The reason I believe better sanitation and not vaccines (as has been claimed) resulted in the greater expanded life expectancy during the 20th century is found at Psalm 90:10:

“The span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong.”

So there it is, written maybe four thousand years ago. Yet, in the year 1900, the average life expectancy in the United States was 47 years. Had humans not deviated from the sanitation principles found in the Old Testament, would it not have been the 70 or 80 from the Bible? Unsafe working conditions also played a part, no doubt, but the role of sanitation is still a huge factor.

Today, that 70-to-80 has improved to 80-to-90, and that probably is the role of modern medicine, which may include some vaccines. But the science zealot who tried to tell me how far we have come, since in the Middle Ages, people “crapped in a bucket and threw it out on the street,” consequently dying at thirty—well, that has nothing to do with science. It has to do with correcting (even if unknowingly) a prior neglect of the Old Testament which held that you’re supposed to bury your poop.

We pull a lot of useful verses out of the 90th psalm, verse 10 among them. However, this time around in the congregation Bible reading, verse 13 caught my attention.

“Return, O Jehovah! How long will this last? Have pity on your servants.”

How long will what last? Is it a special period of anger on God’s part? One might easily think it upon reading 7, 8, 9, and 11:

“For we are consumed by your anger And terrified by your rage.  (7) You place our errors in front of you; Our secrets are exposed by the light of your face. (8) Our days ebb away because of your fury; And our years come to an end like a whisper. (9) . . . Who can fathom the power of your anger? Your fury is as great as the fear you deserve. (11)

And yet, the specific affliction appears to be no more than what verse 10 speaks of, that we get 70 years, 80 at best. See how many verses chronicle the fleetingness of life today.

“You make mortal man return to dust; You say: ‘Return, you sons of men.’” (3) For a thousand years are in your eyes just as yesterday when it is past, Just as a watch during the night. (4) You sweep them away; they become like mere sleep; In the morning they are like grass that sprouts. (5) In the morning it blossoms and is renewed, But by evening it withers and dries up. (6)

That’s just ordinary life he is talking about. No special punishment there. What’s with this psalm?

Unless . . . unless . . could this be one of those passages in which the author reveals truths he is unaware of himself, the Bible being the product of “men [who] spoke from God as they were moved by holy spirit?” (2 Peter 1:21)

People settle for so little today. Totally obsessed with what years are left of their present life, most totally ignore the far longer period after their present life runs its course. Is the psalmist lamenting how that circumstance came about? After all, why does God “make mortal man return to dust [and] say: “Return, you sons of men?” Man was intended to live forever. But rebelling against him, in the oldest transgression of history, in the easy-to-understand act of eating an off-limits fruit—the only thing that was off-limits—had the effect of pulling their own plug from the power source. Thereafter, the blades spinning ever slower, till their offspring many generations downstream, are stuck with a life expectancy of 70 or 80 years that quickly pass by and are filled with trouble.

How long will that “punishment” last, you might picture the psalmist saying, having no knowledge then of the means God would employ to reverse it.

It’s an application I like. Even the aforementioned verses (7-9, 11) of God’s anger could be looked at as that original rebellion being what he is angry about. It is maybe one of those passages that has more than one application. Even if it isn’t, we can assign it one, since the assignment would be in keeping with “the pattern of healthful words.” We used to call such passages antitypes. But now, we drop down to a safer level and say, ‘This reminds me of that.”

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It’s rare to see life as God sees it. But now that we’ve all learned to do photo montages at memorial talks, it begins to happen. A person’s entire life scrolls by in just a few minutes.  Not too different from the psalm:

“For a thousand years are in your eyes just as yesterday when it is past, Just as a watch during the night. You sweep them away; they become like mere sleep; In the morning they are like grass that sprouts. In the morning it blossoms and is renewed, But by evening it withers and dries up. . . . The span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong. . . . They quickly pass by, and away we fly.” (Psalm 90: 4-10)

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