Psalm 90:10 was among the most often used texts for motets in early years of German Protestantism. The popularity of the text reached a high point in the first third of the seventeenth century. Set at least six times by at least five different composers in the years 1615-1635, the verse seems to have been most frequently employed in the context of the Lutheran funeral service. While each of the settings is unique, they share a remarkable amount of homogeneity in their formal construction. This paper will present an analysis focusing on aspects of form in three of these motets -- Heinrich Grimm's eight-voice setting, Johann Hermann Schein's setting for five voices and basso continuo, and Sethus Calvisius's setting for eight voices -- elucidating an underlying model shared by the compositions in question. The author will then suggest that the organization of the rhetorical oration as reformulated and applied to music by Gallus Dressler in his Praecepta musicae poeticae (1571) provides a valuable resource for understanding motet construction in the early seventeenth century.