Knowing The Author

Psalm 90

About thirty years ago there were three books I thoroughly enjoyed reading through... several times. They were A Walk Across America (Peter Jenkins), The Walk West (Peter and Barbara Jenkins), and The Road Unseen (Peter and Barbara Jenkins). We went to pick our oldest son up at camp in Tennessee. I had found that the city where their farm was wasn't that far from the camp. We had gone a day early so we could leave to travel back home early in the morning. So my wife and I drove over to that city, ate at the restaurant Peter talked about in yet another book (had the catfish he recommended), and learned where their farm was. So we drove over to their farm. When we pulled up their daughter walked out to ask what it was we wanted. I said I was hoping to talk to either Peter or Barbara Jenkins. She hesitated a moment, then went back to the house. Shortly Barbara came out. What I didn't know was that they were then divorced and so it was hard to come out and meet people. But Barbara was very gracious and spoke with us. One statement she made was, "Everything we wrote actually happened." Before we left my wife had suggested we get a picture. Sensing Barbara's hesitation in the first place and not wishing her any more awkwardness I said "No. It'll be like the many people they met along their thousands of miles walk who they will remember without taking a picture.” (Barbara, if somehow you happen to ever read this, THANK YOU.

Several months ago I heard a pastor preach about Psalm 90. He ascibed the authorship to King David. Like many may think, ALL the psalms were written by David.

A prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Lord, thou hast been our habitation from generation to generation. Before the mountains were made, and before thou hadst formed the earth, and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art our God.

Psalms 90:1-2GNV

Now the last couple of Psalms we've seen Heman (Psalm 88), Asaph (Psalm 73, among others), and Ethan (Psalm 89) companions, singers, cymbal players, wise men, prophets, and authors. We saw a little of what shaped their lives and what they wrote. Now Moses we seem to already know all about him. What a difference knowing the author makes. Even a brief conversation helps when they say. "Everything I wrote about, that really happened."

While with Peter and Barbara Jenkins during the mid 1970s to early 1980s , Heman, Asaph, and Ethan were appointed as singers with others for bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem to the beginning of the reign of Solomon, for Moses it would be sometime during the last forty years of his life while leading the children of Israel out of Egypt through the wilderness. In his final address to the children of Israel in the book of Deuteronomy at the very end Moses wrote a song. Who knows, maybe when he completed the Pentateuch he may have just felt like writing something purely to the honor and character of God. On the opposite thought Moses who lived to 120 years old writes that man lives to seventy years old, or perchance even eighty years old. Moses knew enough to respond to God's directions given through the burning bush. At that point Moses was eighty years old. But the whole point is the Lord God before everything and eternal. Man has a time and a timeframe. The Eternal God remembers our frame, that we are but dust.

It is an interesting thought that Moses may have written this even before God called him through the attraction of the burning bush. Reading the songs or psalms he wrote recorded in Deuteronomy he was very much aware of the children of Israel not having their hearts toward God and various complexities of leading them as a people. (Please remember these are only my ponderings in meditating on this psalm. They are neither doctrines written in stone nor even certain history. But simply ramblings of possibilities.). But reading through Psalm 90 beginning with the greatness and power of all God is, and then even telling us to number our days. Pointing out man lives seventy, at best eighty years it lends itself to the possible view Moses had with God before being called through the burning bush.

But rather then or later Moses finishes his thoughts with:

Comfort us according to the days that thou hast afflicted us, and according to the years that we have seen evil. Let thy work be seen toward thy servants, and thy glory upon their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and direct thou the work of our hands upon us, even direct the work of our hands.

Psalms 90:15-17 GNV

Just as another after thought, imagine Moses having spent his last forty years with the priest of Midian, especially asking God to direct the work of our hands, then shortly after God calling Moses out of the burning bush. Someone might have told Moses, "Be careful what you ask for when you pray."

Could Jesus have prayed this psalm of Moses? Spoken these things of His Father and acknowledging the frailty of all that man is? There's little doubt for me He could, especially as He knew His time was drawing near, Himself being the Author, the Word of God taking on the form of man.