The poet turns now to the other member of his antithesis. Over against God's eternal Being is set the succession of man's generations, which has been already referred to in ver. 1. This thought of successiveness is lost unless ver. 3_b_ is understood as the creative fiat which replaces by a new generation those who have been turned back to dust. Death and life, decay and ever-springing growth, are in continual alternation. The leaves, which are men, drop; the buds swell and open. The ever-knitted web is being ever run down and woven together again. It is a dreary sight, unless one can say with our psalm, "_Thou_ turnest.... _Thou_ sayest, Return." Then one understands that it is not aimless or futile. If a living Person is behind the transiencies of human life, these are still pathetic and awe-kindling, but not bewildering. In ver. 3_a_ there is clear allusion to Gen. iii. 19. The word rendered "dust" may be an adjective taken as neuter = _that which is crushed_, _i.e._ dust; or, as others suppose, a substantive = _crushing_; but is probably best understood in the former sense. The psalm significantly uses the word for _man_ which connotes frailty, and in _b_ the expression "sons of man" which suggests birth. The psalmist rises still higher in ver. 4. It is much to say that God's Being is endless, but it is more to say that He is raised above Time, and that none of the terms in which men describe duration have any meaning for Him. A thousand years, which to a man seem so long, are to Him dwindled to nothing, in comparison with the eternity of His Being. As Peter has said, the converse must also be true, and "one day be with the Lord as a thousand years." He can crowd a fulness of action into narrow limits. Moments can do the work of centuries. The longest and shortest measures of time are absolutely equivalent, for both are entirely inapplicable, to His timeless Being. But what has this great thought to do here, and how is the "For" justified? It may be that the psalmist is supporting the representation of ver. 2, God's eternity, rather than that of ver. 3, man's transiency; but, seeing that this verse is followed by one which strikes the same note as ver. 3, it is more probable that here, too, the dominant thought is the brevity of human life. It never seems so short, as when measured against God's timeless existence. So, the underlying thought of ver. 3, namely, the brevity of man's time, which is there illustrated by the picture of the endless flux of generations, is here confirmed by the thought that all measures of time dwindle to equal insignificance with Him. The psalmist next takes his stand on the border-moment between to-day and yesterday. How short looks the day that is gliding away into the past! "A watch in the night" is still shorter to our consciousness, for it passes over us unnoted.