Teach Us to Number Our Days
May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish for us the work of our hands— yes, establish the work of our hands! Psalm 90:17 · Berean Standard Bible
May Your grace and blessing rest on us, and may the work we do with our hands—our labor, our efforts—be established and endure through Your favor.
The psalm ends not with escape or passivity but with a request for God's blessing on actual work. The people aren't asking to be removed from difficulty but to have their efforts sustained and made meaningful by God's presence.
Moses, concluding the prayer
This is the Hebrew understanding of vocation—that ordinary work matters because God is involved in it. It echoes back to Genesis where humans are made to work and create, and forward to the New Testament where even manual labor can be done unto the Lord.
May divine favor establish and secure the work our hands undertake, making our labor fruitful and enduring rather than futile.
The final verse petitions for the נ֫עַם (noam, 'favor' or 'pleasantness') of God to establish (כּוֹנֵן, konen) human work. The repetition of 'establish for us the work of our hands' suggests both emphasis and the conviction that without divine validation, human labor—however earnest—remains provisional. This concludes the psalm's arc: it began by acknowledging that humans are 'swept away' like grass (verses 5-6), but it ends with confidence that God can render human effort stable and significant.
The psalmist, now speaking the community's final petition, which synthesizes the meditation on mortality with hope for transcendent significance.
This echoes Genesis' creation narrative where human work partners with God's creative action, and anticipates Paul's exhortation in 1 Corinthians 15:58 that 'your labor in the Lord is not in vain,' establishing the theological principle that Christian action, validated by divine favor, participates in God's eternal purposes.
15Make us glad for as many days as You have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil.
16May Your work be shown to Your servants, and Your splendor to their children.
17May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish for us the work of our hands— yes, establish the work of our hands!
Read all of Psalm 90 — The oldest psalm, attributed to Moses. A meditation on time and what makes every day precious.
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