Psalm 1

I decided just this morning that reading through the Psalms would be a good idea. I plan on reading one a day (or at least a few verses a day) and really concentrating on it. I tried reading through the whole Bible in a year once. Not that I have anything against people who do that year after year, but to me, it was terrible. You hit days where all you do is read genealogies, which is so incredibly boring, and other days when so much passes through your mind that you don't get a chance to examine the words. So, here's how I'm starting my renewed Bible readings, and I decided to share whenever I get the chance, if anyone cares to read. So, without further ado...

Psalm 1 (NKJV)

1 Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
    Nor stands in the path of sinners,
    Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
    And in His law he meditates day and night.

3 He shall be like a tree
    Planted by the rivers of water,
    That brings forth its fruit in its season,
    Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

4 The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

5  Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

6 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

So, in the first two verses, we see a blessed person, defined as someone who keeps himself from sinful ways while delighting in and meditating on the law of the Lord. Verse three then describes this person in more detail:

He shall be like a tree

When we meditate in the laws of God, we are strong and immovable like a tree. We can withstand winds (which we see blowing away the ungodly in verse 4). Whether the winds pushing against us are small or large, we need only to stand God, and we cannot be moved.

Planted by the rivers of water

I immediately think of the woman at the well in John 4, when Jesus tells her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (13-14).

That brings forth its fruit in its season

All we have to do is follow the laws of God to see fruit in our lives. Perhaps the phrase “in its season” also calls on us to be patient too. I know I often feel like giving up if I don’t see immediate results, but when the time is right, our fruits will appear. We shouldn’t be frustrated, thinking that we’re not being good enough, when we just need to wait it out until the harvest.

Whose leaf also shall not wither

If I learned one useless thing about English grammar from Latin class, it’s that when the word “shall” is used in the second or third person, it is emphatic. This is a promise. Even when we’re not seeing fruit, God will cause our tree to grow in Him.

And whatever he does shall prosper

Again, we see a promise. Whatever we, who delight and meditate in the law of the Lord, do most definitely will prosper.

In contrast, the ungodly will not prosper, they are compared to a chaff. The chaff is technically the part of a grain plant that surrounds the actual grain, but more generally can refer to straw, which is made from the non-edible (for people, anyway) leftovers of grain plants. Such a simple comparison immediately sets them in opposition to everything that the righteous man is. Grains are small and feeble compared to trees. Think of straw, dry and brittle and definitely not nourished by life-giving waters, and it blows away very easily. The chaff isn’t even edible to humans. It’s dead and useless.

We don’t see active punishment of the ungodly here. Instead, it’s something much more terrible. They are not allowed to be included with the righteous in the company of God. They perish without God.