Psalms 89:6
In the morning man shall grow up like grass; in the morning he shall flourish and pass away: in the evening he shall fall, grow dry, and wither.
Open Psalms 89:6 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Mane sicut herba transeat ; mane floreat, et transeat ; vespere decidat, induret, et arescat.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- τὸ πρωὶ ἀνθήσαι καὶ παρέλθοι, τὸ ἑσπέρας ἀποπέσοι, σκληρυνθείη καὶ ξηρανθείη.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 90:6
- בַּ֭בֹּקֶר יָצִ֣יץ וְחָלָ֑ף לָ֝עֶ֗רֶב יְמוֹלֵ֥ל וְיָבֵֽשׁ
Haydock's commentary
Fall. Hebrew, "it is cut down and dries." The heat of the climate caused the flowers to decay very soon, Isaias xl. 6. Man's youth touches on old age. (Calmet)
The present moment is all we can call our own. (Berthier)
"A young man may die soon: an old man cannot live long," says an English proverb. (Worthington)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm XC
6. Next, the man of God, or rather the Prophetic spirit, seems to be reciting some law written in the secret wisdom of God, in which He has fixed a limit to the sinful life of mortals, and determined the troubles of mortality, in the following words: “Their years are as things which are nothing worth: in the morning let it fade away like the grass” ( ver. 5 ). The happiness therefore of the heirs of the old covenant, which they asked of the Lord their God as a great boon, attained to receive this Law in His mysterious Providence. Moses seems to be reciting it: “Their years shall be things which are esteemed as nothing.” Such are those things which are not before they are come: and when come, shall soon not be: for they do not come to be here, but to be gone. …