoken of several times as the Last and the First, as in Isaiah 41:4; 44:6; Revelation 21:6; 22:13; and by this is meant in the relative sense that which is perpetual, and in the highest sense that which is eternal.