Psalms 73

The psalm sets its conclusion in the very first line - Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart - and then spends the rest of the poem telling us how nearly it lost hold of that truth. This is an unusual and merciful way to begin. Asaph does not hide the happy ending; he tells you the destination first, and only then lets you see how close he came to never arriving. But as for me - and with those three words the steady creed of verse 1 collides with one man's shaken experience - my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. The image is of a man on a slope of wet rock, one foot already sliding, his whole footing about to give way. And what made him slip was not persecution or grief but something quieter and more corrosive: he looked at the wrong thing for too long. He stared at the prosperity of the wicked until it nearly pulled the ground out from under his faith. Scripture lets a faithful man say this. It does not rebuke him for feeling it. It simply, and with great tenderness, shows us the way through.

For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (v. 3). Asaph names his sin plainly: it was envy. And note the sharp word he chooses for the prosperous - the foolish. Even as he envies them, some deeper instinct knows they are fools; their ease has not made them wise, only comfortable. What follows (vv. 4-12) is an unflinching catalogue of that ease, and the psalm does not soften it. The wicked have no bands in their death - no agonies, it seems, even at the end. They are not in trouble as other men. Their bodies are sleek, their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could wish. This is the honest scandal at the heart of the psalm, the very fact Job named when he asked, Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? (Job 21:7). Scripture does not pretend the world is fairer than it is. It lets the ache stand on the page in full - because a comfort that depended on denying reality would be no comfort at all.

Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment (v. 6). Watch the two vivid pictures. Pride is worn like a chain - a necklace, an ornament; the wicked are not ashamed of their arrogance, they parade it as jewellery. And violence is their garment, the very clothing they put on, so habitual it has become their covering. This is the inner reality the prosperity conceals. Their ease has not produced gratitude or humility; it has produced swagger. And the psalm is quietly making a point that the sanctuary will later confirm: the sleek exterior and the corrupt interior belong together. What looks from the outside like the good life is, from the inside, a life draped in pride and violence. Asaph is beginning, even here, to see that he has been envying a costume.

The catalogue reaches its peak in open blasphemy. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth (v. 9). The first phrase is defiance aimed upward - mouths opened against God Himself; the second is arrogance ranging unchecked across the world, a tongue that struts wherever it pleases. And the creed of these people is captured in a single sneer: How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High? (v. 11). This is practical atheism dressed as success - not a careful denial that God exists, but the comfortable assumption that He is not watching, that nothing is being reckoned, that the books will never be opened. It is the exact opposite of what Asaph will learn in the sanctuary, where he discovers that their end has been noted all along. For now, though, the scandal is complete: the people who scoff at God's knowledge are the very people who prosper in the world and increase in riches (v. 12). No wonder his feet were slipping.

Now the crisis speaks for itself. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency (v. 13). Here is the dangerous thought in its rawest form: if the wicked flourish and the godly are plagued, then maybe holiness is a waste - maybe the clean heart and the washed hands bought nothing. And the grievance is sharpened by the contrast he has just drawn: while the ungodly have no bands in their death, Asaph has been plagued all the day long, and chastened every morning (v. 14). It is a stunning reversal of how we expect the moral universe to run. The man chasing nothing but pleasure sleeps easy; the man pursuing God wakes to fresh trouble. This is the lowest point of the psalm, and it is worth pausing to notice that the Bible records it without flinching and without condemnation. The doubt is not airbrushed out. A man who loved God was tempted to believe that loving God was pointless - and Scripture lets him say it, because the God of this psalm is not afraid of our honesty. He can hold the question. What He will not do is leave Asaph in it.

Something restrains Asaph at the edge of the cliff. If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children (v. 15). Even in the grip of his doubt, he keeps a thought for others. He realises that if he gave full voice to his bitterness - if he stood up and declared that serving God is vain - he would be betraying the whole family of the faithful, the generation of thy children, perhaps wounding the faith of those who looked up to him. So he holds his tongue, not out of dishonesty, but out of love and a lingering reverence. There is real wisdom here for anyone wrestling with doubt. Asaph does not pretend he isn't struggling - the whole psalm is his struggle laid bare before God. But he is careful where he carries the struggle. He brings the raw complaint up to God, who can bear it; he does not broadcast it across to the weak, who might be toppled by it. Doubt brought to God is faith working through a hard night. Doubt sprayed carelessly over others can do real harm. Asaph chooses the better path.

When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me (v. 16). Here is the honest dead-end of pure reasoning. Asaph tried to think his way out - to work the problem of the wicked's prosperity like a riddle until the answer came - and the harder he pressed, the more it hurt. The puzzle would not yield to analysis; it only deepened the ache. This is a crucial admission, because it tells us what the resolution will not be. The psalm is not going to hand us a clever theodicy, a neat explanation that makes the unfairness make sense. Asaph has already tried that road and found it a wall of pain. What breaks the deadlock will not be a better argument. It will be a change of place - and a change of company. The next word in the psalm is the most important word in it: until.

The sanctuary has changed everything, and the proof is in a single image. All along Asaph thought his feet were the ones slipping (v. 2). Now, with eternity in view, he sees who is really on the slope: Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction (v. 18). The very prosperity he envied turns out to be the smooth, treacherous footing on which the wicked stand - their ease is not security but the polished edge of a fall. And the fall is sudden: How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! (v. 19). What seemed permanent collapses in an instant. The most piercing image is the last: As a dream when one awaketh (v. 20). The whole glittering life of the ungodly has the substance of a dream - vivid while you sleep, gone the moment you wake. Asaph was envying a phantom. The thing he thought was solid was vapour all along; the thing he thought was vapour - his own troubled walk with God - turns out to be the only solid ground there is.

Before the psalm soars, it stops to confess. Looking back on his envy, Asaph judges himself with startling severity: So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee (v. 22). He had called the wicked foolish back in verse 3; now he turns the word on himself. To envy the prosperity of the ungodly, he realises, was not shrewd or worldly-wise - it was the reasoning of an animal, all appetite and no vision, seeing only the immediate fodder and nothing of the end. It is a humbling self-portrait, and it clears the way for grace. For the wonder of the next verse depends entirely on this one. Asaph does not say, “Because I kept my faith so well, God stayed near me.” He says the opposite: I was as a beast before thee - nevertheless I am continually with thee. While he was at his most dull and faithless, brooding and bitter and blind, God had not let go of him. The hand that held him held him through his worst, not because of his best. That is the shape of every real rescue: not that we held on to God, but that He would not turn loose of us.