Psalm 37

The Wisdom Psalms  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  51:55
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Introduction

We can divide the Psalms by Genre. For this series, we will be looking at the Psalms that fall into the category of Wisdom Literature.

In contrast to the spontaneous prose prayers found in biblical narratives (see Miller, They Cried to the Lord, Appendix 1), the Psalms are tightly woven poetic compositions. Even prayer psalms reflecting life or death distresses (such as Psa 13 and 22) exhibit intricate literary echoes and structures. While their references to singing imply oral performance, their intricate wording implies that psalms were literary compositions, not spontaneous ad hoc cries of help or praise.

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Wisdom and Torah Psalms

Wisdom psalms reflect the same wisdom tradition known from Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Rather than addressing God directly in worship, they incorporate literary forms characteristic of the wise sages. They either teach wise living, or probe life’s anomalies.

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Wisdom and Torah Psalms

The Torah psalms, Psa 1, 19:7–14, and 119, uniquely refer to “the law of the Lord.” While “torah” is usually translated “law,” the word means “instruction,” and thus can include instruction of any form, such as laws, narratives, and poems.

This psalm contrasts the righteous person who because of his or her behavior experiences blessing in life with the unrighteous whose ungodly conduct yields the fruit of sorrow and destruction.

The Righteous Man Stands Not with The Wicked

Psalm 1:1 NIV
1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,

Counsel, way and seat (or ‘assembly’, or ‘dwelling’) draw attention to the realms of thinking, behaving and belonging, in which a person’s fundamental choice of allegiance is made and carried through;

Yet certainly the three complete phrases show three aspects, indeed three degrees, of departure from God, by portraying conformity to this world at three different levels: accepting its advice, being party to its ways, and adopting the most fatal of its attitudes

Illustration

The Blessed Man Chooses God’s Law

Psalm 1:2 NIV
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

The law of the Lord stands opposed to ‘the counsel of the wicked’ (1), to which it is ultimately the only answer. The psalm is content to develop this one theme, implying that whatever really shapes a man’s thinking shapes his life.

Law (tôrâ) basically means ‘direction’ or ‘instruction’; it can be confined to a single command, or can extend, as here, to Scripture as a whole.

The word translated meditate is elsewhere used in a a way that implies a verbal utterance.

Green Tree Illustrates Righteous Man

Psalm 1:3 NIV
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.

The phrase its fruit in its season emphasizes both the distinctiveness and the quiet growth of the product; for the tree is no mere channel, piping the water unchanged from one place to another, but a living organism which absorbs it, to produce in due course something new and delightful, proper to its kind and to its time. The promised immunity of the leaf from withering is not independence of the rhythm of the seasons (cf. the preceding line, and see on 31:15), but freedom from the crippling damage of drought (cf. Jer. 17:8b).

Jeremiah 17:5–8 NIV
5 This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. 6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. 7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. 8 They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Brown Chaff Illustrates Wicked Man

Psalm 1:4 NIV
4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
This wall painting from an Egyptian tomb at Thebes depicts the winnowing of corn and shows the process of the grain and chaff being separated.
David S. Dockery, ed., Holman Bible Handbook (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 1992), 326.

The simile in verse 4 goes as far beyond Jeremiah’s contrast of fruitful tree and desert shrub (Jer. 17:6) as the judgment (5) goes beyond ordinary calamities. And it emphasizes more explicitly what a man is than what he sees and feels (cf. Jer. 17:6a, 8b); hence the unsparing conclusion. Chaff is, in such a setting, the ultimate in what is rootless, weightless (cf. the ‘vain and light persons’ of Judg. 9:4, AV) and useless. The figure is that of winnowing, in which the threshed corn is tossed up for the husks and fragments of straw to blow away, leaving behind only the grain.

The Wicked Man Stands Not With the Righteous

Psalm 1:5 NIV
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

The end has nothing arbitrary about it: note the irreducible contrasts in this verse, whose opening Therefore leads inexorably out of what these men have chosen to be (4). Before the Judge they will have, in our similar phrase, not a leg to stand on, and among his people no place. These two aspects of judgment, collapse and expulsion, are portrayed again with immense power in Isaiah 2:10–21.

Isaiah 2:10–21 NIV
10 Go into the rocks, hide in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty! 11 The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled and human pride brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. 12 The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled), 13 for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty, and all the oaks of Bashan, 14 for all the towering mountains and all the high hills, 15 for every lofty tower and every fortified wall, 16 for every trading ship and every stately vessel. 17 The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day, 18 and the idols will totally disappear. 19 People will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth. 20 In that day people will throw away to the moles and bats their idols of silver and idols of gold, which they made to worship. 21 They will flee to caverns in the rocks and to the overhanging crags from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth.

God Chooses the Righteous Man

Psalm 1:6 NIV
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
Psalm 1:6 LEB
6 for Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary The Parting of the Ways (1:6)

To ‘know’ is more than to be informed (as in 139:1–6): it includes to care about, as in 31:7 (Heb. 8), and to own or identify oneself with (cf. Prov. 3:6). To perish is used in many senses: here for instance of a road or course that comes to nothing or to ruin; elsewhere of hopes or plans frustrated (e.g. 112:10; Prov. 11:7), of creatures that get lost (119:176), and of men and achievements that come to grief (2:11; 9:6). The New Testament brings to light the eternal implications which are already contained in it (e.g. John 3:16).

So the two ways, and there is no third, part for ever.

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