Psalms 1
Big idea: The Psalter does not begin with a prayer. It begins with a doorway, and a choice about which way you are facing. Walk, stand, sit — the verbs slow down as the man sinks deeper into company he never meant to keep. Against that, one image: a tree planted by streams of water, whose fruit comes in season and whose leaf doesn't wither, because something underground is feeding it that the weather can't reach. Then the counter-image, which is not a bad tree but no tree at all — chaff, the husk left after threshing, weightless enough for wind to take.
Psalm 1 sets the two ways for one man. Psalm 2 widens the same question to every king on earth.
1:1–6 — A tree planted by streams of water
The Psalter's preface, and it argues by contrasting two pictures rather than two verdicts. The first is a tree someone planted on purpose beside water someone else channelled — the fruit and the unwithered leaf are effects of a location, not of effort. The second is not a bad tree but no tree at all: chaff has no roots to contest, which is why the wind is enough. Everything the poem claims about the two ways rests on that asymmetry.
1 Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand on the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in Yahweh’s law. On his law he meditates day and night. 3 He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 6 For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).