Dual Panel1LORD, YOU have been our dwelling place {and} our refuge in all generations [says Moses].
2Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed {and} given birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God.
3You turn man back to dust {and} corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]!
4For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
5You carry away [these disobedient people, doomed to die within forty years] as with a flood; they are as a sleep [vague and forgotten as soon as they are gone]. In the morning they are like grass which grows up--
6In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers.
7For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed, {and} frightened away.
8Our iniquities, our secret heart {and} its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance.
9For all our days [out here in this wilderness, says Moses] pass away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told [for we adults know we are doomed to die soon, without reaching Canaan].
10The days of our years are threescore years and ten (seventy years)--or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years); yet is their pride [in additional years] only labor and sorrow, for it is soon gone, and we fly away.
11Who knows the power of Your anger? [Who worthily connects this brevity of life with Your recognition of sin?] And Your wrath, who connects it with the reverent {and} worshipful fear that is due You?
12So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.
13Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long--? Revoke Your sentence {and} be compassionate {and} at ease toward Your servants.
14O satisfy us with Your mercy {and} loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us {and} to the years in which we have suffered evil.
16Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children.
17And let the beauty {and} delightfulness {and} favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm {and} establish the work of our hands--yes, the work of our hands, confirm {and} establish it.