Before The Mountains Were Born

VERSE OF THE DAY

Psalm 90:2,4 (New Living Translation)

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Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God.

Before creation, before you formed the mountains and created images of earth and gave birth to universe from start to finish you are God you had it all already planned at hand

What Does Psalm 90:2 Mean? ►

Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God.

Psalm 90:2(HCSB)

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Verse Thoughts

The book of Genesis tells us about the beginning of creation, but before time and space and matter were brought into being, before the universe came into existence and before man was made in His image and likeness – there was only God.

God is and has always been and will be forever and ever, and the Psalmist seeks to place this concept, that is inconceivable to the mind of man into perspective, with the words – from everlasting to everlasting You are God. for before the mountains were born, the earth the birthed and the world was created, from beginning to end, you are God from eternity past to eternity future You are the Lord.

God is eternal. He is the first and the last and He is without beginning or ending. He is the genesis of all that is and He is the revelation of all that ever will be. He is sufficient in Himself and needs neither man nor angels to find completeness. He existed in sublime glory and exists in great majesty – and in Himself He is self-sufficient, self-sustaining and entirely complete.

It was Frederick Faber who wrote of our limitless, omniscient, glorious, triune God:

Timeless; spaceless;

single lonely –

Yet sublimely Three,

Thou are grandly;

always; only

God in unity.

My Prayer

Loving Lord and heavenly Father my mind cannot comprehend the wonders of Who You are, but I praise Your wonderful name that You have disclosed Yourself to me in Your Word. Help me to know You more, to love You better to

Source: https://dailyverse.knowing-jesus.com/psalm-90-2

Thoughts on Today’s Verse…

So many things about our life are uncertain. This one thing, however, is sure: no matter where, when, or how long, God will be there and will be with us and for us.

My Prayer…

Everlasting Father, I find great comfort in knowing that I cannot be in a place or time where you are not. Stir my courage through your Spirit that I may be more bold, by your power and presence, to share the Gospel of Jesus. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

What does Psalm 90:2 mean?

Here, in what is likely the oldest of all the psalms, Moses answers a question which comes up even today: When did God begin? The answer is that He did not “begin;” He has always existed, and He always will exist. He is eternal, without beginning or end. He lived before He formed the mountains and brought the earth and the universe into existence. This is not merely something Scripture claims. It is also a logical necessity—there must be one un-created and un-caused “something” to originate everything else. Otherwise, there could never be anything, at all.

The Son of God is also eternal. He described Himself to the apostle John on the island of Patmos as “‘the Alpha and the Omega…’who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty'” (Revelation 1:8). John 1:2–3 affirms that the eternal Son of God “was in the beginning with God,” and “all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” The Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity, is also eternal. Hebrews 9:14 tells us Jesus offered Himself as the flawless sacrifice “through the eternal Spirit.” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the eternal members of the Trinity, and each played a role in creation. The Father spoke everything into existence through His Son, and the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1).

Context Summary

Psalm 90:1–2 cites God as eternally existent and Israel’s dwelling place, meaning their refuge. He also describes God as the Creator. God is not part of the creation; He existed before He created the mountains, the earth, and the world. He has always existed and always will exist. Genesis 1 and 2 describe God’s creative process, and Hebrews 11:3 points out that God created the universe by His spoken word.

Chapter Summary

Psalm 90, likely the oldest psalm, opens with Moses addressing God as eternal and Israel’s dwelling place, but quickly shifts to an acknowledgement of man’s brief life on earth. Our iniquity is the reason God directs His wrath at us. In most cases, a person can expect to live somewhere around 70 or 80 years, barring disease or misfortune. Short or long, life is full of toil and trouble. In view of life’s brevity, Moses asks the Lord to fill His people with wisdom. He also asks the Lord to reveal His work, demonstrate His power, grant His favor, and make Israel’s labor successful.

2  vBefore the wmountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

xfrom everlasting to everlasting you are God.

4  For aa thousand years in your sight

are but as byesterday when it is past,

or as ca watch in the night.

So we all see things in different ways but many perspectives come the same even in differences of what we’ve seen what We’ve seen for 1000 years in our eyes become a piece of the heavenly story and all perspectives don’t matter because God see even so differently than we could even imagine or try to see on a level out of our range of sight our sight is guarded by our own wall we build around us but always guarded by that of what God sees in our eyes and what we see he knows all

GeoScriptures — Psalm 90:4 — God’s days are not the same as our days



geochristian

6 years ago

“For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” — Psalm 90:4 (ESV)

Christians disagree with one another about the age of the Earth and the universe. Some Christians insist that the only possible way to interpret the opening chapters of Genesis is that Earth is only about 6000 years old, and that any other interpretation is an accommodation with atheistic naturalism. Other Christians, equally sincere in their trust in the Bible as God’s Word, have studied Genesis and come to the conclusion that the Bible is not so clear on the age of the world, and that there is room for alternative understandings.

An important principle of Biblical hermeneutics (the art and science of interpretation) is to let Scripture interpret Scripture. For example, there are verses in 1 John that, if taken by themselves, make it sound like a Christian cannot sin (e.g. 1 John 3:9). Well, I still sin, so if all I knew was 1 John 3:9 I would be wallowing in despair. But if I look at other verses in 1 John, I am assured that God still loves me even though I still struggle with sin. I’m thinking of 1 John 2:1-2 in particular:

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Reading 1 John 2:1-2 helps me to understand that 1 John 3:9 is not teaching that only the perfect will be saved.

I think it is fair to say that most Bible scholars interpret Psalm 90:4 to mean that God’s perspective on time is very different than humanity’s perspective on time. God is eternal, but we quickly return to dust. God knows the end from the beginning; we see the present dimly, and can only guess at the future. A thousand years is nothing to God, but is far beyond our personal experience.

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. (Psalm 90:10)

My desire in this brief essay is to demonstrate that Psalm 90:4 is relevant as we seek to understand what is meant by the word “day” in Genesis 1. Does Genesis 1 require six literal, consecutive 24-hour days of creation, or is there freedom to interpret the chapter in a somewhat less literal fashion? As we look at Psalm 90:4, I ask you to consider the following points:

1. The Hebrew word used for day in Psalm 90:4 is yom, the same word that is used for day in Genesis 1. In Psalm 90:4, yom is not the daily period of light between sunrise and sunset, nor is it a roughly 24-hour period from sunset to sunset. In Psalm 90:4, yom is clearly figurative.

2. Moses was the author of both Genesis 1 and Psalm 90. The title for Psalm 90 is, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God.” This title is part of the Hebrew text, not an insertion by the English-language translators. It is clear that the word yom is used in a figurative sense in Psalm 90:4, so it is not unthinkable that Moses could write of figurative days, at least in some contexts.

3. The context of verse 4 is creation, so it is legitimate to at least consider whether or not the figurative use of yom in Psalm 90 is applicable to our understanding of the days of Genesis 1. The surrounding verses (Psalm 90:2-6) all speak of aspects of creation:

2 Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

3 You return man to dust

and say, “Return, O children of man!”

4 For a thousand years in your sight

are but as yesterday when it is past,

or as a watch in the night.

5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,

like grass that is renewed in the morning:

6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

in the evening it fades and withers. (ESV)

There are several references to creation: mountains being brought forth, the formation of the earth, man being created from dust, a flood, grass growing and withering.

4. The number 1000 is used in a general sense in Psalm 90; the purpose is to show that God’s view of time is not the same as man’s view of time. It would be just as accurate to say that 1,000,000 years–or even perhaps the entire history of the universe–is as a day or a watch in the night to God.

5. God was the only witness to the events of Genesis 1, and as we have seen in Psalm 90:4, God’s time is not the same as our time.

6. Put these all together, and we get the sense that Moses–and God–is not nearly as concerned with literal 24-hour days as most young-earth creationists are.

I am aware of young-earth creationist’s (YECs) objections to this use of Psalm 90:4, so I’ll mention a few of them.

• YECs will say that the plain meaning of yom in Genesis 1 is a 24-hour day, regardless of what Psalm 90:4 says. I will answer this objection by saying that yom is used to mean something other than a 24-hour day more than once in Genesis 1-2, and it is by no means plain that the other occurences aren’t meant to be figurative. The very first use of yom in Genesis 1 is in verse 5, where it says, “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.” Yom in this passage means “the period of time when it is light,” not a 24-hour day. Even the “There was evening and there was morning, the nth day” phrase that is repeated for each of the six days is something other than a 24-hour day, as the Jewish “day” ran from sunset to sunset, not sunset to morning, which is only part of a 24-hour day. In addition, Genesis 2:4 uses yom in a figurative sense, where it refers to the entire creation week.

Perhaps the clincher is that the seventh day is left open-ended; there is no repeat of the “evening and morning” phrase (see Genesis 2:1-3). Hebrews 4:3-11 seems to teach that the seventh day is ongoing, and that some people enter that rest, and others do not.

• YECs also commonly object that Exodus 20:11 requires us to read the days in Genesis 1 as literal.

“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

I will reply by saying that the meaning of “day” in Genesis 1 should drive our understanding of “day” in Exodus 20:11. If day is figurative in Genesis 1, then it can be figurative in Exodus 20:11. The reason I say that is because the seventh day of creation is a pattern not only for the weekly Sabbath, but also for the Sabbath year and the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25. There is no need for the seventh day of creation in Genesis to be “literal” in order for it to provide a pattern for the weekly Sabbath in Exodus 20, as well as the Sabbath year and Year of Jubilee.

• A third YEC objection is that Genesis is a historical document, and so the days should be taken literally. I will counter this by saying that Genesis 1 clearly has a structure to it that is not found in other Old Testament historical narrative passages. Genesis 1 is not poetry, such as is found in Psalms or Proverbs, but it is clearly not strictly historical narrative, such as what is found in much of Genesis through 2 Chronicles. This needs to be taken into consideration when interpreting Genesis 1, but in general, YECs simply lump the chapter in with other historical narrative passages.

This does not mean that Genesis 1 is non-historical; I believe it is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth. But its distinctive style, combined with other considerations, causes me to think that there is more flexibility in the passage than YECs will allow for.

In this brief essay, I certainly have not “proven” that Genesis 1 allows for a universe that is older than 6000 years. But it is clear that God’s days are not necessarily the same as our days, and this needs to be taken into consideration as we interpret the creation account given in Genesis.

Grace and Peace

What does Psalm 90:4 mean?

In contrast to man’s frailty and finiteness (Psalm 90:3), the Lord is not subject to time. He regards a thousand years the way a human being might think of a 24-hour period or a single watch during the night.

A “watch” refers to a guard’s shift. There were three nighttime watches, each one lasting four hours. In the middle of the night most people would not notice the guard keeping watch because they were asleep. Similarly, a thousand years pass almost like they didn’t happen when compared to eternity.

In answer to the scoffers who believed the coming of the Lord will never happen because everything has continued unchanged from creation (2 Peter 3:4), the apostle Peter declares, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). God lives in eternity (Isaiah 57:15), whereas man lives in a span of days, weeks, months, and years.

Context Summary

Psalm 90:3–10 reflects on life’s brevity and God’s wrath. Psalm 8:4 raises the question of man’s status, and James 4:14 describes life as finite and fleeting. Numbers 14:33–35 spells out God’s judgment on the Israelites for refusing His call to enter Canaan.

Chapter Summary

Psalm 90, likely the oldest psalm, opens with Moses addressing God as eternal and Israel’s dwelling place, but quickly shifts to an acknowledgement of man’s brief life on earth. Our iniquity is the reason God directs His wrath at us. In most cases, a person can expect to live somewhere around 70 or 80 years, barring disease or misfortune. Short or long, life is full of toil and trouble. In view of life’s brevity, Moses asks the Lord to fill His people with wisdom. He also asks the Lord to reveal His work, demonstrate His power, grant His favor, and make Israel’s labor successful.