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Before the mountains were born,
    the earth and the world brought forth,
    from eternity to eternity you are God.(A)
You turn humanity back into dust,[a]
    saying, “Return, you children of Adam!”(B)
A thousand years in your eyes
    are merely a day gone by,(C)
Before a watch passes in the night,
    [b]you wash them away;(D)
They sleep,
    and in the morning they sprout again like an herb.
In the morning it blooms only to pass away;
    in the evening it is wilted and withered.[c](E)

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Footnotes

  1. 90:3 Dust: one word of God is enough to return mortals to the dust from which they were created. Human beings were created from earth in Gn 2:7; 3:19.
  2. 90:5 You wash them away: the Hebrew of Ps 90:4–5 is unclear.
  3. 90:6 It is wilted and withered: the transitory nature of the grass under the scorching sun was proverbial, cf. Ps 129:6; Is 40:6–8.