Psalm 90:10

Hebrew Bible

8 You are aware of our sins; you even know about our hidden sins. 9 Yes, throughout all our days we experience your raging fury; the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh. 10 The days of our lives add up to 70 years, or 80, if one is especially strong. But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression. Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away. 11 Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger? Your raging fury causes people to fear you.

Jubilees 23:15

Pseudepigrapha

14 And all these shall come on an evil generation, which transgresses on the earth: their works are uncleanness and fornication, and pollution and abominations. 15 Then they shall say: 'The days of the forefathers were many (even), unto a thousand years, and were good; but behold, the days of our life, if a man has lived many, are three score years and ten, and, if he is strong, four score years, and those evil, and there is no peace in the days of this evil generation.' 16 And in that generation the sons shall convict their fathers and their elders of sin and unrighteousness, and of the words of their mouth and the great wickednesses which they perpetrate, and concerning their forsaking the covenant which the Lord made between them and Him, that they should observe and do all His commandments and His ordinances and all His laws, without departing either to the right hand or the left.

 Notes and References

"... The author of Jubilees is especially fond of Abraham, Jacob and Levi. He therefore expanded their narratives. Abraham’s death at a relative short age of 175 years, however, presented a problem to the author. Compared to the long lives of the ancestors in Genesis 5 (referred to in Jubilees 23:9 and 27) the short life of Abraham does not make sense. Psalm 90:10 presented the solution to the author’s problem. In Psalm 90 the brevity of man’s life is linked to his sin and to God’s wrath. Although his jubilees scheme indicated the order of history, the author has to amend his scheme by acknowledging the effect sin has on history. Psalm 90 links sin to longevity and Abraham’s relative short live must be understood in those terms. The antediluvian ancestors mostly lived for more than 900 years according to Genesis 5. This is recalculated in Jubilees 23:9 in heptadic terms as 19 jubilees of years (931 years). The age of the generations then started to decline ..."

Venter, Pieter M Intertextuality in the Book of Jubilees (pp. 463-480) HTS Teologiese Studies, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2007

 User Comments

Do you have questions or comments about these texts? Please submit them here.