The first psalm: Meditate on the scriptures.

Psalm 1.

For years I’ve been writing about psalms, but I’ve never written anything on the first one. Even though it’s the second psalm I memorized. (The first was the 23rd, and honestly I got it memorized because of the Keith Green song.) I used the text-to-speech feature on my Macintosh Quadra to recite Psalm 1 in the New International Version to Edvard Grieg’s “Í höll Dofrakonungs úr Pétri Gaut,” or “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” as we call it in English. So now it’s permanently in my brain that way. I suppose I could re-memorize it to the Scottish metrical version… but nah; what’s important is it’s in there.

But yes, I retranslated it for this bible study. Didn’t make it rhyme yet.

Anyway. The first psalm, Beatus vir, “Blessed is the man,” begins the first book of Psalms. If you’re thinking, “There are five books of Psalms?” yes there are; they’ve been mashed together into the one book of Psalms in your bible, but originally they were five. We don’t know who wrote Beatus vir, though some folks will claim it’s Ezra because it’s about meditating on the Law of Moses, and Ezra was a scribe, and scribes did just that. But that’s a lousy reason to insist Ezra wrote it. Anybody who thinks there’s wisdom to be found in the Law would appreciate this psalm, and anybody back in bible times who felt that way would’ve written such a psalm.

My translation second. I figured first I’d give you the version from the 1550 Church of Scotland prayer book. They sing it to the same song as “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”

Psalm 1 Scottish psalter

1That man hath perfect blessedness,

who walketh not astray

In counsel of ungodly men,

nor stands in sinners’ way,

Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair:

2But placeth his delight

Upon God’s law, and meditates

on his law day and night.

3He shall be like a tree that grows

near planted by a river,

Which in his season yields his fruit,

and his leaf fadeth never:

And all he doth shall prosper well

4The wicked are not so;

But like they are unto the chaff,

which wind drives to and fro.

5In judgment therefore shall not stand

such as ungodly are;

Nor in th’ assembly of the just

shall wicked men appear.

6For why? the way of godly men

unto the Lord is known:

Whereas the way of wicked men

shall quite be overthrown.

You want it to sound authentic, try singing it in a Scottish accent. Go ahead; I’ve got time.

Get a solid foundation in the scriptures.

One would think the first psalm would be something more like the last psalm, in which we’re instructed to praise the LORD every which way. Ps 150 Isn’t that the point of the psalms?—praising God every which way? Instead the first psalm tells us the wise, happy man meditates on the Law, instead doing the same as all his wicked schmucky neighbors.

And that’s because the anonymous psalmist is right. If you want your head on straight, following the crowd, which doesn’t know anything anyway, isn’t the way to do it. Thinking about what God teaches, is. If the psalmist had lived in Jesus’s day, he’d’ve told us to meditate on Jesus’s teachings day and night. Since Jesus’s teachings didn’t exist yet, but the Law of Moses did… yeah, that’s the next best thing. Meditate on that.

Now for my translation.

Psalm 1 KWL

1The happy person is one who doesn’t

walk by the advice of wicked people

nor take the path of sinners.

Nor stops and sits with the scornful.

2For the LORD’s Law is their¹ delight.

They¹ meditate day and night on his Law,

3and becomes like a branch transplanted by a canal of water,

which produces fruit in its time.

Their¹ leaves don’t wither.

All they¹ do will be successful.

4Wicked people? Not so.

They’re like chaff the wind scatters.

5This is why wicked people won’t withstand the judgment,

nor sinners when the righteous gather.

6For the LORD knows the path of righteous people.

The path of wicked people will be destroyed.

Happy (Hebrew אַ֥שְֽׁרֵי/ašrí) gets translated “blessed” because they’re synonyms, as you’ll notice whenever somebody has something pleasant happen to them, so they share it on social media and tack on the hashtag #blessed. They’re happy. They think this happiness came from God’s blessings; and let’s be fair, it might have! But sometimes they’re just doing the right thing, and the natural consequences of that are “blessing” them. And that’s kinda what we see here in the psalm: This hypothetical blessed person is meditating on the Law on a frequent basis, and it’s affecting and improving their life.

Way more than if they’re listening to, say, TV pundits all the time. Or reading what their favorite bloggers have to say. Or looking at all the reactions to this or that on social media. When verse 1 refers to wicked people, sinners, and the scornful, it’s no coincidence whatsoever that this sounds exactly like the sort of people we see in the media and on the internet. That’s what godless people look like in any culture—ancient, medieval, modern, or postmodern. They should absolutely not be your role models. The amount of space they take up in your brain should be minimal—and most of that time should be in praying for their lack of sense. Or their souls.

The psalmist compares this happy person to a branch that’d either been transplanted to a tree by a canal, or a whole tree that’d been moved there. The KJV says “tree planted by the rivers,” but עֵץ/etz can mean either “wood” or “tree”; you’ll know which by context. And שָׁת֪וּל/šatul refers to a transplant (or “transplantatum,” as the Vulgate has it), not just a planting; this wood originally wasn’t there, but now is. Lastly פַּלְגֵ֫י/palgéy means “a split [in the earth], a channel”—this is an irrigation canal. Not a river which grows and swells with the weather, not a wadi which dries up in the summer, but an irrigation ditch which is meant to always have water. This tree or branch will never go dry. It’s a simile for the righteous person’s spiritual life… and consequently their entire life. Work on your spiritual life and you fix both.

So when you have a regular, flowing stream from the LORD in your life, you’re gonna prosper. This is not a biblical promise, as some preachers will insist; this is wisdom literature, meaning sometimes there are exceptions to these circumstances… so we use wisdom to figure out if it applies right now. You gotta be stupid to think this constitutes a biblical promise… that, or you’ve never read Job. Might have to read Job.

All things being equal, if we meditate on the scriptures on a regular basis, we’re gonna know what God thinks about things, we’re gonna follow his lead, we’re gonna prosper. Now if a tornado flattens my house (really unlikely in California, but y’never know with climate change), this doesn’t mean I should drop the pursuit of God in despair. Faithfully sticking with God, and sticking to the scriptures, will help me recover from disaster all the faster. Rightly understanding the scriptures should be read with basic commonsense, instead of some weird spiritual delusion which denies reality, makes way more sense than those people who insist Psalm 1 is a “biblical promise.”

Meanwhile the unrighteous, who have nothing to do with wisdom or God? Yeah, they’re headed for ruin. Might not look like it at the moment, ’cause their riches and worldly success might confuse us into thinking their souls aren’t a rotten, unholy mess. But their time will come. Always does. All the more reason to try to steer ’em towards God.