(1) LORD, YOU have been our dwelling place {and} our refuge in all generations [says Moses]. (2) Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed {and} given birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God. (3) You turn man back to dust {and} corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]! (4) For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. (5) You carry away [these disobedient people, doomed to die within forty years] as with a flood; they are as a sleep [vague and forgotten as soon as they are gone]. In the morning they are like grass which grows up-- (6) In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers. (7) For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed, {and} frightened away. (8) Our iniquities, our secret heart {and} its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance. (9) For all our days [out here in this wilderness, says Moses] pass away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told [for we adults know we are doomed to die soon, without reaching Canaan]. (10) The days of our years are threescore years and ten (seventy years)--or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years); yet is their pride [in additional years] only labor and sorrow, for it is soon gone, and we fly away.