As I’ve said before, the books of the Old Testament were originally in a different order. The original collection put the books into three groups: first was the Torah, then the Prophets, then the Writings. Christian bibles intersperse the books of the Writings and the books of the Prophets. I’m reading them in the original order.
I’m starting the Writings, which begins with the book of Psalms. I could write a separate post for each psalm, but I won’t. Instead, I chose ten of the most popular psalms.
Psalm 1 is in the “wisdom” genre. Which means it instructs people how to act. How should we act? Well, we should be righteous and not wicked. If you’re looking for more detail than that, you won’t find it in Psalm 1.
Perhaps the modern self-help industry has taught me to expect more. I need a three-step process, at the very least. Maybe a clever acronym.
We have to look outside of Psalm 1 to find any specific instructions. The writer of Psalm 1 assumed the reader knew about all the commandments in the Torah. In fact, Psalm 1 says the righteous person meditates on the Torah day and night. If you follow the laws of the Torah, you will prosper.
This is the first layer of Psalm 1. The simple instruction to be a good person. But there are more layers.
Why does the righteous person meditate on the laws day and night? If they were simple rules to follow, you could learn the rules and be done with it. But Psalm 1 tells us to read them over and over.
Also, only a small percentage of the books of the “law” contain rules to follow. It’s mostly stories. Stories are complex, like life. Stories acknowledge that all rule books are incomplete, and life has to be about more than following rules.
Then there’s the poetry of Psalm 1. Living a good life is not about checking things off a list. Psalm 1 says it’s more like choosing the right path to walk. It’s slow. You may not know what path you’re on until it’s too late. After walking at length on one path, you become stagnant. You stop walking and have a firm stance. Then you sit down, entrenched in your ways.
Choose the right path and the sitting place is beautiful. You become like a tree, with solid roots, giving fruit to the world. Choose the wrong path and the sitting place dissolves under you, like dust.
Of course, we will all choose the right path, right? Well, most of the bible is about why we choose the wrong path sometimes, even though we know it’s the wrong path. What do we do about that?
Psalm 1 isn’t about that. Even with all our mistakes, it’s still sometimes helpful to tell us to do the right thing. The writer of Psalm 1 knows that most people won’t follow the Torah all the time. In fact, they’ll likely disregard the Torah in the most shameful ways. The Torah itself has many stories of this happening.
But still. Just do the right thing, people. If you do, you will prosper.
Someone has to keep saying that. Sometimes humans seem so stupid that it’s impossible for them to do the right thing. But it’s not. It’s hard, but not impossible. It’s a path we choose every single day.
Here’s Psalm 1, annotated with my comments and highlights:
