The choice
Our culture defines success in terms of wealth, status, and security, all attained autonomously. This psalm offers a radically different take on the good life.
1 How blessed the one who doesn’t walk
the road the ungodly recommend
or stand with self-seekers on their path
or sit among those who scoff and sneer.
2 They delight instead in YHWH’s Torah
and meditate on his instruction day and night.
3 This makes them thrive
like a tree planted beside waterbrooks
bearing fruit in season and their leaves not withering
they flourish in all they do.
4 But not the ungodly!
They’re like chaff driven away by the wind.
5 The wicked won’t stand when justice is done
nor wrongdoers in the community of God-seekers
6 Because YHWH knows the path of those who seek him
while the path of the wicked leads to failure and futility.
The Psalter’s first and second psalms are meant to be taken together, like a two-part poem. Double-framing the entire book, they speak of the same man, God’s messianic king, whose delight in God’s Torah, or instruction, leads to his resounding success, while his enemies’ disregard for God’s instruction—and for God himself—leads to their tragic failure.
This psalm’s focus is on human fulfilment. Its initial walk-stand-sit progression suggests the way dabbling in waywardness leads finally to its full embrace. And what the psalm says of the Messiah is true of all who submit to him: dwelling on God’s Word, constantly drawing on its wisdom, we make it part of our lives. This discipline issues not from demand but rather delight since God’s Word is life-giving. While instruction through scripture is primary, God speaks in many ways. The psalmist commends what Calvin called a “teachable frame,” a constant openness to whatever God says by whatever means.
The psalm contrasts the flourishing God-seeker and the languishing self-seeker, the former a well-rooted tree, the latter wind-blown chaff. But admittedly, it doesn’t always look that way: the self-seeker’s beginning may look nothing like their destination. Indeed, there can be great appeal in being your own god, doing whatever you like, and scoffing at anyone calling you on it. But such “self-fulfillment” leads to alienation. Ironically, our Western concept of individual autonomy ultimately destroys freedom. Letting self-love crowd God out leaves us lost, excluded from the one community that matters. Delighting in God’s word, we flourish because he “knows” our path, the Hebrew word for know (yada‘) implying intimate involvement.
While this psalm only alludes to the clash between God-seekers and the wicked, the second psalm, which completes it, points clearly to the Messiah’s role in that conflict. Together, these psalms frame the book with life’s two ways and their inevitable ends: listening to God yields fulfillment, ignoring him to life’s dissolution.
Prayer:
Rooted in your Father’s word, Jesus, you flourished as no one else ever has. I would live like you. Yet the choice before me is obscured in countless ways, lest I see how empty loving myself supremely is. How much better to find my identity in you. Help me draw life from your Word, and flourish in you. Amen.
In your free moments today, meditate on these words:
This makes them thrive
like a tree planted beside waterbrooks
bearing fruit in season and their leaves not withering
they flourish in all they do.
