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Psalm 90:4

For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night.

2Before the mountains were born, before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
3You turn man to destruction, saying, “Return, you children of men.”
4For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night.
5You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass.
6In the morning it sprouts and springs up. By evening, it is withered and dry.
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← Psalm 90:3Psalm 90:5 →
Notice

A thousand years becomes yesterday gone and a watch in the night, confronting the gap between the time you can imagine and time in God's sight.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

What part of your life feels different when you picture a thousand years as yesterday gone?

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How does the image of a watch in the night shape your thoughts about God's eternity?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

11 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
2 Peter 3:8But don’t forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.Both compare a thousand years with a single day in God's sight, challenging human measures of time.
Hebrews 13:8Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.Both speak across spans of time: the psalm describes God's perspective, while Hebrews declares Jesus Christ unchanged.
Psalm 39:5Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath.” Selah.Both measure time before God, using brief, familiar images to express how small even long spans can seem.
Matthew 24:43But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his …Both mention a watch in the night, though Matthew concerns watchfulness against a thief and the psalm concerns time before God.
Psalm 102:27But you are the same. Your years will have no end.Both describe God's relation to years: a thousand seem brief in his sight, and his own years have no end.
Luke 12:38They will be blessed if he comes in the second or third watch and finds them so.Both use the measure of a watch, though Luke concerns readiness for an arrival and the psalm describes time in God's sight.
Job 8:9(For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow.)Both use yesterday to express brevity, with Job describing human life and the psalm describing a thousand years before God.
Matthew 14:25In the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came to them, walking on the sea.Both mention a watch of the night, used as a comparison in the psalm and to mark Jesus' arrival in Matthew.
Revelation 20:3and cast him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years were finished. After this, …Both mention a thousand years, though Revelation describes a period of confinement and the psalm compares that span with yesterday.
Psalm 90:9For all our days have passed away in your wrath. We bring our years to an end as a sigh.Both describe years through fleeting comparisons: yesterday gone in verse four, and a sigh in verse nine.
Hebrews 1:12You will roll them up like a mantle, and they will be changed; but you are the same. Your years won’t fail.”Both address the Lord across the passage of years, describing their brevity in his sight and their inability to exhaust his life.
Where this verse fits

Aging. fear for the future. death and what comes after.

What the Bible says about fear →What the Bible says about death →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Read the verse aloud as a prayer

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Encouragement

Your years have limits, and this psalm faces that fact without softening it. The God addressed here was God before the mountains existed; your lifespan does not measure his.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 90:4. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

Keep goingPsalm 90 · the whole chapter with its connection mapPsalms · every chapterBuild a reading plan through Psalms

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).