Psalm 1: The Blessed Man Explained
Psalm 1 has no title, no author's name, no historical note at the top, which is unusual in a book full of superscriptions. That silence is on purpose. It reads less like a personal prayer and more like a doorway, placed there by whoever finally assembled the Psalter, to tell you how to read everything that follows. Before you get to the laments and the fury and the doubt, you're handed a choice between two roads and told plainly which one holds up. Quick answer Psalm 1 opens the book of Psalms by setting up two ways of living: one shaped by delight in God's instruction, the other drifting along with people who have made peace with cynicism and sin. The righteous person is compared to a tree planted by water, stable, fed, fruitful in its own time. The wicked are compared to chaff, light, rootless, gone at the first wind. The psalm doesn't promise the righteous an easy life. It promises them a sustained one, and it promises that God knows the way they're walking, eve...