This post was created in April 2017.
19 July 2022 -- I've since abandoned this specific project, and am working on something a bit different. This page remains for anyone who might find it interesting.
This big post contains the following, in order: the consonantal text, a pronunciation guide, a phrase by phrase explanation of the Hebrew text, a bit about what it means for the wicked to “stand in the judgment,” an awkward translation of this psalm, notes on various things, a bit on the history of the Psalm, and comments on how Psalm 1 vis-a-vis religious skepticism.
Consonantal Text
Here’s the unvowelled Hebrew, broken into lines as found in Biblia Hebraica Kittel. Try, first of all, to vocalize this on your own and see how much you can understand.
ʾšry hʾyš ʾšr lʾ hlk bʿṣt ršʿym
wbdrk ḥṭʾym lʾ ʿmd wbmwšb lṣym lʾ yšb
ky ʾm btwrt yhwh ḥpṣw wbtwrtw yhgh ywmm wlylh
whyh kʿṣ štwl ʿl plgy mym
ʾšr pryw ytn bʿtw wʿlhw lʾ ybwl
wkl ʾšr yʿšh yṣlyḥ
lʾ kn hršʿym
ky ʾm kmṣ ʾšr tdpnw rwḥ
ʿl kn lʾ yqmw ršʿym bmšpṭ wḥṭʾym bʿdt ṣdyqym
ky ywdʿ yhwh drk ṣdyqym wdrk ršʿym tʾbd
Vowels
Here’s the Masoretic pronunciation, in a Sephardi/Israeli way of reading. Pronounce the vowels roughly like Spanish. Pronounce h‘s. Capitalization just shows you which syllable gets the stress. See if that helps you understand a bit more.
ash-RE ha-ISH a-SHER lo ha-LAKH ba-a-TSAT r’-SHA-im
u-v’-DE-rekh KHAt-ta-im lo a-MAD u-v’-mo-SHAV l’-TSIM lo ya-SHAV
ki im be-to-RAT a-do-NAI khef-TSO u-v’-to-ra-TO yeh-GE yo-MAM va-LAY-la
v’ha-YA k’-ETS sha-TUL al-pal-GEI MA-yim
a-SHER pir-YO yit-TEN be-it-TO we-a-LE-hu lo-yib-BUL
v’-KHOL a-sher-ya-a-SE yats-LI-akh
lo-KHEN ha-r’-sha-IM
ki im-ka-MOTS a-sher-tid-FE-nu RU-akh
al-KEN lo-ya-KU-mu R’SHA-im ba-mish-PAT v’-khat-ta-IM ba-a-DAT tsa-di-KIM
ki-yo-DE-a a-do-NAI DE-rekh tsa-di-KIM we-DE-rekh r’sha-IM to-VED
Phrase by phrase reading
Now let’s go through bit by bit.
ashre haish, happy or blessed is the man, asher lo halak, who does not walk (that is, live or act), ba-atsat reshaim according to the advice, counsel, plans of evil people.
ubederek hattaim and in the path of sinners lo amad he does not stand.
and does not stand in the path of sinners. That is, the “blessed man” is a person who does not “walk” the way evil people advise, and he does not “stand” in the sinful path: two metaphorical statements of basically the same concept.
ubemoshab, and in the seat of, letsim, mockers or scorners, lo yashab, he does not sit. The “mocker” or “scoffer” is a stock character in the biblical wisdom literature. There is the man who lives by wisdom, and his opposite, the person who arrogantly scoffs at wisdom. That is, by threefold repetition, the exemplary blessed man does not walk, stand, or sit like the wrongdoers do. Finished with this description of how the blessed one does not live, we move on to a positive description.
ki im but instead, be-torat YHWH heftso, he delights in Yhwh’s instruction (literally, in the torah of Yahweh [is] his delight). u-be-torato and in his (Yahweh’s) instruction yehge yomam welayla he studies day and night. He delights in and continually reads to himself Yahweh’s law. Depending on when this was written, I suppose “Yahweh’s instruction” might refer either to the Pentateuch as a whole, the book of Deuteronomy in particular, or some other text along these lines — the traditional religious/social/civil guidance of the Israelite or Jewish people. Notice that this is a portrayal of a literate man as the exemplar.
vehayah, he is (or will be), ke-ets like a tree shatul planted al-pilge mayim along streams or channels of water. He is like a tree planted exactly where a tree would want to be planted. asher, who, piryo yitten, yields his fruit, be-itto at his (customary, right, appointed) time. He is planted where he should be, and he is fruitful as a tree ought to be. we-alehu lo yibbul, and his leaf does not wither, he is protected from the kinds of hardship or danger a tree might endure.
we-kol asher yaase and whatever he does yatsliah, he succeeds. I’ve also seen someone read this verb here as “survives,” but this verb seems to me more positive than that.
lo ken ha-reshaim, the wicked are not so. The wrongdoers do not partake in this protection and success granted to the exemplary man / well-planted tree.
ki im, but rather, kammots, (the wicked are) like chaff, worthless dead vegetable matter as opposed to a flourishing tree. asher tidfenu ruah which the wind blows away, unlike the stable and flourishing tree.
al-ken, Therefore, lo yaqumu reshaim, the wicked will not stand bamishpat in the judgment. The wicked will not stand in the judgment. That might seem a little strange. Is the passage saying that the wicked will escape judgment? No. That doesn’t fit with the tenor of the Psalm. Let’s put a pin in this and get back to it.
we-hattaim, nor sinners, baadat tsadiqim in the congregation of the righteous people. Nor will sinners stand in the congregation of the righteous — they are excluded.
ki yodea yhwh, because Yhwh knows, derek tsadiqim, the path of righteous people. Yahweh sees how the righteous live. we-derek reshaim tobed, but the path of wicked people will be destroyed. Maybe we can paraphrase, the wicked path will lead to destruction.
And that’s Psalm 1. 6 little verses.
What About the Wicked Standing?
So what about The wicked will not stand in the judgment? This cannot mean that the wicked will be exempt from judgment; that flies in the face of the whole meaning of Psalm 1. If we read “stand” as a positive, like “be vindicated” or “remain,” we could interpret along the lines The wicked will not be able to stand in the judgment, or even, The wicked will not (with)stand, or survive, the judgment.
Briggs discussed this possibility and another: that we should read yaqumu as meaning “rise up” in the sense of resurrection — that the wicked will not be resurrected on judgment day. Now, in general, the Hebrew Bible writes from a perspective which sees death as a one-way ticket to Sheol, the generally uneventful afterlife where both the wicked and righteous alike end up. In general, the Hebrew Bible is not concerned with the afterlife primarily, but with righteousness, success, land tenure, happiness, and piety in this life. The ultimate judgment which the prophets and the Primary History anticipate for evildoers is death or conquest or sickness or exile, not hellfire or missing out on the resurrection. However, some sort of resurrection appears in the (very late: 2nd century BCE) book of Daniel. After most of the Hebrew Bible was written, Judaism developed an idea of resurrection, and eventually ideas about heaven and hell. Briggs suggests that Psalm 1 is later than all the other Psalms, and that it reflects late concern with resurrection.
Now, Briggs wrote in 1906. I’ve looked at a number of translations of Psalm 1:5 made over the past century and before, most of them by the sorts of evangelicals who would ordinarily be receptive towards the idea of seeing the resurrection in a Psalm, but not one translated yaqumu as anything that would indicate resurrection. So given the consensus of translations, and the general rule that the Hebrew Bible does not anticipate a resurrection, I’m going to tentatively rule that Psalm 1:5 does not refer to a resurrection. I’d need a bit more evidence to convince me of that.
An Awkward Translation
This isn’t the prettiest translation. If you want something more poetic, learn the Hebrew by heart.
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk according to the wicked people’s counsel,
and does not stand in the path with sinners, nor sit in the mocker’s chair.
2 Instead, he delights in Yahweh’s tora, and he studies his tora day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water.
At the appropriate time he bears his fruit, and his leaves do not wither.
Whatever he does, he succeeds.
4 Not so the wicked men!
Instead, like chaff the wind blows them away.
5 Therefore the wicked will be unable to stand when the judgment comes;
and sinners [will be unable to stand] in the congregation of righteous people;
6 because Yahweh knows the path of the righteous,
and the path of the wicked will be destroyed.
Textual Variants, Alternate Translations, Interpretive Notes
According to Eugene Ulrich’s The Biblical Qumran Scrolls, the Dead Sea / Qumran Scrolls do not contain any texts of Psalm 1.
In verse 1, instead of Blessed (as in KJV), one might translate ashre as happy (Briggs) or fortunate. Its form looks like it would be a construct plural noun, and NLT (but none of the other translations I’ve checked) according translates, “Oh, the joys of . . .”
Where the word man occurs, one could say that the Psalmist is simply using archaic language, but would have in mind a person of either gender. Or, like Briggs, one could argue that the Psalmist is actually thinking of a specifically male man. The Bible’s implicit audience does usually seem to be presumptively masculine.
Regardless of whether it’s better to translate the “good man” as a singular male individual or a singular individual of unspecified gender, something is lost when, as in the NRSV, the gender-neutral option is exercised by using a plural: “Happy are those who,” etc. In the Psalm in Hebrew, a (singular) righteous person is contrasted to (multiple) wicked people. Flattening out this numerical distinction may undermine an implicit point made by the Psalmist: that the excellent person is outnumbered but clings to his faithful ways anyhow.
Where I read above, sit in the mockers’ chair, the words yashab (“sit”) and moshab (“chair”) can carry a range of meanings. When you yashab, you might be “sitting”, or you might be “settling” or “living” somewhere, depending on the context. Likewise, a moshab can be a seat or particular place one person sits, it can be an assembly or meeting of people, or it can be a place where people live. So you might want to read that the righteous person does not sit in the mockers’ chair, or does not sit in a session of scorners (Briggs), or even does not dwell where mockers dwell, though this last suggestion might break the poetic train of metaphor: walk, stand, sit.
In verse 2, where the Masoretic Text reads betorat Yhwh hafetso, he delights in the instruction of Yahweh, Kittel suggests that perhaps we should read b’yir’at Yhwh hafetso, “he delights in the fear of Yahweh.” This is not so strange as it sounds, as “the fear of God” is a stock biblical way of expressing a God-obeying way of life. I’m not sure where Kittel got the idea that the Masoretic Text might be wrong here.
Verse 3 is similar to a degree that cannot just be coincidence with Jeremiah 17:8, where the metaphor of a fortunate tree is used for a God-trusting person. Where the Psalm reads planted by streams of water, Kittel notes that Jeremiah reads only planted by water.
As for the palgei (“streams”), the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges notes some doubt as to whether the language implies natural rivers or artificial canals. The Cambridge Bible suggests the latter.
Where I (and Gesenius, KJV) read planted, Briggs reads transplanted. Briggs thinks that the image is of a tree taken from where it naturally grew and deliberately placed in a favored location. Either way, the idea is that someone deliberately put that tree where it belongs.
he succeeds. This is a hiphil verb, and I’m reading it as being the righteous man who is the subject of the verb, along with YLT, JPS 1917, NLT, ESV, NASB, NET. Some translations see “whatever he does” as the subject of this verb, reading something along the lines of whatever he does succeeds: KJV, Douay, RV, ASV, NIV
Verse 4, Not so the wicked! To the end of this phrase, Kittel points out that the Septuagint adds an additional not so! For an English translation of the Septuagint, see here. the wind blows away. To the end of this phrase, the Septuagint and Vulgate add “from off the earth” (Kittel, Cambridge Bible).
Verse 5. the judgment. Either take this as referring to God’s various judgments on the wicked throughout history, or else (as Briggs does) to an end-time eschatological judgment. I don’t know enough to have a solid opinion on this.
Verse 6, Yahweh knows the way of the righteous. Kittel suggests perhaps deleting “way of” here.
will be destroyed. Briggs suggests the possible alternate translations “be exterminated” or “be lost.”
Briggs on the Structure and Development of Psalm 1
Briggs sees the Psalm as originally not containing verse 3. In that case, you get a very symmetrical Psalm (his translation below):
HAPPY the man!
Who doth not walk in the counsel of wicked men,
And in the way of sinners doth not stand,
And in the session of scorners doth not sit down;
But rather in the Law of Yahweh is his delight,
And in His Law he studies day and night.
NOT so the wicked!
But rather they are as the chaff which the wind driveth away;
Therefore the wicked will not rise up in the Judgment,
And sinners (will not enter) into the congregation of righteous men;
For Yahweh knoweth the way of righteous men,
But the way of wicked men will perish (everlastingly).
Later, says Briggs, what became verse three was added to the end of the “HAPPY” half of the Psalm (his translation of verse 3):
AND he is like a tree transplanted beside channels of water,
Which yieldeth his fruit in his season,
Whose leaf withers not;
So all that he doeth, he carries through successfully.
Now, take your pick. Believe Briggs or not. Either way verse 3 fits well in its present location, immediately before verse 4. 3 compares the righteous to a valuable, strong plant, deliberately put in a secure place where it will flourish. Then 4 compares the wicked to dead and worthless plant matter, insignificant and blown away by the wind. Now, you could say that verse three decreases the symmetry of the poem. But didn’t someone say once that good poetry is about a deliberate interplay of symmetry and asymmetry? I don’t have the necessary skills to rule on a question like whether verse three is original to the Psalm. In a case like this, I’m not sure whether anyone does.
Skeptical Comments
It is worth noticing that this Psalm describes the consequences of good and evil in a way similar to much of the Hebrew Bible, including the Primary History and the Prophets. A dramatic statement of this view that life is just can be found in Deuteronomy 28. The writer is convinced that good people will succeed, and bad people will fail in life. Against this view, however, there are the skeptical tones of Ecclessiastes, where Qoheleth does not seem to share this view of life’s inherent justice. The New Testament, with its introduction of heaven and hell, attempts to resolve this tension by assuring the reader that all the injustices of this life will be ironed out later, in contrast to Deuteronomy 28, Psalm 1, and other passages which view this life, and not an afterlife, as the proper place for rewards and punishments. And there is also the Book of Job, which contains a sustained protest that God is punishing a just man arbitrarily. Various religious readers of the Bible have various ways of either reconcile or deal with these differences, but it should be noticed that the Bible promotes several different views regarding whether life (this one or the next) rewards the good and punishes the bad.
The famous (or infamous) Skeptic’s Annotated Bible has taken a look at Psalm 1 and finds verses 5-6, with its mentions of “righteous” people, to be in contradiction with other verses that deny or seem to argue against the existence of “righteous” people. I have to disagree with SAB on this one. This seems to me to be a fairly superficial, surface-level, literalistic way to find disagreement. It’s entirely plausible that you can divide humans into “righteous” and “wicked” categories while still viewing human “righteousness” as entirely inadequate when held up to God’s standard. Just as a man might tell his wife she’s “perfect” but also insist that “nobody’s perfect” in another context. On the other hand, there is a legitimate question about the Bible’s treatment of the topic of human righteousness, God’s view of human righteous behavior, and the consequences of righteous behavior, in particular with reference to the afterlife. But that’s a discussion that would have to go much deeper than listing verses. Another discussion for another day.
Sources Mentioned