Psalms 62: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A psalm of quiet confidence in God during a time of attack. The speaker says God alone is his rock, his rescue, and his safe place, and repeats that claim after describing enemies who bless him out loud while cursing him inside. He then turns to the people and tells them to trust God at all times, warning that people of every rank weigh nothing on the scale and that stolen money and growing riches are not worth setting your heart on. It closes with two things that belong to God: power, and steady love that repays each person according to what they have done.

Claim by Claim

1. 62:1
   • The speaker's soul is silent and still toward God alone.
   • The speaker's salvation comes from God.
2. 62:2
   • God alone is the speaker's rock.
   • God alone is the speaker's salvation.
   • God is the speaker's high stronghold.
   • The speaker will not be greatly shaken.
3. 62:3
   • The speaker asks how long his opponents will assail a man, the verb for their attack being obscure.
   • The speaker says all of them will be slain, though the wording can also mean that all of them commit murder.
   • The speaker says they will be like a leaning wall.
   • The speaker says they will be like a tottering fence.
4. 62:4
   • They plan only to thrust him down from his high position.
   • They take pleasure in falsehood.
   • They bless with their mouth.
   • They curse inwardly.
   • Selah.
5. 62:5
   • The speaker tells his own soul to be silent toward God alone.
   • The speaker's hope comes from God.
6. 62:6
   • God alone is the speaker's rock.
   • God alone is the speaker's salvation.
   • God is the speaker's high stronghold.
   • The speaker will not be shaken.
7. 62:7
   • The speaker's salvation rests on God.
   • The speaker's honor rests on God.
   • God is the rock of the speaker's strength.
   • The speaker's refuge is in God.
8. 62:8
   • The people are told to trust in God at all times.
   • The people are told to pour out their heart before God.
   • God is a refuge for us.
   • Selah.
9. 62:9
   • Men of low rank are a breath.
   • Men of high rank are a lie.
   • When placed in the scales they rise.
   • Together they are lighter than a breath.
10. 62:10
    • The hearers are told not to trust in extortion.
    • The hearers are told not to become empty through robbery.
    • If wealth increases, the hearers are told not to set their heart on it.
11. 62:11
    • God has spoken once.
    • The speaker has heard this twice.
    • Strength belongs to God.
12. 62:12
    • Steadfast love belongs to the Lord.
    • The Lord repays each man according to his work.

Words Worth Explaining

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

62:1

"Soul" in Hebrew (nephesh) means the whole living person (breath, appetite, life itself), not an inner part separate from the body. The verb behind "waiteth" carries the sense of silence or stillness, so the line pictures a person going quiet and holding still rather than one merely passing time.

62:2

"Rock" and "high, safe place" are military images from the landscape of ancient Israel: a crag or cliff-top too steep to be stormed, where people fled when raiders came. "Defence" in 1611 English meant a fortress or stronghold, not an argument or an excuse.

62:3

Walls in this world were often mud brick, and field boundaries were dry stone or brushwood. Once such a wall began to lean it was finished, a push from the crowd would bring it down. The speaker is the leaning wall in the image; the attackers are the ones shoving.

62:4

"Selah" is a term left untranslated because no one knows what it means. It appears mostly in the Psalms and is generally taken as a direction to the musicians (a pause, an instrumental break, or a change in volume), rather than part of the words being sung.

62:5

"Expectation" here is not guesswork about the future but what a person is counting on and waiting for, the thing on which hope rests.

62:6

This repeats verse 2 almost exactly, but the Hebrew drops the qualifier: verse 2 said "not greatly moved," this one says simply "not moved." Such near-repeated refrains are a standard structuring device in Hebrew poetry.

62:7

"Glory" here means honor or standing in the eyes of others, a person's public weight and reputation, which in this culture mattered as much as property.

62:8

"Pour out your heart" is an image from tipping a jar until nothing is left in it. The heart in Hebrew thought was the seat of thinking and deciding as much as feeling, so this means telling God the whole of what is going on in you, plans and doubts included.

62:9

"Vanity" translates hebel, meaning breath, vapor, or mist, something real but weightless and gone in a moment. The two groups are literally "sons of Adam" and "sons of man," two Hebrew phrases for common people and people of rank. The scales are the old balance kind with two pans: the lighter side rises, so "they rise" means they weigh nothing.

62:10

"Oppression" here means extortion, wealth squeezed out of people by force or position, and "robbery" means goods actually stolen. Both name sources of income, not attitudes.

62:11

"Once... twice" is a Hebrew way of counting for emphasis, common in wisdom sayings ("three things... four things"). It signals that the point has been settled and repeated, not that God spoke on two separate occasions.

62:12

"Mercy" translates hesed, which has no single English equivalent: loyal, committed kindness of the sort owed within a binding relationship, steady love that keeps its word rather than pity for someone in trouble.