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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
Owlam
Citations are to the NIV-UK
edition of 1984.
‘Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.’
– Psa.
90: 1, 2 –
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Thus begins the prayer of Moses.
The everlasting-ness of Jehovah is a recurring theme in Scripture.
He bestrides eternity and is without origin or finality, eternally complete.
This attribute of being is possessed by Him alone, and is appealed to in our text as the basis of trust and assurance of faith (‘dwelling place’).
The Hebrew word for ‘everlasting’ is owlam (o-lam). It signifies an indeterminate point in the future, a vanishing point – not the (full) terminus, but a destination that once reached, discloses another, like links in a chain of infinities. The Almighty Maker stands above and beyond all space and time, out of sight and beyond the reach of ordinary senses. As the Unchanging One, He is from owlam to owlam, unaltered across a series of endings and beginnings, from horizon to horizon. And the implicit assurance to us is that no matter how things change or decay around us down here, He cannot ever change.
God thus dissects eternity into perceptible
chunks, bringing it down to human scale, as if looking towards the
earth-horizon, the farthest the unaided eye can see. The patriarch, Abraham, was
told that the number of his offspring would be ‘as the stars of the heaven’
(Gen. 22: 17). Of course, there were countless more stars beyond those visible
to Abraham. But he could see owlam – far enough to understand the
promise.
Like eternity, human history and individual
life is made up of periods of change or dispensations, with beginnings and
endings. But as each generation approaches its appointed horizon it becomes
difficult for it to see the details of the next one. This myopia of
understanding is mirrored in the narrowness of individual human life, set at an
average 70 or 80 years, not all of it spent wisely. Figurative grass, in the
‘evening’ we all pass, and become ‘dry and withered’ (vs. 6,
10).
The bleak prospect is lifted in v. 14, with
the hint of blessings to come: ‘Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing
love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.’ This is a promise of
everlasting life for frail humanity, and has been guaranteed by the death and
resurrection of Christ, assured and underwritten by the Almighty, who inhabits
eternity.
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March 2017