A Psalm of Wishful Thinking
Do not fret because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. Psalm 37:1-2 NASB
Wither quickly – Stop! Before you read my homily on Psalm 37:1-2, read the entire psalm. It will only take a minute or so. I’ll wait.
Ready? What was your overall impression? Did you think that this psalm tried to encourage you in a time when it looks like evil men will prevail? Did it make you feel better about your circumstances? Did you notice that the same idea, that God will protect the righteous and judge the wicked, is repeated again and again in this psalm? The language might differ but the claim is the same. “Don’t get upset now. In the end, God will take care of things.”
Now the crucial question. Is this true? I don’t mean, “at the end of the world God’s justice will prevail.” I mean, “Do you feel as if this is true now, in your life today?” Don’t tell me that this is an unfair question. The psalm doesn’t say, “Oh, just wait a few thousand years and eventually God’s justice will take care of the wicked.” No, it says that the wicked will wither quickly. It says, “those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.” Inheritance doesn’t mean a whole lot if it happens after you’re dead. It says, “I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread” (v.25). But I have. I’ve seen the righteous not only begging for bread, I’ve seen them begging for their lives—to no avail. They died, sometimes in excruciating pain, waiting for God. In what sense is a poem like this even close to our reality? In what way is it any comfort? As my college history professor used to say, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” I seem to get more comfort from Koheleth than from this poem of David. Koheleth is a realist. David might seem like a dreamer. And it’s a little disturbing that David writes this as king. Maybe kings see the righteous protected, but I’m afraid the plight of the poor (whether righteous or not) is far more difficult for them.
“Wither quickly.” The Hebrew is mĕhērâ yimmā’lû. mĕhērâ means “with haste,” or “speed.” You will find it in Psalm 147:15 and Isaiah 58:8. Both occurrences stress the speedy action of God. This is not a “wait for the millennium” word.
The most interesting of these two Hebrew words is the next one. The spelling (Mem, Lamed, Lamed) actually yields four separate roots, that is, if we remove the vowel points, we see the same three consonants used in four different ways. Those are:
מָלַל (mālal) I, say, utter, speak מָלַל (mālal) II, rub, scrape מָלַל (mālal) III, languish, wither, fade, מָלַל (mālal) IV, circumcise[1]
You only know which of these four choices is the correct one by understanding the context. But I think they all have something in common. They all hurt. You might object. mālal I, “to say, utter, speak”) is a synonym of dābar. It’s about speaking, talking, anything said, and words. But we know that dābar isn’t just vocalization. dābar is sometimesthe thing done and the saying of the thing done.[2] It has an enormous range of meaning. “This noun is translated in eighty-five different ways in the KJV! This is due to the necessity of rendering such a fertile word by the sense it has in varying contexts.”[3] Some of those meanings involve injurious words and acts. Not all, of course, but the umbrella is big. It seems to me that we can consider mālal as something that causes or could cause pain. Maybe what the poet is saying is simply that the wicked will feel pain. God will see to it.
I can live with that, I suppose, but it doesn’t offer much immediate consolation. Asaph tells me not to envy the wicked, but they do seem to have most of the stuff I wish I had. Yes, some day they will pay, but right now it seems that the righteous are paying—dearly! My friend Steve Brown once told me, “I don’t doubt God’s omnipotence, but sometimes I doubt His benevolence.” Me, too.
Will it all work out in the end? Yes, I am confident it will (that’s a statement of trust, not observation). But I also agree with Heschel. “History is a nightmare.” We live in the twilight zone, between the nightmare and the millennium. How we live in this in-between state is still unclear.
Topical Index: mĕhērâ, haste, mālal, wither, righteous, wicked, Psalm 37:1-2
[1] Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., Jr., & Waltke, B. K. (Eds.). (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 511). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] https://skipmoen.com/2015/04/the-bible-at-large/
[3] Kalland, E. S. (1999). 399 דָּבַר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 180). Chicago: Moody Press.
