Psalm 125:4

Psalm 125 is one of the Songs of Ascents, Psalms 120 to 134, which were likely sung by pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the annual feasts. The climb to the holy city matched a journey of the heart toward God’s presence, and Jerusalem, ringed by mountains with the Temple on Mount Zion, stood for the safety of dwelling with God.

The psalm opens by saying that those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, immovable (Psalm 125:1), and that as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people (Psalm 125:2). Then comes a danger. “The rod of the wicked” may press on the land given to the righteous, and its weight could tempt the righteous themselves to turn to iniquity. The LORD promises that it will rest there only for a time (Psalm 125:3).

Verses 4 and 5 answer that danger. Verse 4 prays for the faithful, and verse 5 sets the two ways side by side and closes the psalm with a blessing. The people who first sang these lines knew threats from hostile nations, from corruption inside Israel, and from the pull to compromise their faith. Their prayer rests on the covenant, in which God promised to bless his people’s faithfulness (Deuteronomy 28:1–14).

“Do good, O LORD” is a direct, earnest request for God to act. The psalmist asks the LORD to step in with his kindness and favour, and he appeals to God as the one from whom all good comes. The English word “good” stands twice in this verse, once for what God does and once for the people who receive it. The word for the people, ṭôwb, is broad. It covers what is morally excellent, pleasing, prosperous and beneficial, and here it describes people whose character and conduct match God’s ways and please him.

The second line says the same thing at a deeper level: “and to them that are upright in their hearts.” The word yâshâr, upright, comes from a root meaning straight or right. It describes someone honest, sincere and fair, whose walk has nothing bent in it. The word for hearts, libbâh, is a form of the ordinary Hebrew word for the heart, the inner person. So the goodness the psalmist prays for begins inside, in a heart that is undivided toward God. Hebrew poetry often sets two lines side by side like this, with the second deepening the first, and here the pairing ties outward goodness to an upright heart, set against hypocrisy and against the crooked ways of the next verse.

Scripture speaks often about the upright. “The integrity of the upright shall guide them” (Proverbs 11:3). The LORD gives grace and glory, and he keeps back no good thing from those who walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11). Jesus says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). God looks at the heart, and through Jeremiah he promises to write his law there (Jeremiah 31:33).

The verse is also a pattern for prayer. The psalmist asks good for the whole company of the faithful, and Paul likewise urges that prayers be made for all people (1 Timothy 2:1–2). God is gracious to all, and this prayer asks for his particular favour on those who sincerely seek to live his way.

“As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways” names those who leave the straight road. The verb nâṭâh, turn aside, means to bend or incline, and here it is a moral turning from the straight course. The ways are “their” crooked ways, the paths they have chosen for themselves. The word for crooked, ʿăqalqal, means winding. In Judges 5:6 it names the byways travellers took when the highways were empty. Here the winding road pictures a life that has left the straight path God sets before his people, the opposite of the upright heart in verse 4. Proverbs speaks of those whose ways are crooked (Proverbs 2:15), and it calls us to look straight ahead and keep to a straight path (Proverbs 4:25–27).

“The LORD shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity.” The verb is yâlak, to walk or go, and here the LORD is the one who makes them go. He leads them out to share the end of those who practise evil. “Workers of iniquity”, pōʿălê ʼâven, joins pâʻal, to do or to work, with ʼâven, a word for trouble, wickedness and emptiness that is often tied to idolatry. These are people for whom evil has become their settled work. The warning is that someone who drifts quietly from God’s ways ends in the same place as the open evildoer. There is an irony in it too: they chose their own way, and the LORD leads them along it to the end it was always heading for.

God is the judge of the peoples (Psalm 7:8), and Jesus speaks of the same division. He exposed those who looked righteous on the outside and were full of hypocrisy within (Matthew 23:27–28), and he will divide the sheep from the goats when he judges the nations (Matthew 25:31–46).

“But peace shall be upon Israel” turns from judgment to blessing and closes the psalm, with the two halves of the verse set against each other. The word shâlôwm means completeness, soundness, welfare, peace and safety. Israel here is God’s faithful covenant people, those who trust in the LORD as verse 1 describes. God had promised peace in the land to a people who walked in his ways (Leviticus 26:6), and this blessing rests on his people even while wickedness is still around them. The psalm that opened with the security of those who trust in the LORD ends with his peace upon them.

Only one person has been wholly good and upright in heart. Jesus was without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and God’s greatest act of doing good was sending this Son for a fallen world unable to make itself good (John 3:16). God made the sinless one to be sin for us, so that we might be made righteous in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Through Ezekiel he promised a new heart and his own Spirit within, so that his people would walk in his ways (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Those who are in Christ receive the good this psalm prays for on the ground of his goodness and uprightness given to them, and his Spirit enables them to walk in newness of life.

Jesus is also the straight way that the crooked ways leave behind. He called himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and he came to bring people back from their crooked ways and reconcile them to God. The peace spoken over Israel comes to its fullest in him. Paul says, “For he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), for Christ has broken down the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, and his peace reaches all who believe in him. He gives a peace the world cannot give (John 14:27), and “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” guards the hearts and minds of his people in him (Philippians 4:7). The warning stands for those who reject him, and the promise of peace is kept for all who are his.

Pilgrims sang these lines on the way up to Jerusalem, and they still give God’s people words for the journey. The psalm puts a plain prayer in our mouths, asking the LORD to do good to his people, and it shows that he looks for uprightness in the heart and meets those who stumble with forgiveness. Its warning about crooked ways shows how seriously he takes even a quiet turning aside. And its final word is peace, the blessing that rests on all who trust in the LORD and that Christ himself gives.