Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40 Commentary

Psalm 37 is a little bit all over the place.  The Lectionary would have us skip 27 of this poem’s 40 verses but to preach well on this psalm, we need to at least read through verses 12-38.  And if we do so, then we see that Psalm 37 is at once highly realistic and highly idealistic.  A curious combination!  Here are some examples of both the realistic and the idealistic that we encounter here:

On the realistic side of the ledger we are told that wicked people do succeed, they do carry out their wicked schemes (vs. 7).  The wicked nash their teeth and plot against the righteous (vs. 12).  The wicked do succeed in amassing great wealth (vs. 16).  Some wicked people do indeed flourish “like a luxuriant native tree” (vs. 35).  In short, there is such a thing as wicked and evil people and a lot of the time they do very well for themselves thank you very much.

On the idealistic side we have two themes to see.  One is that everything that we just considered about the prospering of the wicked is true but it is only temporary.  God will destroy the wicked (vss. 9, 10, 17, 20, 28, 36, 38).  The wicked make evil plots but God just laughs at them (vs. 12).  The wicked will try to do harm to the righteous but it will always boomerang back on them—the sword they draw will pierce their own bodies (vs. 14-15).  The wicked lie in wait to ambush the righteous but God outwits them (vs. 32).

A second piece of idealism comes in the flurry of verses here that assert the idea that certainly in the long run but sometimes perhaps even in the short run, the righteous will flourish.  God will give good people the desires of their hearts (vs. 4).  The meek will inherit the earth and enjoy peace and prosperity (vs. 11).  The blameless will flourish even when all others are experiencing want and famine and disaster (vss. 18-19).  If the righteous stumble, they will not fall (vs. 24) and the righteous will never be forsaken, their children will never go hungry (vs. 25).  In short, if you are righteous, somehow everything will turn up roses.

So running side by side in the same psalm are admissions that rotten people often get away with it and yet not for long, it is claimed, and certainly not at the end of the cosmic day.  Meanwhile and somehow or another the righteous will always experience deliverance, will prosper and flourish and be blessed beyond measure.  Somehow this combination feels at once bracingly refreshing and frustratingly overly optimistic, at least in the near term when—as the many, many Psalms of Lament attest—good people find themselves at the bottom of life’s heaps again and again and without a glimmer of justice to be spied anywhere.

Depending on your vantage point here early in the year 2025, Psalm 37 may take on some resonances that in some congregations might be quite discomfiting.  And in other places might be quite comforting.  And possibly in still other congregations a pastor might avoid preaching on or reading a psalm like this one on account of not wanting to be liable to being accused of grinding a political axe in the pulpit.  We live in a moment when a lot of very powerful and wealthy people are constantly in the news and though opinions and assessments of such folks vary a lot, some of us who preach might just as soon avoid being accused of connecting Psalm 37’s words to this or that specific person or groups of persons.  Who is in the camp of the righteous and who is in the camp of the wicked . . . well, even pondering this can become very blood-warming very quickly.

So how should we interpret or understand Psalm 37, both in the 13 verses the Lectionary does assign but also across those other 27 verses we just surveyed?  Certainly and at the very least we ought to view this psalm as a fountain of hope.  Though it can be difficult at times to discern what God  is up to and where God is acting, we are assured God is not absent.  God is not on the sidelines.  God is watching, God is hearing our laments, God is carrying out a plan of salvation that will in the end not be thwarted or diminished in the least and most certainly it will not be thwarted by the people who for now fancy themselves as holding all of life’s aces and calling all the shots for who gets what and why in this fractured world.

How should we understand Psalm 37’s more optimistic sentiments about how the righteous kind of never having a bad day?  Well, as one part aspirational and one part inspirational.  Rather than roll our eyes over what in some verses appear to be a too-sunny-by-half set of ideas on how well righteousness always pays dividends of delight and flourishing, we can maybe understand these verses as an attempt to instill hope in our hearts.  And not a few people would testify that they could use a whopping dose of such hope long about now.  Or even a small dose would be better than nothing.

“The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord” we are assured in verse 39.  “He is their stronghold in times of trouble.”  No one could quibble with these closing sentiments of the 37^th psalm.  We won’t quibble with it but we do need to cling to it with everything we’ve got.

Illustration Idea

When I made my Profession of Faith during my high school years—this is my denomination’s equivalent of what some call “Confirmation”—we sang a hymn often associated with Professions of Faith, “O Jesus, I Have Promised.”  It is a hymn about committing oneself to Jesus, to follow him and to desire him alone.  One of the lines in the hymn might resonate with the sentiments of Psalm 37:  “O let me feel you near me, the world is ever near. I see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds I hear.”  It was to head off the allure of just such dazzle and such that the writer of Psalm 37 wanted to convey, to blunt these temptations for his readers, perhaps for especially his younger readers.

Of course, we live in a culture that fosters and celebrates the allure of all those dazzling sights as well as dazzling people.  Not a few observers have noted over the years that in the advertising industry, you can see what could be called “designer envy.”  We are made to feel perpetually restless, as though no matter what we currently possess, it’s not good enough.  We have to be motivated to get the next new iPhone by being made to feel that the iPhone 15 we were ABSOLUTELY told we had to have two years ago is now almost an embarrassment and so you must line up early at the Apple store for the iPhone 16 the moment it goes on sale.

We envy those with the best stuff.  We envy whole lifestyles that make a splash.  It reminds me of an early scene in the movie Jerry Maguire when a single mom sitting in the coach section of an airplane overhears a conversation from First Class in which someone – it turns out to be Jerry Maguire – is bragging on and on about his high-flying rich lifestyle and the pyrotechnic relationship he has with his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend.  At one point she sighs as she overhears all this, prompting her little boy in the seat next to her to ask what is wrong.  “First Class is what is wrong,” she replies.  “It used to be a better meal.  Now it’s a better life.”

Never mind that at the end of the day the rich and famous and flashy and dazzling are typically not moral exemplars or the kind of people any righteous person should want to emulate.  But they are so dazzling . . .

To this Psalm 37 counsels, “Don’t go there.  Don’t aspire to that.  Don’t want that.  Look to God for your hope, your salvation, your ultimate vindication over all those who for now can make you feel small and insignificant.  Because in the end it is those people, and not God’s people, who will be revealed to be the insignificant ones.”

Good advice.