Psalm 15:4

The psalm’s answer, given in verses 2 to 5, is the person whose whole life agrees with the holiness of the God he comes to. David puts the question to God himself and calls him by his covenant name, Yᵉhôvâh, the self-existent and eternal One who keeps faith with Israel. Addressing him by that name makes the question a serious one from its first word, because it is the host who decides who is welcome in his house.

David asks it in two lines. “Abide” is gûwr, to sojourn or to stay as a guest, so the first line pictures someone received into God’s tent the way a traveller is welcomed into a household. “Dwell” is shâkan, to settle down and stay. The second line reaches further than the first, from being received as a guest to making a home there. The two lines say one thing in two ways, as Hebrew poetry often does, and together they express a longing for lasting nearness to God.

Psalm 15 belongs beside the psalm that asks who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD and answers with clean hands and a pure heart (Psalm 24:3–4). It is a psalm of entrance, and it may have been used by pilgrims coming up to worship, as instruction in the character God looks for in those who draw near. Going up to Jerusalem for the great feasts was part of Israel’s life, so the question was a practical one. The first verse leaves it open, and each worshipper who hears it is led to hold his own life up against the answer that follows.

Verse 2 describes the whole person in three clauses, and the verses after it give examples from daily life.

“He that walketh uprightly” speaks of the general course of a life. The verb hâlak, to walk, is the Bible’s common picture for the way a person lives. “Uprightly” is tâmîym, which means complete, whole, sound and, when said of people, blameless. It describes a life that is all of one piece, the same in private as in public, and it stops short of claiming a person has never sinned. Scripture uses the word of Noah (Genesis 6:9) and in God’s call to Abraham to walk before him (Genesis 17:1).

“And worketh righteousness” turns to deeds. Pâʻal means to do, to make and especially to practise, so this is righteousness as a habit of action. Tsedeq is rightness and justice, the standard of what is right in God’s eyes, in how a person behaves and in how he treats others. The person the psalm describes actively does what is fair and just, as well as keeping away from wrong. Amos calls for the same thing when he asks that judgment run down as waters (Amos 5:24).

“And speaketh the truth in his heart” reaches the source of the other two. ʼEmeth is truth, with the sense of something firm and certain that can be relied on. The three clauses move from the outward course of a life, to its particular deeds, to the heart from which both come. That is why Proverbs tells us to keep the heart with all diligence (Proverbs 4:23), and why God’s promise for the new covenant is to write his law on the heart (Jeremiah 31:33).

Verse 3 names three things this person keeps from, and two of the three concern speech.

“He that backbiteth not with his tongue” uses the verb rāgal, which comes from the word for foot. Its root idea is to go about, and it is used of spying and of slander. The picture is of someone who goes around with tales, quietly damaging another person’s name when that person is absent and unable to answer.

“Nor doeth evil to his neighbour” widens the thought from words to deeds. Raʻ is a broad word that covers wickedness, harm and injury of every sort, from violence to cheating someone out of what is his.

“Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour” comes back to speech from the other side. Cherpâh is disgrace, scorn, an insult or a taunt. To take it up is to accept it, believe it, repeat it or lend it weight. So the psalm covers the hearer as well as the speaker: the first clause deals with starting slander, and the last deals with receiving it and passing it on.

In Israel, where news travelled by word of mouth, a person’s good name could be ruined by gossip or a false charge, and the law guarded it. The ninth commandment forbids false witness against a neighbour (Exodus 20:16), and the law commands, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), which Jesus names as the second great commandment (Matthew 22:39). Scripture returns to the tongue again and again. Proverbs warns against the lying and slandering tongue (Proverbs 10:18) and says that death and life are in its power (Proverbs 18:21), and James calls the tongue a fire (James 3:6). Each of the three clauses, by ruling out a harm, also points to the good we owe one another, which Jesus sums up in the rule of doing to others as we would have them do to us (Matthew 7:12).

The verse reaches every form our words now take. A written comment, a message sent on, or a rumour shared before anyone has checked it is as much the work of the tongue as a whisper in the street.

Verse 4 first shows where this person’s respect goes. “In whose eyes a vile person is contemned” uses bâzâh, to despise or hold in contempt, and the “vile person” is described by a word from mâʼaç, to spurn or reject, a reprobate. Set against him are “them that fear the LORD”. Yârêʼ means fearing or reverent, and it describes people who hold God in awe and obey him. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), and the one who may dwell with God holds such people in honour, whatever their standing in the world. He values people as God values them, and he keeps company accordingly, for he that walks with wise men shall be wise (Proverbs 13:20).

Verse 5 closes the list with two matters where the strong can easily take advantage of the weak.

“He that putteth not out his money to usury” uses the word neshek, which literally means a bite. Interest taken from a poor man bites into his living. The law told Israel to lend to a brother in need freely (Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35–37), so that a loan would be an act of mercy and the poor would be protected.

“Nor taketh reward against the innocent” is about bribes. Nâqîy means innocent or clean, a person who is free of guilt in the matter. Justice in Israel was often settled locally, where a powerful man’s gift could turn a verdict, and so the law forbade judges to take a gift (Deuteronomy 16:19). Proverbs speaks of the wicked man who takes a gift to pervert the ways of judgment (Proverbs 17:23). In both halves of the verse the person fit for God’s presence reflects the God who is a righteous judge and who cares for the poor.

The psalm ends with a promise. “These things” gathers up the whole list, and the weight falls on “doeth”: the promise belongs to the one who practises this life. “Moved” is môwṭ, to totter, shake or slip, and the Hebrew, lo’ yimmoṭ, says this person will stand firm. Trials will still come to him, and he will be held through them, because the LORD who welcomes him also upholds him. His footing rests on God’s faithfulness to his people.

Elsewhere the psalms picture the ungodly as chaff that the wind drives away (Psalm 1:4). The person of Psalm 15 is like the house in Jesus’ parable that was built on a rock and stood when the storm beat on it (Matthew 7:24–25). Real security lies here, in a life lived before God, and wealth and influence are poor substitutes for it.

The psalm describes the character of people who already belong to God by his covenant, and it shows what a life with him looks like. Israel came to God by his grace from the beginning. He carried them out of Egypt and brought them to himself before he gave them any command (Exodus 19:4–6), and their way into his presence was through the covenant and the sacrifices he provided. The qualities of this psalm are the fruit and evidence of that grace. The New Testament says the same of us: we are saved by grace through faith, and good works follow as what God has prepared for us to walk in (Ephesians 2:8–10). Our access to God is a gift received through Jesus Christ, so that we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16).

Jesus is the one man who has met every line of this psalm. He was tempted as we are and remained free of sin (Hebrews 4:15), and “in him is no sin” (1 John 3:5). He walked uprightly, fulfilling all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), and he worked righteousness by always doing what he saw the Father do (John 5:19). He spoke truth from the heart because he is himself the truth (John 14:6).

His tongue wronged no one. When he was falsely accused and made to suffer unjustly, he gave back no insult (1 Peter 2:23). Far from doing evil to his neighbour, he “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil” (Acts 10:38). The reproaches of those who reproached God fell on him, and he bore them (Psalm 69:9). He hated sin and exposed it, and he loved sinners and came to redeem them. He honoured his Father in everything, having come down from heaven to do the will of him that sent him (John 6:38).

He also kept his word to his own hurt. His whole life was a commitment to the Father’s saving purpose, and he held to it in obedience all the way to death on the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). Where the usurer profits from another’s need, Jesus came to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). He was himself the innocent one against whom a reward was taken, the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas and foreshadowed in Zechariah (Zechariah 11:12–13), and he endured that injustice willingly for our salvation (Isaiah 53:7). He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he did.

So the closing promise is his first of all. His kingdom is everlasting (Daniel 7:14), his words shall never pass away (Matthew 24:35), and he is the one foundation on which the church is built (1 Corinthians 3:11). He has gone up to the true holy hill and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3).

He went there for us. By his blood we have boldness to enter the holiest by a new and living way (Hebrews 10:19–22), and the righteousness we lack is given to us in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). In Christ we are a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), and we have passed from being strangers to being members of the household of God (Ephesians 2:19). The guest of verse 1 has become a child of the house. We receive a kingdom which cannot be moved (Hebrews 12:28).

The character of the psalm is then formed in us by the Holy Spirit. God’s purpose is that we be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29), walking in newness of life (Romans 6:4) and in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), putting on the new man created in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24), and speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

Psalm 15 shows us who God is by showing us the company he keeps. He is truthful, just, faithful to his word and tender toward the poor and the falsely accused, and he delights in people who are like him in these things. It is a gift to be told so plainly what pleases him.

The psalm also holds worship and daily life together. The same person sings in God’s house and signs a contract, speaks of a colleague behind his back or declines to, lends money, and gives his word. Each of these ordinary acts belongs to our life with God, and each is a place where his character can be seen in us.

Read honestly, the psalm humbles us, because we see how far short of it we fall. That is where it leads us to Christ, who lived it in full and who brings us in by his own righteousness. From there it becomes a description of the life his Spirit is forming in us, and its last line becomes a promise we may rest on: the one who is held by God shall never be moved.