Psalms 73:1 - Meaning and Application

This psalm begins a little suddenly: “Yet God is good to Israel.” The psalmist had been thinking about the prosperity of the wicked, and while he thought, the fire grew hot inside him. At last he spoke to correct himself. In effect, he said, “Whatever else is true, God is still good.”

Even though wicked people receive many gifts from God’s care over the world, we must still say that he is specially good to Israel, his covenant people. They receive favors that others do not. The psalmist is about to tell how he was strongly tempted to envy the success of the wicked, a common trial that has tested many believers. So he begins by holding onto one great truth: God is good.

Other servants of God did the same in their own struggles. Job fixed on God’s knowledge of all things, saying that times are not hidden from the Almighty (Job 24:1). Jeremiah held to God’s justice, saying, “Righteous are you, O God, when I bring a case before you” (Jeremiah 12:1). Habakkuk held to God’s holiness, saying that God is too pure to look on evil (Habakkuk 1:13). Here the psalmist’s anchor is God’s goodness. These are truths that cannot be shaken, and we must live and die by them. Even if we cannot explain every part of God’s providence, we must believe they all fit with his character.

Good thoughts about God will protect us against many of Satan’s temptations. “Truly God is good,” the psalmist says. He had turned over many thoughts about God’s dealings, but this truth finally settled his heart. God is good to Israel, even to those who are of a clean heart. The true Israel of God are those whose hearts have been made clean, washed from sin by Christ’s blood and given over to God’s glory. An upright heart is a clean heart, because inward honesty is real purity. God is good to all people, but he is good in a special way to his church and people, as he was to Israel long ago. He was good to Israel in bringing them out of Egypt, making them his covenant people, giving them his laws and worship, and guiding their lives by many acts of care. In the same way, he is good to all who are of a clean heart, and we must not think otherwise, whatever happens.

Now the psalmist tells how his faith in God’s special goodness to Israel was shaken by a strong temptation to envy the wicked. That temptation made him think that God’s people are no happier than others and that God is no kinder to them than to anyone else. He says it was a very close call, and that he nearly fell completely under it. “As for me, my feet had almost slipped,” he says, meaning that the tempter nearly tripped him up. “My steps had nearly gone,” that is, he had almost given up his religion and all hope of blessing through it. He was envious of the foolish.

Even strong believers can have their faith badly shaken. There are storms that test the strongest anchors. And those who will never finally be lost can still come very near it, and feel in themselves as if they are almost gone. Many precious souls, who will live forever, once came very close to ruin. They stood just one step away from bitter rebellion and complete falling away, yet God rescued them like a brand pulled from the fire. That will forever show the riches of divine grace in all who are saved.

Now we should notice how the temptation worked, what he saw, and what it pushed him toward. He observed that foolish wicked people often enjoy great outward success. With grief, he saw the prosperity of the wicked. Wicked people are truly foolish, because they act against reason and against their own best interests, yet everyone can see their success.

They seem to have the least share of the troubles and sufferings of this life. They are not in the troubles that other people face, even good and wise people, and they are not plagued like others. It looks as if they have some special privilege that frees them from the common sorrows of life. If they do meet trouble, it is small compared with what many less sinful people endure, even though those others suffer far more.

They also seem to have the greatest share of life’s comforts. They live at ease and give themselves over to pleasure, until their eyes bulge with fatness. Excess pleasure is a strange thing. A moderate use of pleasure can refresh a person, but those who overindulge in bodily delights harm themselves. They become their own tormentors by forcing nature, while pretending to satisfy it. And these people often have more than heart could wish, more than they ever expected to possess. They may not even have as much as a humble and contented heart would truly desire, yet they still have more than enough.

Many people hold a great deal of this life in their hands, but nothing of the life to come in their hearts. They live without fear of God and without worshiping him, yet they prosper and keep rising in the world. They do not only become rich, they increase in riches. Others struggle to keep what they have, but these people keep adding more honor, more power, and more pleasure. They are the prosperous ones of the age.

Their end seems peaceful, which makes the matter even more surprising. Peace in death was usually thought to belong especially to the godly (Psalm 37:37), yet outwardly it is often the lot of the ungodly (Psalm 73:4). “There are no bands in their death.” They are not cut off by a violent death. Though they are foolish, they do not die as fools often die, with hands bound and feet chained, like Abner’s death (2 Samuel 3:33-34). Nor are they taken by death too early, like fruit shaken from the tree before it is ripe. They are left to live on until old age, when they quietly drop away.

They do not die in great pain either. There are no pangs, no fierce struggles, in their death. Their strength seems firm to the end, so they hardly seem to feel death coming. They are like those who die in full strength, completely at ease, not like those who die in deep sorrow and never enjoy life (Job 21:23, Job 21:25). More than that, they are not bound by terror in their last hours. Their consciences do not trouble them with the memory of sin or the fear of judgment. They die securely.

So we cannot judge a man’s condition beyond death by the way he dies, or by the calmness of his spirit at the end.

Men may die like lambs and still have their place among the goats. Wicked people may look harmless in the end and still belong with the lost.

The psalmist also saw that they made very bad use of their outward success. Prosperity did not soften them. It made them more proud, more cruel, and more open in their sin. If their success had made them less offensive to God or less harsh toward people, it would not have troubled him so deeply.

First, it made them proud and arrogant. Because they live in comfort, pride wraps around them like a chain (Psalm 73:6). Their wealth and ease show their swollen pride to everyone, like an ornament worn for display. Pride can even show itself in dress, but the real issue is the heart that puts it on. The same is true of their speech, they talk as if they are greater than everyone else (Psalm 73:8). They use big, empty words and boast about themselves.

It also made them oppressive to their poor neighbors (Psalm 73:6). Violence covers them like a garment. What they gain by fraud and oppression, they keep and increase by the same wicked means. They do not care what injury they do, as long as they can enrich themselves. They are like the giants and the people of the old world, when the earth was full of violence (Genesis 6:11, Genesis 6:13). They speak wickedly about oppression, meaning they defend their own cruelty and speak well of sin. They are corrupt, given over to luxury and pleasure, and then they mock others and spread harmful lies. From their lofty place they speak oppression.

Their behavior also showed great insolence toward both God and people (Psalm 73:9). They set their mouth against the heavens, showing contempt for God, his honor, his power, and his justice. They cannot reach up and shake God’s throne, so they attack him with their words. Their tongue also walks through the earth, and they feel free to abuse everyone they meet. No one’s rank or goodness can fully protect him from a poisonous tongue. They delight in mocking everyone. They are a plague in the land, because they neither fear God nor respect people.

In all this, they were deeply ungodly and profane. They could not have become this wicked unless they had learned to say, “How does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” (Psalm 73:11). They did not want to know God, who had given them all their blessings and would have taught them to use them well. Instead, they wanted to believe that God did not notice their sin and would never call them to account. As if, because he is Most High, he could not see them or would not care, as Job 22:12, Job 22:13 says. But because he is Most High, he can see all people and all they do, say, and think. What an insult it is to the God of perfect knowledge, from whom all knowledge comes, to ask if he knows anything! So he rightly says, “Look, these are the ungodly” (Psalm 73:12).

The psalmist also noticed that while wicked people grew worse through prosperity, good people suffered greatly, and he suffered in particular. That made the temptation even stronger to complain about God’s rule.

He looked around and saw many of God’s people deeply troubled (Psalm 73:10). Because the wicked were so bold, God’s people were left confused and shaken, just as he was. They did not know what to make of it either. On top of that, bitter trouble was poured out for them in full measure. They were not only made to drink deeply from the cup of affliction, but they had to drink it to the last drop. Their tears ran freely when they heard wicked people blaspheme God and speak in a profane way, as David did (Psalm 119:136). Those tears were part of the waters wrung out to them.

He also looked at his own life and felt the steady pressure of God’s discipline while the wicked seemed to enjoy nothing but favor (Psalm 73:14). For his part, he says, he was plagued all day long with one trouble after another and corrected every morning, as surely as morning came. His afflictions were heavy, and they came without pause. They were constant, morning after morning, and all day long. He thought it was very hard that those who blasphemed God lived in ease while he, who worshiped God, suffered so much. He spoke from deep feeling when he spoke of his own pain, and there is no arguing against what people feel except by faith.

From all this came a strong temptation to give up religion. Some who saw the prosperity of the wicked, especially when compared with the suffering of the righteous, were tempted to deny God’s providence, his careful rule over the world, and to think he had abandoned the earth. Some take Psalm 73:11 this way. Even among people who claim to belong to God, there are those who say, “How does God know?” They act as if everything is left to blind chance, not ordered by an all-seeing God. Some heathen, seeing things this way, have even asked, “Who will believe that there are gods?”

The psalmist himself did not go that far. He was not really doubting that God knows everything. But he was tempted to question whether religion was worth it. He could have said, “Surely I have kept my heart clean for nothing, and washed my hands in innocence for no purpose” (Psalm 73:13). To be religious is, first, to cleanse the heart by repentance and new birth, that is, a changed heart given by God. Then it is to wash the hands in innocence by turning from sin in daily life. It is not useless to do this. It is not useless to serve God and keep his commands. Yet good people have sometimes been tempted to say it is useless, because they see wicked people prosper. But whatever it may seem like now, when the pure in heart, those blessed people, see God (Matthew 5:8), they will not say they cleansed their hearts in vain.