“Before the mountains were brought forth.”
Before those elder giants had struggled forth from nature's womb, as her dread firstborn, the Lord was glorious and self-sufficient. Mountains to him, though hoar with the snows of ages, are but new-born babes, young things whose birth was but yesterday, mere novelties of an hour.
“Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world.”
Here too the allusion is to a birth. Earth was born but the other day, and her solid land was delivered from the flood but a short while ago.
“Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God,” or, “thou art, O God.”
God was, when nothing else was. He was God when the earth was not a world but a chaos, when mountains were not upheaved, and the generation of the heavens and the earth had not commenced. In this Eternal One there is a safe abode for the successive generations of men. If God himself were of yesterday, he would not be a suitable refuge for mortal men; if he could change and cease to be God he would be but an uncertain dwelling-place for his people.
From the Treasury of David, exposition of Psalm 90:4. Flickr photo by Christian Abend; some rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment