Psalm 1 2025 Commentary

The Hebrew Psalter opens with a beatitude.  But unlike Jesus’s well-known Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and Luke 6, Psalm 1’s blessing is not for something a given person is or does.  No, this blessing gets pronounced over those who do not engage in certain activities.  As beatitudes go, then, this one is rather different.  A person is blessed when they do not walk with wicked people as they career through life and engage in their various nefarious activities.  A person is blessed when they do not stand on the roads traveled by bad people.  A person is blessed when they do not hang out with people described here as “mockers.”  If you can avoid all of that in your life, then you are pronounced blessed.

Curiously, when we get to the positive things such a blessed person engages in, the beatitude proper is not repeated.  But we can likely carry over the “Blessed is the one” from verse 1 to extend now to the one activity here that is singled out as a blessed one: meditating on God’s Law.  Day and night God’s Law is on the mind and the heart of the blessed one.  In fact this Law is described as a source of pure delight for this person.

The result is that unlike the wicked—who seem to be a blur of unholy activity in Psalm 1, finally in fact blowing away like chaff on the wind—the blessed one is firmly planted and still.  Unlike the furious scrambling and scheming of wicked mockers, the blessed one is depicted as having a deeply rooted repose.  And like a tree planted next to a stream or a river, the blessed one will have a constant flow of good nutrients through its spiritual root system, feeding and enabling on an ongoing basis this repose, this delightful and delighted stillness.

Given the picture of the blessed one such as Psalm 1 depicts it, perhaps it is no surprise that some more ascetic types in history took this kind of thing literally.  They actually removed themselves from society to become gurus who sit on a ledge or on a pole or in some monastery like environment.  It’s sort of like any number of classic New Yorker cartoons showing someone climbing up to a high mountaintop seeking enlightenment and then finally at the very top coming upon a bearded person wearing a robe and sitting legs akimbo on a ledge with his eyes shut.

But that is not likely the lifestyle being commended by Psalm 1 or any other parts of Scripture.  True, in Luke 10 we have that classic portrait of Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet and meditating on all he was saying, which ticked off Mary’s sister Martha who had been working up quite a sweat in the kitchen making a meal for their Lord.  When Martha complains about this, Jesus assures her Mary had chosen a better position.  That said, however, I am sure Jesus enjoyed the meal Martha made and was glad she made it!  And this is the same chapter where at the end of the Parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus tells the lawyer whose questions had led to the parable, “Go and do likewise.”

We cannot keep the whole of God’s Law by sitting stock still in meditation all day every day.  Because God’s Law also calls on us to be champions for justice, to take active care of orphans and widows and strangers.  In Matthew 25 the sheep are commended by Jesus for visiting people in prisons and hospitals, providing food and water to the hungry and thirsty, giving clothing to those who lack decent attire.  Obviously, none of that will get done if we are literally as still as a well-rooted tree next to a stream.

So whereas Psalm 1 shows the wicked as busy doing things—consistently bad things—and the righteous as being very still and in repose, in truth the righteous have plenty to do as well.  But that means that it is possible to meditate on God’s Law—and I would expand that to the whole of God’s Word—night and day and at the same time and as part of that meditation be active in producing the fruit of righteousness by ministering to the poor and to any and all whom we meet who are in need.  Having inward repose can express itself in a variety of ways not all of which involve sitting still with your eyes closed and your hands folded in your lap.  We do all benefit from the disciplines involved in having daily devotions and prayer of course.  But those times are also meant to feed our more active moments when we express our inward delight in God’s Word through deeds of kindness, love, and mercy.

Psalm 1 ends with one of those statements one could only wish were true 100% of the time already right now today: the wicked trail off into destruction.  Ultimately that will be true but for now, plenty of wicked people are doing quite nicely.  But the part of the end of Psalm 1 that is most certainly true already now is that the Lord God is said to watch over, see, and have high regard for the ways of those who are truly righteous by God’s grace in Christ Jesus.  We may not always be able to see the lasting impact of the actions enabled by our delight in God’s Law and Word, but because God has regard for such things, we know the memory of it will be unto everlasting.  And that is more than a little encouraging.

Illustration Idea

They say that how you ask a question can determine the answer you get, even if technically it is the same question put different ways.  The story is told that a monk once asked his abbot, “Can I smoke while I am praying?”  The abbot replied, “No, my child, prayer must be the singular focus of your mind and heart.”  Later another monk asked the abbot, “Can I pray while I am smoking?”  To this the abbot replied, “Of course, my child, you can pray anytime.”

Something of my reflections above about realizing that you can be meditating on God’s Law and Word even when actively engaging in acts of ministry reminded me of this alleged anecdote!