Return, O LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on Your servants.
Parallel translations
- WEB Relent, Yahweh! How long? Have compassion on your servants!
- KJV Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
- NKJV Return, O Lord! How long? And have compassion on Your servants.
- NASB ¶Do return, Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants.
- NLT O Lord, come back to us! How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants!
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Moses pleads for God to turn from His anger and show compassion to His servants.
Overview
The psalm shifts from sober reflection to earnest petition: "Relent, how long?" Moses appeals to God's mercy to replace wrath with compassion. This cry for God to relent is answered in the gospel, where mercy triumphs through Christ's atoning work (Titus 3:5).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Deut 32:36For the LORD will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants when He sees that their strength is gone and no one remains, slave or free.
- Ps 106:45And He remembered His covenant with them, and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion.
- Ps 135:14For the LORD will vindicate His people and will have compassion on His servants.
- Ps 80:14Return, O God of Hosts, we pray! Look down from heaven and see! Attend to this vine—
- Amos 7:3So the LORD relented from this plan. “It will not happen,” He said.
- Hos 11:8How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!
- Jonah 3:9Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.”
- Joel 2:13–14So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.
- Ps 89:46How long, O LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath keep burning like fire?
- Amos 7:6So the LORD relented from this plan. “It will not happen either,” said the Lord GOD.
- Ps 74:10How long, O God, will the enemy taunt You? Will the foe revile Your name forever?
- Ps 6:3–4My soul is deeply distressed. How long, O LORD, how long?
- Exod 32:12Why should the Egyptians declare, ‘He brought them out with evil intent, to kill them in the mountains and wipe them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce anger and relent from doing harm to Your people.
- Exod 32:14So the LORD relented from the calamity He had threatened to bring on His people.
- Jer 12:15But after I have uprooted them, I will once again have compassion on them and return each one to his inheritance and to his land.
- Zech 1:16Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there My house will be rebuilt, declares the LORD of Hosts, and a measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem.’
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 90:13 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.