Psalms 73: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer admits he almost lost his footing, because he envied wicked people who looked healthy, rich, and free of the troubles other people carry, and who said openly that God knows nothing. He felt his own effort to keep a clean heart had been wasted, and could not make sense of it until he went into God's sanctuary and saw how such people end: set on slippery ground and swept away. The rest of the psalm turns to what he still has (God holding his hand, guiding him with counsel, and being the strength of his heart) and closes with him saying it is good for him to be near God.

Claim by Claim

1. 73:1
   • The psalm is a psalm of Asaph.
   • God is truly good to Israel.
   • God is good to those who are pure in heart.
2. 73:2
   • The speaker's feet had almost turned aside.
   • The speaker's steps had nearly slipped.
3. 73:3
   • The speaker was envious of the arrogant.
   • The speaker's envy arose when he saw the well-being of the wicked.
4. 73:4
   • The wicked have no pangs in their death.
   • The body of the wicked is sound and fat.
5. 73:5
   • The wicked are not in the trouble that other men are in.
   • The wicked are not stricken like other men.
6. 73:6
   • Pride encircles the wicked like a necklace.
   • Violence covers the wicked like a garment.
7. 73:7
   • The eyes of the wicked bulge out from fatness.
   • The imaginations of their heart overflow beyond bounds.
8. 73:8
   • The wicked scoff.
   • The wicked speak wickedly of oppression.
   • The wicked speak from on high.
9. 73:9
   • The wicked set their mouth against the heavens.
   • The tongue of the wicked walks through the earth.
10. 73:10
    • Therefore God's people turn back to this place.
    • Abundant waters are drained by them.
    • It is unclear who returns and who drinks the waters.
11. 73:11
    • The wicked say, 'How does God know?'
    • The wicked say, 'Is there knowledge in the Most High?'
12. 73:12
    • These are the wicked.
    • The wicked are always at ease.
    • The wicked increase in wealth.
13. 73:13
    • The speaker says he has kept his heart clean in vain.
    • The speaker washed his hands in innocence.
14. 73:14
    • The speaker has been stricken all day long.
    • The speaker has been chastened every morning.
15. 73:15
    • If the speaker had said he would speak in this way, he would have betrayed the generation of God's children.
16. 73:16
    • The speaker thought about how to understand this.
    • Understanding it was trouble in his eyes.
17. 73:17
    • The speaker went into the sanctuary of God.
    • Then the speaker understood the end of the wicked.
18. 73:18
    • God sets the wicked in slippery places.
    • God casts the wicked down to ruin.
19. 73:19
    • The wicked become a desolation in a moment.
    • The wicked are swept away and consumed by terrors.
20. 73:20
    • The wicked are like a dream after one awakes.
    • The Lord will despise their image when he rouses himself.
21. 73:21
    • The speaker's heart was embittered.
    • The speaker was pierced in his inward parts.
22. 73:22
    • The speaker was brutish.
    • The speaker did not know.
    • The speaker was like a beast before God.
23. 73:23
    • The speaker is continually with God.
    • God has held the speaker by his right hand.
24. 73:24
    • God guides the speaker with his counsel.
    • Afterward God will take the speaker to glory.
25. 73:25
    • The speaker has no one in heaven but God.
    • The speaker desires no one on earth besides God.
26. 73:26
    • The speaker's flesh and heart fail.
    • God is the rock of the speaker's heart.
    • God is the speaker's portion forever.
27. 73:27
    • Those who are far from God will perish.
    • God destroys everyone who is unfaithful to him.
28. 73:28
    • Nearness to God is good for the speaker.
    • The speaker has made the Lord GOD his refuge.
    • The speaker's purpose is to declare all of God's works.

Words Worth Explaining

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

73:1

"Israel" is the whole people descended from Jacob, whom God renamed Israel (the nation as a single community. The Hebrew consonants of this line can also be divided a second way, giving "Surely God is good to the upright," and translators have gone both ways; the rest of the line, about clean hearts, narrows the claim either way. "Heart" in Hebrew means the inner person) thinking and willing as much as feeling, so a clean heart is honest intent, not warm emotion.

73:2

"Well nigh" is old English for "very nearly." The image is of walking on a wet or icy surface: the poet is describing how close he came to abandoning what he believed, not an actual fall.

73:3

The word behind "the foolish" is not about low intelligence. In Hebrew this family of words means boastful, reckless, arrogant, someone who lives as though nothing will ever catch up with them.

73:4

This is one of the hardest lines in the psalm. The Hebrew word rendered "bands" means pangs or bonds, so the sense is either "they suffer no death-agonies" or "they have no pains." The words can also be split differently to read "they have no pangs; their body is sound and fat." Fatness here is a picture of wealth and ease, not a comment on looks.

73:5

"Plagued" here does not mean infected with disease. In the King James it means struck, hit or afflicted by trouble of any kind, the way a person might be hit by illness, debt or grief.

73:6

Necklaces and fine clothing were how status was displayed in public. Pride worn as a chain and violence worn as a robe means these things are not hidden faults but the outfit they put on to be seen in.

73:7

"Fatness" throughout the Hebrew Bible signals prosperity and rich food, the visible result of never going without. Some ancient copies of this verse read "their iniquity comes out from fatness" instead of "their eyes bulge from fatness", one Hebrew letter separates the two.

73:9

Heaven and earth together are a way of saying everything there is. Their mouths take on what is above and their tongues take over what is below: nothing is off limits to their talk.

73:10

The Hebrew of this verse is damaged or obscure, and no one is certain what it originally said. Ancient and modern translations differ sharply, some have God's people turning back to the wicked and swallowing whatever they say, others have people draining a full cup of water. The rendering keeps the King James wording rather than choosing a solution.

73:11

"The Most High" (Hebrew Elyon) is an old title for God, stressing that he is above all other powers. The taunt is sharper because of it: they name him by his highest title and then ask whether he notices anything.

73:12

The Hebrew phrase can mean "always at ease, untroubled" as easily as "prospering in the world"; both senses are in play, these people are comfortable and they stay comfortable.

73:13

Washing the hands was a public ritual, not hygiene. A person under suspicion washed his hands in front of witnesses to declare, visibly, that he had no part in a crime. So the line means: I kept myself demonstrably clean, and it bought me nothing.

73:14

"Chastened" means disciplined or punished, the word used for a parent correcting a child. He is describing a life that feels like one long correction, with each new morning bringing more of it.

73:15

"Generation" here does not mean an age group. It means the company or community of people loyal to God, his contemporaries in faith. Saying out loud what he had been thinking would have been a betrayal of them.

73:17

The sanctuary is the temple in Jerusalem, the building where God was understood to be present and where sacrifices and worship took place. Going in meant entering its courts, the one place where the whole story could be seen from God's side rather than from the street.

73:20

The Hebrew word for "image" here is the ordinary word for a statue or likeness, but used of the shape a person sees in a dream. Their solid, enviable lives turn out to have the substance of something that vanishes on waking.

73:21

"Reins" is old English for the kidneys. Hebrew locates the deepest feelings and the conscience in the kidneys the way English locates them in the heart or the gut, so this is being cut to the core, not a medical complaint.

73:22

The Hebrew word is a large brute animal, used with a plural form for emphasis, something that eats and reacts but cannot reason about what it sees.

73:23

Taking a person by the right hand was the gesture of someone stronger steadying or leading someone weaker, a king raising a subject, a guide bringing a person safely through.

73:24

The Hebrew is genuinely open here. The verb translated "receive" is the ordinary word for "take," the same verb used when Enoch and Elijah were taken away by God, so some read this as being taken to God at the end of life. Others read "glory" as honor within this life, and "afterward" as simply "later on." The wording does not settle it.

73:26

A "portion" was the share of land a family was allotted in Israel, what you lived off and passed to your children. The priestly tribe of Levi received no land and was told that God himself was their portion. Saying God is my portion claims that inheritance: he is the estate, and it does not fail.

73:27

"Go a whoring" translates a Hebrew idiom that treats the bond between God and his people as a marriage; unfaithfulness to it, especially by worshiping other gods, is spoken of as adultery. It is a standard biblical figure of speech, not an accusation about sexual conduct.

73:28

Printed as "LORD" or "GOD" in small capitals, this stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud. "Lord GOD" here renders the pair of titles Adonai YHWH, roughly "my Master, YHWH." The Hebrew behind "put my trust" is literally "made a refuge," the image of taking shelter somewhere safe.