Psalm 25:13

All three verses speak of the same person, the one who fears the LORD. The word in verses 12 and 14 is yârêʼ, an adjective meaning fearing or reverent, said of one who fears. Here it describes a person who stands before God in reverence and awe, who takes his holiness, power and authority to heart, and who therefore wants to obey and please him. That awe is the right place for a creature to stand before his Creator, and it is where wisdom starts. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), and “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).

The one feared is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the self-existent and eternal God, the name by which Israel knew him. He is the God who made his covenant with his people and keeps it, and he is always the same. So the fear in this psalm belongs to someone who knows God personally, and it sits easily beside trust. In the same psalm David says to the LORD, “on thee do I wait all the day.”

God himself longs for this fear in his people. In Deuteronomy he says, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!” (Deuteronomy 5:29). The same three things meet in our passage: the fear of the LORD, the ways he teaches, and good that reaches to the children.

Psalm 25 is a personal prayer of David written as an acrostic, so that each verse or pair of verses begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, though the pattern is imperfect in places. In it David asks for forgiveness, for protection from his enemies, and above all for guidance. “Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths” (Psalm 25:4). “Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day” (Psalm 25:5). He prays, “Remember not the sins of my youth” (Psalm 25:7), and “O keep my soul, and deliver me” (Psalm 25:20).

Verse 12 answers the longing of Psalm 25:4–5 by naming who receives that guidance. “What man is he that feareth the LORD?” picks a person out by the attitude of his heart toward God, whatever his rank, learning or wealth, and the promise follows straight away: “him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose.”

The verb for teach is yârâh. Its plain senses are to flow as water does when it rains, to lay or throw, and to shoot, as with an arrow, and from there it means to point out, as if aiming a finger, and so to teach. The word Torah, God’s instruction or law, comes from it. The “he” who teaches is the LORD himself, so God takes on the work of the teacher and points out the road to the one who reveres him. His teaching covers both how to live rightly and how to make the practical decisions of life.

The way is derek, a road as it is trodden, and so a person’s course of life and manner of acting. In Israel people sought God’s direction through prophets, through the Urim and Thummim and through prayer, and here God promises to teach the God-fearing man in person. Another psalm gives the LORD’s own words: “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye” (Psalm 32:8). Isaiah heard the same: “I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go” (Isaiah 48:17). God led his people from the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness onward, and he leads us now by his Spirit, for Jesus promised that the Spirit of truth “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

Verse 13 names what the one who fears the LORD receives, first in himself and then in his children. Soul is nephesh, from a word meaning to breathe. It means a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person, and here it is the man himself, the core of his life. “Dwell at ease” joins the verb lûwn, to lodge, remain or abide, with ṭôwb, good, pleasant or well. His soul will lodge in good, settled in lasting well-being.

For Israel, ease meant safety from the war, famine and loss of home that troubled the nations of the time, and that peace was God’s gift and a sign of his protecting presence. For the one who fears the LORD it is also a rest of the heart, a settled calm that comes from trusting God’s care and holds even when trouble comes. Isaiah says, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3). Proverbs joins trust and guidance just as verses 12 and 13 do: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6). Paul calls it “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

The second half of the verse widens the blessing from the man to those who come after him. Seed is zeraʻ, the word for seed or grain, used also for sowing and for offspring, and here it means descendants. Family line mattered deeply in Israel, where the faith of one generation shaped the next, and God’s favour to the one who fears him reaches his children and their children.

To inherit is yârash, to inherit, take possession of, or dispossess, and so to secure a lasting claim. Earth is ‘erets, which can mean land, ground, earth or country, and often means the land of Israel. The words go back to God’s promise to Abraham: “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7). For Israel, holding the land meant security, identity and blessing, and it showed that God was keeping his covenant. In this psalm the phrase carries that whole picture of a secure and fruitful home held under God’s favour. Another psalm uses the same words: “But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace” (Psalm 37:11).

Secret is çôwd. It comes from yâçad, to set or found, and in its reflexive sense to sit down together and consult. The noun itself means a session, a company of people in close deliberation, and so council or counsel. The picture is of a trusted circle talking things over together, like a king’s private council. To say that the LORD’s çôwd is with those who fear him means that he takes them into his confidence and shares with them his counsel, his purposes and his ways. Scripture speaks of God here in human terms, as a friend who confides in friends, to show how near he draws to his people.

Proverbs uses the same word: “For the froward is abomination to the LORD: but his secret is with the righteous” (Proverbs 3:32). Amos says, “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). And Jesus told his disciples, “I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15).

“Shew” is yâdaʻ, to know, here in the sense of making known or teaching, so the covenant is known by experience as well as understood. Covenant is bᵉrîyth, a covenant, alliance, treaty or league, and the origin of the word is uncertain. God’s covenants with his people, above all the covenant given through Moses, set out the terms of the relationship: his promises, their obligations, and blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Knowing that covenant was at the heart of who Israel was and where it was going.

To those who fear him God opens the meaning of his covenant, so that they understand his faithfulness, his promises that hold, and the duties of belonging to him. Through Jeremiah he promised a new covenant: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). Christ is “the mediator of a better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6), established on his shed blood and the Spirit who lives in his people.

Jesus is the one who feared the Father perfectly. He said, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29), and “he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). His soul rested in the Father even in suffering, and on the cross he prayed, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

He is also the way God chooses for us. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he said (John 14:6), so the way of verse 12 is finally a life lived in union with him. In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), the mystery of God that Paul wants believers to understand (Colossians 2:2–3). As the Word made flesh (John 1:14) he has declared the Father (John 1:18), so the secret of the LORD is made known in him, and the Spirit he gives “searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).

Paul says the promises were made “to Abraham and his seed,” and that the seed is Christ (Galatians 3:16). He is the true heir, and those joined to him by faith inherit with him. The rest promised to the soul is found in him, “For he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14).

The fear of the LORD is where these blessings begin, and it grows as we come to know him. You can bring your decisions to him as David did, praying “Shew me thy ways, O LORD,” and trust that the way he chooses is better than the one you would pick. His promise to teach you stands, and his chosen way is always the best way.

The ease he promises is a rest you can have in the middle of trouble, because it rests on him. Your walk with God also reaches past your own life. Your children, and the people you help to faith, receive something from the way you honour him, and that inheritance outlasts any possession.

And God wants to be known. He shares his counsel with those who fear him and has made his covenant known in Christ, so time in his Word and in prayer is time with the One who calls you his friend.