Psalm 1:5

I know I just posted on Psalm 1:4, but I actually translated that yesterday but never got a chance to post it, so I did today. Today I translated verse 5, which is as follows.

עַל־כֵּן ׀ לֹא־יָקֻמוּ רְשָׁעִים בַּמִּשְׁפָּט וְחַטָּאִים בַּעֲדַת צַדִּיקִֽים

Therefore the wicked will not stand in judgement, and sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

This verse is interesting, specifically the first half. The author says how the wicked will not stand in judgement. Immediately I thought this sounded contradictory, since the wicked will be judged by God, so how will they not stand in judgement? Well, using some commentary from the NET Bible (I don't agree with all of their footnotes/remarks on all the verses, but on this particular verse it helped to read what they had to say) and their notes said that this isn't referring to a final judgement talked about else where in Scripture, but a specific judgement. Well, I'm not certain either way on that point, but what did help is that it pointed out that the point that is trying to be made is that the wicked will not last judgement. It helps me to think of the wicked like a house built from wood, which in a fire (judgement) would not stand, it would burn up. But a house built of stone would stand through a fire, since the fire would not consume the stone.

The second part of the verse explains that sinners will not stand in congregation with the righteous. I think another good word for "congregation" might be "company" of the righteous. The author of Psalm 1 is again showing how different and distinct are the righteous from the wicked, they will not even stand together. Another question that arose in my mind while translating was why did the author use "wicked" in the first part of the verse, and "sinner" in the second half? I think I have an answer (though I'm open to correction, this is just a theory). In English poetry, we generally rhyme. A typical rhyming pattern might be an A B A B pattern. While the Hebrew poets do use the tool of phonemes in their poetry, one of the major tools they employ in poetry is parallelism. This entire chapter (or two) is parallelism, comparing the good man versus the wicked. That is what I think is going on here, the author is simply using another term that typifies someone who is opposite from the blessed man.

Well, that was much longer than I thought it was going to be. I fear that as I go on through these two chapters, that the posts are going to be longer and longer as there is more to point out, certain terms referring back to other terms, etc.

The next post will finish up chapter one with verse 6, then after that we'll continue on through chapter two!

Thanks for reading! Any feedback would be appreciated!