The book of Psalms or Psalter is a hymnal book. It is a book of devotions of the Jewish congregation. Historically, the composition of psalms may reflect emotional and spiritual condition stirred by significant events in the life of the nation of Israel as a whole or in personal life of a significant person as David. Our passage is the introductory Psalm since it introduces not only the Book One (Chapters 1-41), but also the whole books of Psalms (5 books, 150 chapters). It is categorized as one of the Wisdom Psalms (W. H. Bellinger, JR, Psalms: Reading and Studying the Book of Praises, p 126). It is also classified as one of the Torah Psalms. Its vocabulary style and theme do not conform to the usual pattern of Psalmody (Nahum M. Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, p 26); however, as a poetic passage, Psalm 1 takes the form of antithetic parallelism, which involves a contrast between statements (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of the Psalm, p 14).
Generic Conception
Generic conception of this passage is that, “The righteous is blessed for the Lord knows his way, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
Observations about the Passage
As one reads this passage, he could immediately see at least there are two things lacking. First, it does not have a heading, which in a considerable number of instances indicate authorship. Second, there is no outpouring of soul as one may expect when reading Psalms. There is no invocation of God, no praise, or petition, neither lamentation.
When our observation goes to Chapter 2, it has no heading either. If these two chapters are put together, then they make sense as the opening Psalms, because Psalm 1 deals with the Law and Psalm 2 with the prophecy, both of them are foundational to the religious lives of Israelites, who were the original readers of Psalms.
This passage starts with the first phrase, “How blessed is the man” (NASB). In Nahum M. Sarna’s observation, the Book of Psalms is complementary to the Torah. According to him, the Torah is anthropotropic, which represents the divine outreach to humankind; the book of Psalms is theotropic, which epitomizes the human striving for contact with God. The Ten Commandments then, opens with “I am the Lord your God,” and closes with “Your neighbor,” while the book of Psalms symbolized the movement in the reverse direction from humanity to God, by commencing with “How blessed is the man” (Psalm 1:1) and ending with “Praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6). Sarna even goes further speculating that the “five-fold divisions of the books of Psalms may well have been influenced by the pentateuchal arrangement of Torah, and the number of one hundred and fifty individual compositions has in all probability been conditioned by the original Palestinian triennial division of one hundred and fifty weekly torah readings.”
The passage proceeds with the contrast through the presentation of: (1) What the righteous is not; (2) What the righteous is; (3) What the wicked is; (4) What the wicked is not; (5) The way of the righteous; and (6) The way of the wicked. The summary of these contrasting facts is “the righteous is blessed and the wicked is doomed.”
The use of illustrations also sharpens the contrast. The first illustration describes the characters of the righteous as a tree planted by the rivers, standing firm, nurtured, and productive, while the second illustration depicts the characters of the wicked as chaff, no standing position, blown by the wind, no certainty at all.
Psalm 1 is truly a Wisdom Psalm which employs characters of wisdom texts such as blessed saying (“How blessed is the man….”), and similes (“The wicked are not so: but they are like chaff which the wind drives away.”) (W. H. Bellinger, JR., Psalms: Reading and Studying the Book of Praises, p 125).
In verse 1 (KJV and NASB), there is a continuation of the idea of how a person could be entrapped into the way of the ungodly: walking, standing, and sitting. Other translations do not reflect this continuation but variation in statements must have an emphasizing effect. Another continuation is in verse 2, which shows further extension of one’s delight in the law of the Lord to his meditating the law day and night.
Difficulty arises when we try to identify the righteous man and the wicked in this passage. Was the writer talking about persons in the same group of people (Israelites), or in two groups of people (Israelites and the heathen)? Assuming that all Israelites were godly is debatable, of course. Interestingly, in this passage, the righteous is in singular form, while the wicked is in plural form (KJV and NASB).
Interpretation of the Passage
The absence of the heading is explained by H.C.Leupold (Exposition of the Psalms, p 5) quoting from Hans Schmidt, “…the notations [in the headings] concerning the author, which by the way are more numerous in the Septuagint, are not to be regarded as a matter of reliable historical record but as conjectures made by the collectors [of the psalms]—venerable indeed as early attempts in the field of literary studies but of no moment for the understanding of the psalms.” Of course, there are some reasons to point to David as the author of Psalm 1 because of some statement that are similar in Psalm 26 verses 4-5 and the appended remark at the end of Book 2 (Psalm 72:20). But the similarities of statements are common to the Book of Psalms and the remark in Psalm 72:20 does not classify all the first 72 Psalms (Book 1 and Book 2) as written by David, since there are about 17 more Psalms in the remaining books appear that are ascribed to David.
“The righteous man” may represent both a person as an individual and a group of Israelites under the law. The word “man” does not imply gender that is why other translation render it as “one” (human kind). This passage does not tell the readers how to become a righteous man. It simply tells what the righteous man is. This is important in order not to draw a false conclusion that a man may be justified by the law. The wicked people (plural) are the general public. “It is they who set society’s standards, who fix the patterns of behavior, and who wield the power to shape popular conceptions of right and wrong in accordance with their own perceived self-interests.” (Nahum M. Sarna, On the Book of Psalms, p 32). In an atmosphere of seductive depravity, our man in view stands apart from the crowd (Note: the definite article—“the ”).
The teachings are very clear: (1) True blessedness or happiness is for the righteous man; (2) The righteous stands away from the way of the wicked; (3) The Lord knows the way of the righteous; and (4) The way of the wicked is doomed.
Application
1) For the original readers (the Israelites) this Psalm was relevant to their religious life under the Law. Hence, the application for them literally followed the text.
2) To us in the present dispensation, the same teachings are applicable too in the sense that our daily walk is governed by God’s word and empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
3) The fact that the Lord knows the way of the righteous gives us assurance, protection, and comfort as we serve Him in the midst of the wicked. “O, how blessed are we ….”
