Psalms 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm opens the book of Psalms by setting two ways of living side by side. The person who avoids the advice and company of wicked people, and instead takes joy in the LORD's instruction, is compared to a well-watered tree that bears fruit. Wicked people are compared to chaff blown away by the wind, and the psalm ends by saying they will not stand in the judgment or among the righteous.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • The man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked is blessed.
   • The blessed man does not stand in the way of sinners.
   • The blessed man does not sit in the seat of scoffers.
2. 1:2
   • His delight is in the law of the LORD.
   • He meditates on the LORD's law by day and by night.
3. 1:3
   • He is like a tree planted by channels of water.
   • That tree gives its fruit in its season.
   • That tree's leaf does not wither.
   • Whatever he does prospers.
4. 1:4
   • The wicked are not like that.
   • The wicked are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5. 1:5
   • Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment.
   • Sinners will not stand in the assembly of the righteous.
6. 1:6
   • The LORD knows the way of the righteous.
   • The way of the wicked will perish.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"Blessed" here translates a Hebrew word (*ashrei*) that is not a blessing pronounced on someone but an exclamation about them (closer to "how fortunate is" or "happy the person who." It describes a condition, not a gift being handed over. The three verbs) walk, stand, sit, move from passing by, to stopping, to settling in permanently. Hebrew poetry often builds a picture this way, and the sequence suggests a gradual sinking in rather than three separate acts. "Scornful" means mockers: people who treat what others hold sacred as a joke.

1:2

"LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided saying it aloud and substituted the word for "Lord," and most English Bibles follow that practice with the small-capital spelling. "Law" translates *torah*, which is wider than legal rules: it means instruction or teaching, and in this period referred to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, narrative and all. "Meditate" translates a word for muttering or murmuring under one's breath; ancient reading was normally done aloud, so the picture is of someone reciting the text quietly to himself, not sitting in silent thought.

1:3

In the dry climate of the region, a tree away from water dies; one planted next to an irrigation channel keeps its leaves through the summer drought. "Rivers of water" refers to those channels dug to carry water to crops, not to natural rivers. "Planted" is a word for transplanting, the tree was deliberately put there by someone.

1:4

Chaff is the light, papery husk around a grain of wheat. After harvest the grain was beaten loose and then thrown into the air on a windy hillside: the heavy kernels fell back to the ground and the worthless chaff blew off. It was the standard image for something with no substance to it.

1:5

"Stand in the judgment" uses courtroom language, in an ancient legal hearing the parties stood before the elders to state their case, and to be unable to stand was to lose. "Congregation" means the assembled community of Israel, gathered as a body for worship or for decisions; to have no place in it was to be cut off from the people.

1:6

"Knoweth" translates a Hebrew verb that covers far more than being aware of a fact (it can mean to acknowledge, to be intimately familiar with, or to look after. That is why modern translations render it "guards" or "watches over," though the plainer sense of "knows" is also present. "Way" throughout this psalm means a road or path used as an image for a whole manner of life) the same double sense English has in "he went his own way."