Today’s Passage: Psalm 37
The wicked prosper while the righteous stand by and watch, and David, now an old man, sets down forty verses so that the watching does not slowly curdle into fretting. Do not fret, he says, and trust in the LORD. He is not turning “wait” into a system, and he is not making the alphabet itself into the meal. Everything he has learned comes down to a single claim held together in one hand: refuse the fret, and trust the LORD.
As you read, hold this: Do not fret. Trust in the LORD.
Context Of David, written late
This one is marked “Of David,” and by verse 25 he will tell us plainly, I once was young and now am old. In the Hebrew the whole psalm is an acrostic, moving stanza by stanza through the letters of the alphabet, and that careful shape is doing real work. It holds a hard feeling in place so that it cannot run off wherever it likes. The feeling itself is not wrong to have. It simply needs somewhere to go.
Psalm 37:1-6 (BSB)
¹ Of David. Do not fret over those who do evil; do not envy those who do wrong. ² For they wither quickly like grass and wilt like tender plants. ³ Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. ⁴ Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart. ⁵ Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will do it. ⁶ He will bring forth your righteousness like the dawn, your justice like the noonday sun.
Here is the whole argument in the first two lines, and then the alternative to it. Fretting, and envy, and the wicked who look like green grass but are already dying even while we stand there watching them. Against all of that the psalm sets four verbs: trust, dwell, delight, commit. Not one of them is a mood that simply arrives on its own. And verse 4 is not the blank check it is sometimes taken to be. It sits deliberately between trusting and committing, inside a psalm about desire that has been aimed at the wrong target. A heart that comes to delight in the LORD does not hold on to the same old list and merely have it granted. The wants themselves begin to change shape.
Psalm 37:7-11 (BSB)
⁷ Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men prosper in their ways, when they carry out wicked schemes. ⁸ Refrain from anger and abandon wrath; do not fret—it can only bring harm. ⁹ For the evildoers will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land. ¹⁰ Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found. ¹¹ But the meek will inherit the land and delight in abundant prosperity.
Do not fret, he says now for the third time, and in its place he sets stillness and patience. Then he names what fretting turns into if it is not refused: anger, and wrath, and harm that comes back on the one who carried it. And verse 11 is the very line that Jesus will one day take up and say again.
Word study "Meek" — anavim (Psalm 37:11)
Hebrew: עֲנָוִים (anavim), from anav, pronounced ah-NAHV. Strong’s H6035. “Humble, meek, afflicted.”
This is not weakness at all. It is a person who has finally stopped grasping, the very opposite of the schemers back in verse 7. And what such a person is given, the psalm says, is nothing less than the land itself.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Matthew 5:5 (BSB)
Jesus never cites the psalm by name. He simply picks up the same promise and hands it to a crowd gathered on a hillside.
Psalm 37:12-17 (BSB)
¹² The wicked scheme against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them, ¹³ but the Lord laughs, seeing that their day is coming. ¹⁴ The wicked have drawn the sword and bent the bow to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose ways are upright. ¹⁵ But their swords will pierce their own hearts, and their bows will be broken. ¹⁶ Better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many who are wicked. ¹⁷ For the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the LORD upholds the righteous.
They scheme, and the Lord laughs, and their own swords turn back against them. Then comes the great reversal of values, said about as plainly as it can be said: better is the little of the righteous. Not better someday, but better already. The one life is upheld, and the other is already breaking apart.
Psalm 37:18-22 (BSB)
¹⁸ The LORD knows the days of the blameless, and their inheritance will last forever. ¹⁹ In the time of evil they will not be ashamed, and in the days of famine they will be satisfied. ²⁰ But the wicked and enemies of the LORD will perish like the glory of the fields. They will vanish; like smoke they will fade away. ²¹ The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous are gracious and giving. ²² Surely those He blesses will inherit the land, but the cursed will be destroyed.
He knows their days, and their inheritance is the kind that lasts. In famine they are not put to shame, while the wicked go up like smoke off a burning field. The one borrows and never pays it back, the other keeps on giving, and once again the promise comes to rest on the same word: the land.
Psalm 37:23-26 (BSB)
²³ The steps of a man are ordered by the LORD who takes delight in his journey. ²⁴ Though he falls, he will not be overwhelmed, for the LORD is holding his hand. ²⁵ I once was young and now am old, yet never have I seen the righteous abandoned or their children begging for bread. ²⁶ They are ever generous and quick to lend, and their children are a blessing.
He takes delight in the whole journey. Falling is named honestly, and then being overwhelmed by the fall is refused, because the LORD is the one holding his hand. And now the psalm turns from teaching to testimony, not a theory but a life: I once was young and now am old. This is simply what one old man has seen with his own eyes over a long span of years, and what he has never once seen.
Psalm 37:27-33 (BSB)
²⁷ Turn away from evil and do good, so that you will abide forever. ²⁸ For the LORD loves justice and will not forsake His saints. They are preserved forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off. ²⁹ The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. ³⁰ The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice. ³¹ The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not falter. ³² Though the wicked lie in wait for the righteous, and seek to slay them, ³³ the LORD will not leave them in their power or let them be condemned under judgment.
Turn away from evil, do good, and know that He will not forsake His own. The land comes up yet again, and now the law of God is written in the heart. Even when the wicked lie in wait for the righteous, the LORD will not leave them in that power.
Psalm 37:34-40 (BSB)
³⁴ Wait for the LORD and keep His way, and He will raise you up to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you will see it. ³⁵ I have seen a wicked, ruthless man flourishing like a well-rooted native tree, ³⁶ yet he passed away and was no more; though I searched, he could not be found. ³⁷ Consider the blameless and observe the upright, for posterity awaits the man of peace. ³⁸ But the transgressors will all be destroyed; the future of the wicked will be cut off. ³⁹ The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. ⁴⁰ The LORD helps and delivers them; He rescues and saves them from the wicked, because they take refuge in Him.
Study notes Wait, and keep His way
Wait for the LORD, and keep His way. This is not a clever method for managing envy. It is a direction to face and a path to walk. Verses 35 and 36 give us the last picture of all: a wicked man who looked as permanent as a well-rooted tree, and then, when you go to search for him again, simply gone. It is the same end that verse 2 named for the grass. And in its final three verses the psalm stops watching the wicked altogether and names the LORD instead: salvation, and stronghold, and refuge. Fretting, it turns out, was never really about how well the wicked were doing. It was about where we had been looking for our safety all along.
Do not fret. Trust in the LORD.