Bible Strands
Psalms 90:5
You sweep them away in their sleep; they are like the new grass of the morning—
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist addresses God while tracing the contrast between divine eternity and human mortality. This observation occurs mid-meditation on how God’s perspective reduces vast human lifespans to a single day or night watch.
The words — זְרַמְתָּם (ze.ram.tam) literally means “you flood” or “you sweep away,” and חָצִיר (cha.tzir) means “grass.” These terms establish the verse’s core image of unresisted removal and rapid decay.
The thread — The grass metaphor reappears in Isaiah 40:6 to mark the fleeting quality of human existence. The flood-sweeping action parallels Job 22:16, while the sudden vanishing mirrors the dream-waking contrast in Psalm 73:20.
Why it lands — The text requires a reader to accept human life as structurally temporary and entirely subject to God’s will. It demands the abandonment of self-reliance by confronting the reality that human presence disappears without warning or restoration.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 40:6 A voice says, “Cry out!” And I asked, “What should I cry out?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field.
- Job 22:16 They were snatched away before their time, and their foundations were swept away by a flood.
- Psalms 73:20 Like one waking from a dream, so You, O Lord, awaken and despise their form.
- Psalms 103:15 As for man, his days are like grass—he blooms like a flower of the field;
- 1 Peter 1:24 For, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall,
- Job 27:20 Terrors overtake him like a flood; a tempest sweeps him away in the night.
- Job 9:26 They sweep by like boats of papyrus, like an eagle swooping down on its prey.
- Job 20:8 He will fly away like a dream, never to be found; he will be chased away like a vision in the night.
- Isaiah 8:7 the Lord will surely bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates—the king of Assyria and all his pomp. It will overflow its channels and overrun its banks.
- Isaiah 29:7 All the many nations going out to battle against Ariel—even all who war against her, laying siege and attacking her—will be like a dream, like a vision in the night,