planted by the rivers of water,

that brings forth his fruit in his season;

his leaf also shall not wither

and whatever he does shall prosper.

4

The ungodly are not so:

but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous:

but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

      There are 150 psalms. Why was this one placed first? It isn’t everyone’s favorite. The 23^rd Psalm takes that honor. I think it is here because it sets the tone for the work to follow: It is a winner's formula for life. There are two important principles that make all the difference: (1)You don’t take counsel of a certain class of men. (2)You make the law of the God your counselor, your tutor, the teacher of your conscience.

      The law of God is not a yoke of bondage, nor shackles and chains. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. The law of God is a descriptor of what works in life. The man who internalizes it gains an edge. Men will study books day and night that they think will give them an edge in the stock market. They do it for money. The law of God gives a man an edge in everything.

      The law is a painful study because we break it so often. It is not that we can’t keep the law in any one of its parts or on any given occasion. We can do that. But keeping it perfectly all the time is rather beyond most of us. Superficially, the law seems complicated, but that is only because the law is about life. It is life that is complicated. So when we study the law, and “meditate on it day and night,” we are going to routinely come across mistakes we have made. There is no gain in agonizing over past mistakes. The gain is in recognizing them and correcting them. The grace of God is what allows us to use the law without being depressed by it.

      The stock market analogy is interesting, because we do not feel guilty when we make a mistake investing. We cut our losses and try not to make the same mistake again. When we study the law of God, we do feel guilty. Yet, what God is after is not guilt, but change. What he wants us to do is learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. Its called repentance. The law need not make us uncomfortable. All we have to do is say we’re sorry and try not to do the same thing again.

      “The LORD knows the way of the righteous,” is a curious expression. The word “know” is the Hebrew word yada which is also the word in Genesis 4:1, "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain.” It is also the root of the word for “knowledge” in “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So it means rather more than “knowing about” something.

      Words often come to have special meanings beyond their denotation. For example, we may can say that we hope a person will not see adversity or know pain. In both cases, the verb has to do not merely with seeing or knowing, but about experiencing. So when the psalm tells us "the LORD knows the way of the righteous" it is saying something more than merely that he watches us walk that way. Both the NIV and the NRSV render the phrase, “The Lord watches over the way of the righteous.”

Poetic structure: The psalmist could have said, "Blessed is the man who is neither ungodly, a sinner, or scornful." Instead, he chooses the poetic way of saying it. Whether we are walking, standing or sitting, we must not conform to these patterns of life. Hebrew poetry comes through in translation, because it doesn't depend on rhyme. It is a poetry of ideas, not sound. At the end, the Psalmist returns to his opening theme but gathers all the contrasting ways of life into one: the ungodly. First, we are led to understand the benefits of walking in God's law, and then we turn to the consequences of the ungodly way of life.