Psalm 41:1

“Blessed is he that considereth the poor” is a beatitude, the same kind of saying that opens the whole book of Psalms: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly” (Psalm 1:1). The word ʼesher means happiness or blessedness, and it is used as the exclamation “how happy!” It describes a person who is fortunate and blessed by God.

The person God calls happy here is the one who “considereth” the poor. The verb is sâkal, in the form maskîl, and it means to consider, to be wise and have understanding, and also to prosper. To consider the poor is to give careful, wise thought to their need, the kind of thought that sees what is wrong and works out what can be done about it. It is the attention of someone who understands, and it leads to help.

The poor here are the dal. The word means poor, weak, thin or low, and Strong’s explains it as properly “dangling”, and so weak or thin. These are people who have little and can do little for themselves, who depend on the kindness and justice of others and finally on God.

Caring for such people was part of the life God gave Israel at Sinai, because it reflects who he is. Moses says of the LORD, “He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deuteronomy 10:18). The prophets called the people back to it when they neglected it: “Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). In Israel, then, considering the poor was a plain mark of a righteous person, a way of fearing the LORD and keeping his commands.

The second half of verse 1 gives the promise: “the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.” The name is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, which the KJV prints as “the LORD”. To deliver, mâlaṭ, is to let someone escape, to rescue him and save his life. “In time of trouble” is literally “in the day of evil”. The first word, bĕyôm, is “in the day”, from the word for a day or a span of time, and raʻâ is evil, here the evil that comes upon a person: calamity, sickness, attack or distress. The man who gave thought to others in their trouble finds the LORD at his side in his own.

Verse 2 spells out what that rescue holds. “The LORD will preserve him”: the verb shâmar means to guard, protect and attend to, and Strong’s explains it as hedging about, as with thorns. “And keep him alive”: châyâh means to live, and in this form to keep alive or revive. It covers both keeping a life going and restoring it when it is failing, which matters for a man who is about to speak of his sickbed. So the LORD guards him from harm outside and keeps the life in him strong.

“He shall be blessed upon the earth” uses the verb ʼâshar, the root from which verse 1’s ʼesher comes, so the opening blessing returns. The earth, ʼerets, is the land where he lives. God’s favour is to be known here, in this life, in ways that can be seen. In Israel, being blessed in the land meant health, long life, provision and a flourishing household, the opposite of the shame and helplessness of a man handed over to his foes.

“And thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.” The word for “will” is nephesh, which means a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person, and also appetite. The enemies have an appetite for this man’s ruin, and the LORD will keep him out of its reach. The word for enemy, ʼôyêb, means one who is hostile. In this psalm the enemies are real people, and the verses after this passage show them waiting for the sick king to die (Psalm 41:4–9).

The same assurance runs through Psalm 91, which ends with the LORD’s own words about the one who loves him: “I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation” (Psalm 91:14–16).

“The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing.” To strengthen, çâʻad, is to support, sustain or prop up, so the LORD holds up a man who has no strength left to hold himself up. The “bed of languishing” is ʻeres dᵉvay. The word dᵉvay, from dāwâ, means sickness and faintness, the state of one worn down and wasting away. It describes a man laid on his back by a long and weakening illness.

In Israel the sick were cared for at home, by family and friends. That makes the betrayal David speaks of a few verses later all the harder: “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me” (Psalm 41:9). When the people who should have tended him turn on him, the LORD himself comes to his bedside.

“Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.” The word for sickness, chŏlîy, means malady or disease, and it can also carry the sense of anxiety or calamity, so the trouble of the sickbed reaches the mind as well as the body. The verb “make” is hâphak, to turn about or over, and so to change.

Psalm 41 is “A Psalm of David”, given “To the chief Musician”, and it is the last psalm of the first book of the Psalms, which closes with the doxology of its final verse: “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting. Amen, and Amen” (Psalm 41:13). David prays it in a time of serious illness, wounded by the betrayal of a trusted friend, perhaps Ahithophel. After these three verses he asks for healing, tells of enemies who speak evil of him and of the friend who turned against him (Psalm 41:4–9), and then asks the LORD to raise him up and ends in confident praise (Psalm 41:10–13).

So verses 1 to 3 are a word of wisdom set at the head of a prayer for help. David states the principle first and then leans his whole weight on it, as a man who needs it that very day. In Israel sickness was often taken as a sign of sin or of God’s displeasure, which made a sick man’s raising up a clear sign of God’s favour and his faithfulness to his covenant. These promises stand firm even while David’s own circumstances look like the opposite.

The LORD answers mercy with mercy. Proverbs puts it in a single line: “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again” (Proverbs 19:17). Jesus says the same in his own beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). James counts care for the helpless as the heart of true religion: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). At the judgment, the King tells those on his right hand, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:34–40).

People ask whether this means a person earns God’s favour by doing good. The blessing in these verses is God’s covenant faithfulness to those who walk in his ways, and showing mercy is how his people share his own heart for the weak and take part in his work in the world. Salvation remains his gift. Care for the lowly is one of the plainest ways a life given to God shows itself, and the LORD delights to stand by those who carry his compassion to others.

Jesus is the one who considered the poor most fully. He went about “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people” (Matthew 4:23), fed the hungry multitude (Matthew 14:13–21), and welcomed outcasts, so that his critics complained, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them” (Luke 15:1–2). When he saw the crowds “he was moved with compassion on them” (Matthew 9:36). He said that the Spirit of the Lord had anointed him “to preach the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18–19).

He also stood at the bedside of the sick, as verse 3 pictures the LORD doing. He healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, taking her by the hand and lifting her up (Mark 1:29–31), and he told a paralysed man who had been let down on his bed, “Arise, and take up thy bed” (Mark 2:1–12).

Jesus then went through the deepest day of trouble himself. He was betrayed by a close friend and opposed by enemies who wanted him dead. Until his hour came they could not take him, “because his hour was not yet come” (John 7:30). He suffered and died on the cross, bearing the sin of the world. Then God delivered him: “Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24). God has “highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9–11), and the risen Lord says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18).

So Christ both shows the mercy these verses bless and receives the deliverance they promise, and through him that deliverance reaches all who believe: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Those who are in him share his victory, for their life “is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The Spirit of the God who raised him dwells in them, and Paul says that he “shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11).

These verses call us to the thoughtful kind of compassion that notices the weak, the sick, the lonely and the wronged, and works out how to help. Mercy shown to them is seen by the LORD and is never lost. It is lent to him, and he repays it.

They also tell those who are sick, and those who care for the sick, that the LORD comes close in weakness. “I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10). He is “the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him” (Deuteronomy 7:9). In the valley of the shadow of death his people can say, “I will fear no evil: for thou art with me” (Psalm 23:4). Paul learned to say, “when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10), and he assures believers, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

Anyone who sits by a sickbed is doing what this psalm pictures God doing, and that work can carry his comfort to the one who lies there. Whether you are giving mercy or needing it, the same LORD stands behind both.