The Psalms: Psalm 1 – What Does This Mean?

I often teach about the 3 P’s of the Psalms: Poetry, Prayer, and Praise. As we begin taking a look at the Psalms, we notice right away that they are written as poetry and not prose. Hebrew poetry is not written like we might write poetry, with rhyming and meter and so forth. It often compares the righteous and the wicked (as we will see in Psalm 1) and repeats a thought to emphasize and describe what the poet means.

Psalms are also prayers. Whereas many of the passages of Scripture are written in third person past tense, the psalms are frequently written in first person. “Have mercy on me, O Lord!” “Save me, O my God!” This makes the psalms memorable, personal, and powerful as we read them, pray them, or worship with them.

Finally, psalms are praise. I say “praise” for the sake of alliteration. What I really mean is that the psalms are songs. The book of Psalms was the first hymnbook of the church and it has remained in this place in worship even today across denominations and contexts. Psalms are poetry and they are prayers, but they stay with us because we sing them.

Let’s take a look at Psalm 1.

The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked

1 Blessed is the man
    who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
    nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
²but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law he meditates day and night.

The first word we find in the entire book of Psalms is “blessed.” Throughout the Old Testament there are many comparisons between the blessings and the curses. And this Psalm certainly brings this out. I often remind my people that this is also how Jesus began His most famous sermon “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” This is also similar to how many pastors begin their sermons with “Grace, mercy, and peace.”

What we want to focus on next in these two verses are the verbs. First, the blessed man does not walk. As we know, “Synod” means to walk together, and this reminds us of the fellowship we have with the congregations around us. But in this case, the man is not walking into sin, “into the council of the wicked.” This is so easy to do, and it is the way that temptation starts. We walk the walk, walking the way to destruction.

What else does the blessed man do? He does not stand in the way of sinners. When we think of walking, there is always the opportunity to “walk away from it.” But now the sinner stands with other sinners and participates with them in it. Now the sinner is one of the rest, just like everybody else.

But soon after we walk the walk of sin and destruction, eventually we talk the talk too. That’s what the sinner does. The blessed man does not get to this point, but the sinner certainly does. Now he scoffs at the blessed man and reviles the faithful.

Walk, stand, sit. This is the progression of sin that the Psalmist wants us to think about. What logically comes next? Lying down dead. As Paul says in Romans 6, “the wages of sin is death.” And that is the result of unrepentance and sin.

What makes the blessed man so blessed?

It is that “he delights in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” In other words, the blessed man loves the Bible. The blessed man studies God’s Word and believes it is true. The blessed man is not walking or standing or sitting, but hearing and reading and believing.

And as Lutherans, it is important that we do not get stuck on the word “law” in terms of Law and Gospel. “Law” here means the entirety of God’s teaching in His Word. This is the Word of God we love, and it is the Word of God we study. And this is what makes each and every one of us blessed by God and called to be His beloved children.

“Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” Luke 11:28

Rev. James Peterson
St. John Curtis, Nebraska