Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Mazmur 90:10

An intellectual approach to our verse: man experiences three different worlds in the course of his existence. He experiences the first such world while he is within his mother’s womb; during this stage man begins to develop and to admire the wondrous ways of his Creator and the greatness of His works. Concerning this stage of man’s development David has said in Psalms 139,15: “My frame was not concealed from You while I was being shaped in a hidden place, knit together in the recesses of the earth.” He had already referred to this phenomenon earlier in verse 14 of the same psalm when he said: “I praise You for I am awesomely, wondrously made; Your work is wonderful.” David was speaking about all the wonderful ways required for G’d to produce a sophisticated creature such as man.
The men of the Great Assembly who perfected the liturgy of the daily prayers for us already acknowledged all this when they bade us recite every morning the words: אשר יצר את האדם בחכמה וברא בו נקבים, , “Who has fashioned man with wisdom and provided him with numerous orifices any one of which if not functioning correctly would prove fatal to him” [loosely translated. Ed.]. The signature of this short prayer concludes with ומפליא לעשות, “and doing wonders.” Considerations of this nature prompted Solomon to write in Kohelet 11,5: “Just as you do not know how the life breath passes into the limbs within the womb of the pregnant woman, so you cannot foresee the actions of G’d, who causes all things to happen.” in other words, all of G’d’s works are of a mysterious miraculous nature. Solomon simply uses as an example something we are aware of and familiar with to illustrate a principle which operates throughout the universe. Just as it is beyond our understanding to understand how something spiritual is introduced into the womb, so it is beyond our understanding to understand the workings of G’d’s השגחה, benevolent supervision of what goes on in His universe, and how His designs in it can be assured despite our freedom of choice.
Concerning this part of the cosmos and the mysterious ways in which G’d operates within it, Job says (Job 10,9-11): “consider that You fashioned me like clay; will You then turn me into dust? You poured me out like milk, congealed me like cheese; You clothed me with skin and flesh and wove me of bones and sinews.” Job referred to the world in which man spends a strictly limited time, nine months plus a few days at the outside. In that part of his world man is devoid of intelligence and knowledge and is not exposed to external pressures. He would be quite content to remain within this mini-cosmos for all his life seeing that all his needs are taken care of without his having to lift a finger, were it not for the fact that he has no control over being born into a larger cosmos. This is what our sages in Avot (end of fourth chapter) referred to when they said: “man is born against his will.”
No wonder man cries at the moment of birth seeing that he leaves behind such an ideal existence. This is merely an indication that the world the baby is born into is one full of pain, disappointments, and confusion. Man had been transferred from the world in which he was formed into the second world he experiences during his existence, this present terrestrial universe. He does have certain advantages compared to the world he has left behind when he left his mother’s womb. In this world as a general rule man’s intellect grows more or less apace with the development of his body. His wisdom keeps increasing until he becomes wise as a result of having studied the Torah and performed its commandments. As a by-product of all this he acquires a degree of understanding of the workings of G’d, his Creator. In spite of all this, man’s stay in this present terrestrial world is of very limited duration, as a rule not exceeding eighty years. When he dies, i.e. is removed from this life, this also occurs against his will, and this has prompted the sages in Avot 4 which we quoted already as commenting on our involuntary birth to say that our death is equally involuntary. Had man been asked about his preference, the chances are that he would have opted to live on earth forever.
From this terrestrial universe man is transferred to the third world he will experience, i.e. the world known as עולם הבא, “the world to come,” the world of the future. There are no limitations of time in that world. The delights enjoyed in that world are not transient. In that world man is compensated for all the good deeds he has performed while on earth.

ויהיו ימי אדם, “Adam’s lifespan amounted to, etc.” Seeing these early generations lived for so many years when compared to the lifespan of man in times after the deluge, the Torah adopted a method of telling us about their inordinately longs life spans immediately after reporting that these people fathered their first children at an age when most of us nowadays have long been buried already. By choosing the method adopted here, the Torah explains why these people married (relatively speaking) so late and did not start a family sooner. Seeing that original man had been fashioned by the Creator Himself, he had been endowed with a more perfect body, enabling him and the first few generations after him, to live longer than usual lives in spite of death having been decreed for the species as a whole. Due to the gradual spiritual corruption of mankind, their bodies were affected negatively also, so that immediately after the deluge the average life span had already shrunk to less that half of what it had been prior to the deluge. After the dispersal as a result of the building of the Tower, the life expectancy shrank further, not least because suddenly man had to adjust to climactic changes during the year in the locations to which they had been dispersed. It would seem that the lifetime of people other than the patriarchs had already shrunk to an average of seventy years, (the immediate offspring of Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov excepted) We know this from Moses’ prayer recorded in the Book of Psalms, 90,10, where he describes this number as a “normal.” lifespan. The fact that Pharaoh was dumbfounded when Yaakov told him that he was already 130 years old, seems to support this theory. (Genesis 47,9) Maimonides writes that all the people mentioned in the Torah as having attained such longevity were exceptions and that is why their individual life spans have been mentioned. He credits their exceptional longevity to their having been very careful with their diets, foregoing foods which are basically life-shortening. Anyone not mentioned specifically lived a normal lifespan. Nachmanides already questions Maimonides’ opinion, citing the fact that the people mentioned as having lived for so long were not prophets so that G’d should have performed a miracle [I might add that Chanoch, (5,23) whom the Torah described as loyal to G’d, ”walking with Him,” (5,24) lived far fewer years than his not so righteous contemporaries Ed.] Also, why, according to Maimonides, would the נפילים, corrupt individuals, be granted such long lives as the Torah testified that the spies in Moses’ time had encountered?

AND THE DAYS OF ADAM AFTER HE BEGOT SETH WERE EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS. Because of the long lives of these first men, Scripture states their ages before they begot children and also afterwards, and then sums them all up in the end until the generations which followed the flood.
The reason for their longevity is that the first man, the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, was made in absolute perfection as regards beauty, strength, and height. Even after it was decreed upon him that he be mortal, it was in his nature to live a long time. But when the flood came upon the earth, the atmosphere became tainted, and as a result their days kept on decreasing. Until the flood, their days were about the length of Adam’s; some even lived longer than Adam.⁴⁸⁰Jered lived 962 years (Verse 20), and Methuselah lived 969 (Verse 27) while Adam lived 930 years (Verse 5). And Shem [Noah’s son], who was born before the flood, lived six hundred years;⁴⁸¹Genesis, 11:10-11. he benefitted from his innate strength, but the tainted air after the flood caused him harm, [hence he died at a younger age than that attained by the preceding generations]. The days of his sons who were born after the flood were still more shortened until they came down to four hundred years.⁴⁸²Ibid., Verses 10-17. You can see that this degree of longevity remained with them until the generation of the Dispersion, when the change of climates caused by the Dispersion affected them, and their days were again shortened. Thus you find that the life of Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided,⁴⁸³Ibid., 10:25. came down to half their days, i.e., two hundred years.⁴⁸⁴Ibid., 11:19.
It would appear that in the generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, people lived seventy and eighty years, just as Moses, our teacher, mentioned in his prayer.⁴⁸⁵Psalms 90:10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore years. But as for the righteous ones in their generations, The fear of the Eternal prolongeth days⁴⁸⁶Proverbs 10:27. for them. For Pharaoh wondered about Jacob’s old age, and Jacob in turn spoke to him about the long days of his fathers, even as he said, And they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.⁴⁸⁷Genesis 47:9.
Now what the Rabbi⁴⁸⁸Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam). See above, Note 139. has written in the Moreh Nebuchim⁴⁸⁹II, 47. does not seem right to me, namely, that the longevity was only in those individuals mentioned, while the rest of the people in those generations lived lives of ordinary natural length. He further said that this exception was due to the mode of living and food of such people or by way of a miracle. But these are words without substance. Why should this miracle have happened to them since they were neither prophets nor righteous, nor worthy that a miracle be done for them, especially for generation after generation. And how could a proper mode of living and proper food prolong their years to the extent that they are so many times greater than that of the entire generation? It is possible that there were also others who observed such a mode of living, in which case all or most of them should have attained similar longevity. And how did it happen that enough of the wisdom concerning this good mode of living did not come down to just one of all the sons of Noah after the flood [to enable him to match the longevity of his ancestors], for there was among them a little wisdom of their ancestors even though it steadily decreased from generation to generation?

hastened Heb. ותחש, and hurried, like (Isa. 60:22), “I will hasten it (אחישנה)”; (Ps. 90:10) “for it is soon (חיש) cut off.”

Made me haughty. They made my heart haughty, as in, “And their pride וְרָהְבָּם is toil and pain,”¹²Tehillim 90:10. [and as in,] “They are haughty רַהַב but idle,”¹³Yeshayahu 30:7. asoajier in O.F. The allegorical meaning is as follows: The Holy One, Blessed Is He, said, “In this Beis Hamikdosh, it is impossible to restore to you the Ark, the Ark cover, and the cherubim, which excessively endeared you to Me in the first Beis Hamikdosh, to show you great affection, until you betrayed Me.”

You drew me You drew me and caused me to pass, as (Num. 11:31): “and drove up (ויגז) quails”; (below 90:10), “for it is cut off (גז) swiftly and we fly away.”