Psalm 73:16

Psalm 73 begins by declaring that God is good to the upright (Psalm 73:1). Then Asaph confesses that he himself nearly stumbled, because he envied the wicked when he saw them prosper (Psalm 73:2–3). He describes their easy lives, their pride and violence, their boasts against God, and the wealth and influence that kept on growing (Psalm 73:4–12). Meanwhile he had kept his heart clean and was chastened every day, and his faithfulness looked wasted (Psalm 73:13–14). He kept these thoughts to himself, because saying them aloud would have harmed God’s children (Psalm 73:15). The man who wrote this was a Levite whom David appointed to lead Israel’s worship (1 Chronicles 16:4–7), and Scripture also calls him a seer (2 Chronicles 29:30). This struggle came to a leader of God’s people.

Verse 16 is where that private struggle reaches its height. “When I thought to know this” describes a deliberate effort of mind. The verb châshab is used of weaving and devising, and from there of thinking, reckoning and valuing, so Asaph was working the matter over and trying to make the account come out right. He wanted to know it, yâdaʻ, the common word for knowing, which properly means to find something out by seeing. “This” is everything he has just described, the wicked at ease and the righteous chastened.

“It was too painful for me” uses ʻâmâl, a word for toil and wearing labour, and from there for trouble, sorrow and grief of body or mind. His thinking became a heavy labour that troubled his whole inner life and threatened his faith. It hurt so much because it struck at what he knew of God. The law had set blessing before the obedient and cursing before the disobedient (Deuteronomy 28), and here were the wicked flourishing while a man with a clean heart suffered. The same question fills the book of Job, and Jeremiah brought it to God in his own complaint (Jeremiah 12). God has put Asaph’s honest account of it in his word, and it tells us that a believer may wrestle this hard and still be his.

“Until” is the word on which the whole psalm turns. Up to this point Asaph has looked at the world and reasoned about it. Then he “went into the sanctuary of God”. The word miqdâsh means a consecrated place or sanctuary, and it can be used of any holy place, even an idol’s shrine, so “of God” tells us which one he means. This is the Tabernacle or, later, the Temple, where Israel worshipped, offered sacrifice, prayed and drew near to God’s presence. Asaph went there to seek God himself.

“Then understood I their end.” The verb bîyn means to understand or discern. The word for end, ʼachărîyth, comes from the word for “after” and means the last part of a thing, and so the future or outcome, and it can also mean posterity. Asaph had been looking at the middle of the wicked’s story, and in God’s presence he saw how it finishes. What he learned there was given by God, and it settled the question his reasoning had left open.

That end is ruin and judgment, and the next three verses describe it. God’s justice may wait, and it is certain. Scripture gives the same counsel elsewhere. Proverbs warns us against fretting over evildoers, because of how their lives end (Proverbs 24:19–20). Psalm 37 opens with the same counsel, because the wicked will soon be cut down like the grass (Psalm 37:1–2). Jesus told of a rich man who fared well in this life and Lazarus who lay at his gate, and after death their places were reversed (Luke 16:19–31). The psalm goes on to show the other end as well, that of the righteous, whom God holds and receives into glory (Psalm 73:23–28).

“As a dream when one awaketh.” The word chălôwm means a dream, the ordinary dream of sleep, and it is also the word for dreams that carry a message from God. Everyone knows what happens to a dream in the morning. It held the sleeper all night, and the moment he wakes it is gone. Zophar says the same of the wicked man, that he flies away as a dream (Job 20:8).

“So, O Lord, when thou awakest.” The picture of waking is now turned toward God. The verb ʻûwr means to wake, rouse or arise, and Psalm 7 likewise calls on the LORD to arise and awake to judgment (Psalm 7:6). To our eyes God’s justice can look slow, and his waking is the moment he rises to act and it is plain to all.

“Thou shalt despise their image.” To despise, bâzâh, is to disesteem, to hold in contempt. The word for image, tselem, is the word Genesis uses when God makes man in his image (Genesis 1:26), and elsewhere it is used of statues and idols. Here it is the outward show of the wicked: their appearance of power, wealth, status and safety, the glory they made for themselves and lived by. When God acts, he treats it as a waking man treats his dream. Daniel saw a great image struck by a stone and broken to dust, and God’s kingdom filled the earth in its place (Daniel 2:31–45). Psalm 37 tells of a wicked man in great power who passed away, and when he was sought he was gone (Psalm 37:35–36).

“Thus my heart was grieved.” The heart, lêbâb, is the centre of will, mind and feeling. The verb châmêts is used of being leavened or sour, and Asaph’s heart had soured. Envy had turned into bitterness inside him, and it had spread through his whole outlook. Here he looks back from the sanctuary and names it.

“And I was pricked in my reins.” The verb shânan means to point or sharpen, and so to pierce, and it describes a sharp, stabbing pain. The reins are the kidneys, kilyâh, which Scripture uses for the inner self, the place of deep feeling and conscience. Asaph’s pain reached his inmost being. Read as the sting of conviction, it is a mercy. The Holy Spirit convicts of sin to lead us to repentance and life (John 16:8), and the word of God discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). What a man thinks in his heart shapes who he is (Proverbs 23:7), and Jeremiah speaks of the heart’s deceit and of the LORD who searches it (Jeremiah 17:9–10). Asaph’s envy had been working on him for a long time, and God showed it to him for what it was.

“So foolish was I.” The word baʻar means brutish or dull, the stupidity of cattle. “And ignorant” is in Hebrew “I knew not”, and the verb is yâdaʻ, the same verb as “to know” in verse 16. The man who set out to know confesses that he knew nothing. “I was as a beast before thee.” The word bᵉhêmâh means a beast, a dumb animal of the field, which lives by what is in front of its eyes. That is what Asaph’s envy had been: judging God by what he could see. “Before thee” deepens the confession, because those brutish thoughts were thought in the sight of the God who knows all things.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), and the one who trusts his own heart is a fool (Proverbs 28:26). Paul describes people who professed themselves wise and became fools (Romans 1:21–22), and he writes that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God (1 Corinthians 3:18–19). Asaph’s confession is the humble end of that road. Once he sees God’s ways, he names his own folly plainly, and the psalm moves straight on to God’s goodness to him.

The question that was too painful for Asaph has its fullest answer at the cross. There the righteous Son of God, who knew no sin, was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), and suffered while wicked men had their way. The cross is foolishness to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18), and it is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:23–25). God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and through him there is escape from the terrors of judgment.

Christ is also where Asaph’s understanding comes from. In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2–3), he is made unto us wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30), and believers are given the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). His Spirit guides us into all truth (John 16:13). He is a High Priest who was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin, and he is touched with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15). He calls the weary to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30), and he gives a new heart and a new spirit, as God promised through Ezekiel (Ezekiel 36:26).

The slippery places have their answer in him too. Jesus told of the house built on sand that fell and the house built on the rock that stood (Matthew 7:24–27), and he is the one foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11). God has delivered his people from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13–14). When Christ comes again, he will judge the nations and separate the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31–46), and the dead will be judged before the great white throne (Revelation 20:11–15). His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), and every knee will bow to him (Philippians 2:5–11). The images of glory that people build for themselves will pass away, while Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), and believers are being changed into his image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).

These verses give us honest words for a hard question. Asaph says plainly that he could find no answer by thinking alone, that envy soured him, and that he was a fool, and God put all of it in Scripture. They show that God’s justice is certain even when it waits, and that the prosperity of the wicked is as solid as a dream. They show that understanding came to Asaph in God’s presence, and that the same God now receives us through Christ.

The turning of the psalm happens when Asaph stops reasoning on his own and goes in to God. From there the rest of Psalm 73 turns to the God who holds him and is his portion for ever (Psalm 73:23–28). Vengeance belongs to the Lord, and he will repay (Romans 12:19). Our affection can rest on things above (Colossians 3:2), and his peace, which passes all understanding, keeps the hearts and minds of his people (Philippians 4:7).