class="scripRef">37, 49.

Psalm 1 is a splendid type of the wisdom psalm, since it begins with the characteristic opening words: “Blessed is the man,” and then sets forth the qualities of the good man and claims for him success, while it asserts for the wicked certain condemnation and ruin. Psalms 112 and 34 are also characteristic wisdom psalms, confined however in the artificial limitations of alphabetical acrostics. Psalm 78 teaches the same lesson as to the secret of success from history, recalling how Yahwe had again and again punished disobedience and rewarded obedience until he finally rejected Ephraim and accepted Judah, and chose David to be his servant.

If there were in Israel wise men, such as the author of Ecclesiastes, who taught that all life was vanity, there were other wise men such as the author of Psalm 127 who taught that while all human effort without God’s cooperation was vain, yet life with God’s cooperation was certain of happiness. God does give his help to man, and one of his very best gifts is children. Again 128 gives the assurance that he who walks in Yahwe’s ways will enjoy the fruits of his labor, and in happiness see his children and children’s children round about him. Psalm 133 pays simple and charming tribute to the joy of human fellowship.

The assertion that the righteous always prosper and that the wicked suffer misfortune was inevitably challenged by the sceptics and scorned by the scoffers, who mocked the believing psalmist in his distress saying: “Where is now your God?” It became necessary therefore to deal with this problem on the basis of the facts of life, and we get accordingly a somewhat different type of wisdom psalm. Psalm 125 testifies to the existence of this problem. Verses 1 and 2, to be sure, affirm the security of the righteous. Verse 3, however, attempts to justify the affirmation of the preceding verses by a rational argument. If the righteous were not certain to prosper in the world, why should men be righteous? Would not the righteous become wicked and the moral foundations of life crumble? The petition in verses 4 and 5 requesting Yahwe’s favor for the good and his punishment for the wicked, while properly no part of a teaching psalm, are further recognition that actually certain of the facts of life contradict the psalmist’s theory. Nevertheless, his own conviction is expressed in verse 1:

Psalm 73 is the teaching of one who wrestled with this same problem of the theodicy. Verse 1 is an assertion of his faith:

But verses 2-20 tell how nearly the psalmist came to losing that faith as he saw the wicked prosper, while he himself suffered misfortunes, and how he recovered his faith with the conviction that the prosperity of the wicked was but temporary and their ultimate doom certain. Verses 23-28 are accordingly an assertion of the psalmist’s devotion to Yahwe as in a psalm of faith, but the main thesis of the psalm is stated in verse 1, and so may therefore be best grouped with the wisdom psalms.

Psalm 37 is composed in stanzas of four lines, the first letters of the first lines of the stanzas spelling out the alphabet. The author of the psalm is an old man who gives warning against fretting over the prosperity of the wicked, and who affirms on the basis of his long experience of life, that, while the prosperity of the wicked is short-lived, God never forsakes the righteous. The use of the acrostic form may itself be taken as evidence of this psalmist’s unquestioning belief in the above dogma.

The author of Psalm 49 has no certain promise of prosperity for the righteous, nor does he threaten the wicked with premature death, but he does smile at their fatuous confidence, since death must surely overtake them. Therefore he does not let their possession of wealth trouble him because it cannot be taken to Sheol. On the other hand there seems to be just a suggestion in verse 16 that God can relieve the pious from the grasp of death: