Two Psalms That Sum Up the Hebrew Bible

Hey, this is John, and before we get started on today's episode, I wanted to let you know about our new expanded show notes. These are really cool. Our show notes now have chapter-by-chapter summaries, reflection questions for you to dig deeper. Every time we reference scripture or look at a biblical word, that's all going to be referenced in the show notes. And you can find a link in our episode description. You can also find them in the Bible Project app. All right, here's the show. Welcome to Bible Project Podcast. Today, we're going to do something unique. We're going to spend a whole hour comparing two biblical passages together. Two weeks ago, we read Psalm 1. Last week, we read Psalm 2. Today, we're going to read Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 as if these two poems become something more when we read them in light of each other. And reading texts in light of each other is a part of what we mean by meditating on the Bible. The art of learning how to meditate on scripture means learning how to appreciate every individual little paragraph unto itself. Then also backing up and saying, it was put alongside the thing before it and the thing after it on purpose. We'll focus on repeated words and repeated ideas shared by both poems. For example, Psalm 1 talks of a man placed by God as a tree by a string. Psalm 2 talks about a king placed by God on a throne. This tree doesn't plant itself. This king doesn't install himself as the ruler of the world. Both are done by God. Both poems are reflections on the good life. In Psalm 1, the good life is meditating on Yahweh's instruction and being known by Yahweh. In Psalm 2, the good life is taking refuge in Yahweh's anointed king and giving him your full allegiance. what the poem calls kissing the son. Both poems are saying the same thing in two different ways. The way to avoid a life that leads to nothingness or lostness is both to be known by Yahweh and to kiss the son. Half a dozen paragraphs in the Gospel of John are leaping to my mind. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. If you know me, you know the Father. If you kiss the son, Yahweh knows you. And this is just the beginning. Psalm 1 and 2 sit at a strategic place in the shape of the Hebrew Bible, and they carry key language that's shared with the Torah and prophets. And so in this way, Psalm 1 and 2 become a key to understanding the whole of the Hebrew Bible. Let Psalm 1 and 2 really take up space in your mind, and you'll find all the parts of the Bible coming alive. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hey, John. Hello. Hello. Hi. We are talking about Psalms. We've been going through Psalms. We went through Psalm 1, and then we went through Psalm 2. Those are both things that we did. And then you said, hey, John, did you know Psalm 1 and 2 work together? Yeah. It's like a little couplet. And also, as a little two-part poem, they introduce you to... Yeah, the Psalm scroll as a whole. And they also hyperlink to the entire Bible. Yep. They lay along one of the major divisions of the three parts of the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. And each one of those expanding contexts informs how we think about the meaning of Psalms 1 and 2. Yeah. Yeah. So Psalm 1 is all about what's the good life? Yeah, that's right. Right? Yep. And then Psalm 2 is all about like, man, what are we going to do with these raging nations? raging nations spreading violence on the land. What is God doing about it? Okay. Those are the two big ideas. Somehow those two ideas work together and there's chemistry between them. And then that chemistry between them somehow introduces us not only to the collection of Psalms, but also to how it fits in the world of the whole Bible. That's right. Yeah. The art of learning how to meditate on scripture. and again that phrase comes from Psalm 1 means learning how to appreciate every individual little paragraph or poem or story unto itself. But then also backing up and saying it was put alongside the thing before it and the thing after it on purpose. And then meditating on the thing you're looking at in relationship to what came before or what came after is a part of understanding its meaning. You know, think of like any time if you get on Google Earth or something or your little like phone device map and you like zoom in to see your apartment or your house or something like that or your school or whatever. And then the moment you zoom out and you see the location of that building you're looking at, like with a, you know. In its neighborhood. In its neighborhood. You're like, whoa, see how it like fits in? Yeah. And you notice new things. Zoom out even more. It's that. Okay. Learning the art of that process of meditating close up and then at the levels going out is an important skill to develop in learning how to read biblical literature. So we're going to do that for Psalms 1 and 2. Great. Can we just dive in? Yes, we do. All right. Sweet. So first thing to just notice, when you're reading through the Psalms, the book of Psalms has been organized as a patchwork of hundreds of individual poems, 150 individual poems. But they've been organized into little bundles. Little groupings? Little groupings. So learning how Psalms are grouped together, what are the techniques, it's different. For Psalms 1 and 2, it's great because Psalm 1 and 2 are set apart. by a number of features that link them together. You're saying Psalm 102 is a grouping? Yeah. It's the first little bundle of poems. It's just two. What sets them apart? Well, we're going to see there's a bunch of unique repeated words between these two poems. So when you look forward into Psalm 3 or 4, you're like, oh, it's different. Those words stopped occurring. So that's one thing. Usually it's repeated words. We'll look at that in a moment. Another thing that's unique, if you look to Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, there's no actual little heading. Like a Psalm of David. Exactly. Let's look at Psalm 3, and you get the first appearance of one of these headings. A Psalm of David when he fled from the presence of Absalom his son. Okay. That's a good example. It's not really the title of the poem. No, that's right. It's not a title. It doesn't function. But it is giving you a little clue. Dear reader, read this poem in relationship to this other story found in the prophets, the former prophets. Psalm 4, for the music director with stringed instruments, a psalm of David. Psalm 5, for the music director with flutes. This one needs flutes. A psalm of David. Psalm 6, for a music director with stringed instruments on the shimminit. Shimminit is the word eight. I think what it means is on an eight-stringed instrument. Oh. With stringed instruments specifically on the eight string. Okay. A Psalm of David. These are written for specific instruments. Yeah. No, these are little notes from the Levite choirs that performed these songs in the temple. Yeah. So a number of these songs comes from David, but then it had an afterlife in the history of the temple liturgy. And then it had another afterlife in the psalm scroll that was shaped. In the collection here. Exactly. So here's the point is, you can go through all the Psalms that follow, and all except a very few exceptions that prove the rule, the majority of the poems in all the Psalms that follow have these little headings. The ones that don't have it are the first two. So it's another little feature that sets Psalm 1 and 2 apart, is that they don't have these little headings. So that's one feature. So there's a lot of words that they share. And that's what we're going to look at right now. A whole universe. And then also, they don't have superscript. Exactly. And all the ones that follow. You got it. 10-2. You got it. Okay. So we read through slowly and as a whole, you know, Psalms 1 and 2. What I want to do is do a reading where we're going to read them alongside each other. Oh, okay. Both forward and backward. Okay. Or forward and backward and then as a chiasm. Okay. And this is how this literature is meant to be read. So what we'll do is we'll read kind of the first stanza, our paragraph, Psalm 1. Then we'll look at the first couple stanzas of Psalm 2. And I'm showing you them in parallel columns. We're just literally going to read through them next to each other and notice things. Psalm 1. How good is life for the man who doesn't walk by the counsel of the wicked? In the path of sinners he does not stand. In the seat of mockers he does not sit. Rather, in the instruction of Yahweh is his delight. And on his instruction, he meditates day and night. That's the good life. That's the good life, right? A bunch of things that the good life person does not do. And then what they do based on their delight. Yeah. And they meditate. And our summary was, the good life is not a man who walks in a way that ultimately puts him in a place that's just... Where he gets counsel and input, right? That leads him down the wrong path. That gets him stuck in a way of thinking of the world that just constantly failing morally at life to the point where you just become a cynical mocker. Well, this is all ridiculous and I'm above it all. That's the tragedy. But the good life, in contrast, is the one who understands that there is wisdom that comes from Yahweh. And that wisdom or instruction is something you can both meditate on and delight in. Yeah, you got it. So let's ponder that in relationship to the first main part of Psalm 2, verses 1 through 3, which was about the rebel nations. And then verses 4 through 6, which is God's response to the rebel nations. So that went, why do the nations rage and the peoples meditate on emptiness? There's meditation. So meditate. It's the same Hebrew word, haggah. If you look in the Psalms that follow for haggah, it doesn't appear. It's just unique. These Psalms 1 and 2. Two ways to meditate. And whenever you see a repeated word, I'm trying to like open up the hood of the car of reading biblical literature, so to speak. What do you do when you notice a repeated word? What should you do? Compare and contrast. Usually, yeah, compare and contrast. So let's contrast Psalm 2 verse 1 and then Psalm 1 verse 2. 1 verse 2 is meditating on the instruction of Yahweh. Yeah. Delighting in it. That's right. So Yahweh's got things he wants to teach you. And those things become an object of delight. And then you just find yourself. Remember, haggah, meditate, means to say out loud, to murmur. Repeat quietly to yourself as a way to focus your attention on it. Yeah. And later in the poem, there's a connection to this being known by Yahweh. Yeah, right. Which is an intimate word of relational connection. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what the good life person meditates on. What's beautiful and good and true that Yahweh wants to instruct them. What is it that the nations are meditating on? Emptiness. Empty. Yeah. Nothingness. That's funny. That's how we're meant to meditate. Empty your mind. In the modern contemporary meaning. This doesn't mean that. This doesn't mean like find some inner Zen. You're meditating on destroying other nations. Yeah. And then it's saying that is an actual futile, empty conquest. Yeah. So conquering your enemies, dominating and defeating them, and then benefiting from their stuff that you've taken. Yeah. They're trying to win at life in a different way. Yeah, that's right. They're trying to take and destroy. Yeah. Let's keep reading verse 2. This is interesting. Verse 2 said, the kings of the land take their stand and the rulers take counsel together. Together. Council. Ding, ding, ding, council. Council. Okay, that's interesting because the good life person of Psalm 1 doesn't walk by the council of the wicked. Different Hebrew words. Oh, okay. In Psalm 1, it's etsa. In Psalm 2, it's a verb, nos du. But they have the same, to nos du means that you get a group of people together for collective information and guidance. Okay. Like, I don't know what you know. You don't know what I know. Let's get together. Yeah. A little brainstorm sesh. Yep. That's right. So these are synonyms. They're synonyms. Yeah. And it works this way too. It doesn't have to be the exact word as a clue for you, the reader, to say, I need to compare and contrast these words. Very often, biblical authors will give you one or two like low-hanging fruit, as it were, by exact repeated words. But then they've loaded the bundled sections you're looking at with other ways that link the ideas together. So this word counsel is a good one. So who is it that is offering counsel in Psalm 1? It's the wicked and the sinners and the mockers right there. It's sort of like those are the bad guys of the opening of Psalm 1. Who are the bad guys of the opening of Psalm 2? And you can kind of see the relationship there. The nations, the peoples, the kings, the rulers. Yeah. Both groups end up perishing in the way by the end of the poems. That's right. Yeah. Both groups, their behavior sets them on the trajectory away from life and goodness and away from God. And notice how it's real individual terms. There's the good life, person, individual, and then the wicked one and the sinner and the mocker. In Psalm 2, it's corporate. nations and people and kings and the rulers. Okay. But both are on negative paths that are destructive to others and away from life. Psalm 1 focuses on the individual. Psalm 2 focuses on the corporate nature of people rebelling. The Psalm 1 individual, though, does find counsel from people who are leading them astray. Yeah. And this idea of a group of people conspiring together is a connection point, too. the rulers of Psalm 2 are taking counsel together They take their stand That a key word Yitzvot And that a symbol of their rebellion against yahweh and his anointed one ah and you read that back into psalm one where that person just started standing in the path and you're just like why did he stand in the path of sinners yeah did he just kind of is he tired did he did he just need a break why did he stop walking and stand and now when you think of Psalm 2, it's like, well, standing is saying like, okay, I'm now in rebellion against Yahweh. Yeah. So in Psalm 1, standing in the path of sinners shows your alignment with them. And in Psalm 2, rebel kings taking their stand together is showing their alignment with each other. The good life person doesn't join that alliance. The last connection is the opposite of standing but it's sitting so in Psalm 1 the good life person doesn't sit in the seat of mockers the seat of mockers the throne of those who think they're above it all think they're above it all who's really above it all Psalm 2 verse 4 the one sitting in the skies yeah and God he mocks yes he is mocking the same word rebel kings different word different word different word but synonyms. Okay. Yeah. It's Leitz in Psalm 1, and it's La'ag in Psalm 2. Yeah. So they're both sitting in a seat of mockery. God is sitting in a seat of mockers. And I guess you could say he's the only one who really is outside at all to have an accurate take on what is mockable or not. And what's mockable are violent kings who think that they are gods on the land. Yeah. Yeah, because in Psalm 1, we created this world of the person who's like, you think I need to take care of the poor? You think I need to love my neighbor? I can just do what I want. And then the king, the warrior king, is just taking that to 11 and just being like, I'm going to just, he's the lame-it character. So that's that type of mockery, which is then contrasted with the way that Yahweh mocks, which is like, you don't get it. You don't get it. Okay. So let's just pause. All we've done is read the first paragraph of Psalm 1, first stanza, and the first stanza of Psalm 2. And we've noticed the identical words of meditating and of sitting, and then of synonyms that is different Hebrew words, but that have similar meaning of counsel, standing, and mocking. That's a lot, man. There's a lot packed in there. So this is very typical of how biblical authors do it. Give you a few identical words, then that tips you off like, ooh, I should just kind of read through both of these slowly and meditate on their relationship to each other. That was rich, man. That was some good insights right there. And that's how this works. Let's keep going. Keep going. Okay. The middle stanza of Psalm 1, which is verses 3 and 4, reads like this. He, that is the good life person, will become like a tree planted by streams of water, which gives its fruit and its time. Its leaf does not wither. Everything he will do he makes successful. Not so the wicked. Rather, he's like chaff that the wind drives away. Okay. That's the middle of Psalm 2. Yeah, the one who delights in Yahweh's instruction. the image here is someone who has been planted they don't decide where they're going to stand the yahweh oh right plants them and plants them near a source of just perpetual life which you kind of imagine being yahweh's wisdom and because of that is fruitful bears fruit which is like when a tree bears fruit it's for the benefit of others So it's like benefiting others and does it in this way that's just full of life, doesn't wither. And then we meditate on everything he will do he makes successful. If you make this an extreme caricature of someone in full union with Yahweh, then yeah, everything is for good. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And then the wicked are the opposite. They're like on a wheat stalk. there's that, I guess it was the leafy part that then dries up. And when you harvest the grain, it then crumbles away. And that's chaff. And it crumbles and then just the wind will blow it away. You don't worry about it. It just kind of just goes away. Lifeless. It's dyed. And it's just transitory, temporary. It just blows away. Okay. So that's the middle of Psalm 1. Let's look at the middle as a word of Psalm 2, which is verses 7. through 9. And I'll just reader alert, there's no identical repeated Hebrew words shared with the middle of Psalm 1. Just looking at shared ideas. But the first Dan's already told me, like, hey dear reader, there's a lot of payoff when you compare these two poems. So even if I don't find repeated identical Hebrew words, I might find repeated synonyms or ideas. So let's read it. So the middle of Psalm 2 was when the king in first person spoke up to us and said, Hey, dear reader, let me tell you the decree that Yahweh made. He said to me, You are my son. Today I have birthed you. Ask of me. I'll give the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the land as your possession. Whoa. Wow. This king's getting installed as the divine son. And he's getting, well, the whole world. Ruling the world. Yeah, as his inheritance. You will break them. That them refers back to the violent rebel nations and kings from the first part of the poem. You'll break them with a rod of iron. Like the vessel of a potter, you will shatter them. Okay. Yeah, I don't see much of a connection. Yeah. So this is so great. With trees or chaff. Okay. Streams of water. Yeah. So let's go back. The first lines. Psalm 1, good life person is like a tree planted by streams of water. And you remembered a thing that we noticed that if it's planted by a stream of water, it's been planted by someone. So God planted it by the stream of water. In a similar way, the middle of Psalm 2, a king is telling us, here's what God did for me. Or here's what God appointed me to, to become the divine son who is the ruler of everything. So you're imagining that the enthronement of the son is the planting of him. It's like being planted. All I'm saying is both are people who God puts into a situation that they couldn't have done. And trees don't plant themselves. And kings don't. Well, actually, kings do appoint themselves. But this king doesn't. This king doesn't. This tree doesn't plant itself. This king doesn't install himself as the ruler of the world. Both are done by God. That's interesting. Okay. Also interesting is that the tree, we're told, as it's planted, offers fruit and perpetually green leaves. And what the king does when he's installed is he's declared the divine son who's birthed by God, as it were. So this is a deep cut, meaning this is a deep hyperlink. But I'm convinced that this is what's going on because it happens all over the Hebrew Bible. Psalm 1, verse 3. And you're like, hmm, trees that are planted and come up out of the ground because of water that offer fruit and leaves. Where's the first time that idea occurs in the Bible? Day three of creation. It's the bonus of day three. Okay. So God separates day from night, day one. God separates water from waters, day two. Day three, God separates the land from the seed. Bonus, day three, fruit trees. are summoned up out of the ground. And then there's this long paragraph about, now the fruit has the seed in it. And the seed of the fruit. Yeah. And they're fruit trees with all this foliage and they're green. And it gives its fruit. And you're like, okay, cool. Bonus, day three. Yeah. We go start into the next triad of creation days. Day four. Day four, God puts the lights in the sky to separate day from night. Yep. Not just matching day one. Day five, God puts the birds and the fish in the waters above and waters below. Matching day two. Matching day two. Day six, God summons land animals to come up out of the ground. Then he appoints humans as the rulers on the land. And then he says to them, make fruit. Make more of yourselves and make fruit and rule over the land. That's another little bonus part. Yeah. So the bonus of day six is humans who make fruit. Okay. Who rule over. So you're saying day three, you get the land, which is going to be the domain of the humans. But the land, when it's created, gets this little bonus of the trees and the fruit of the trees. And they're green leaves. And then you get to day six, where the land is populated with creatures. The creatures. Yeah. And then particularly the humans. Bonus. Humans. Yeah. And then they're called to make fruit. So the trees bear fruit. Pari. And then the humans are called to make fruit on day six. Pari. Okay. And what is human fruit? Birthing in children. So isn't it interesting that Psalm 1 at its center, the good life person is compared to a tree bearing green leaves and fruit. And Psalm 2 has as its middle a divine birthing of a divine son, as it were, the fruit of God. So you might think I'm out to lunch on that one, and that's okay. The claim you're making is that when these poems were put into this position of first and second, that the scribes and prophets, either they noticed this or they even adjusted the language to cement this connection. Yep, that's right. Because why again? Because they want you to think about how... Yeah. Psalm 1 is about how God is bringing life out of the chaos waters and wilderness through speaking his word that summons up fruitful trees out of the ground, creates fruit when there was no fruit. Psalm 2 is all about God installing rulers, and they're called to make fruit and make more of themselves. And that's a way of reflecting on what God's up to in Psalm 2. But in Psalm 2, this is a very particular son. Mm-hmm. Exactly. An image, a singular image of God. Notice in Genesis 1, humans are called the image of God. Here in Psalm 2, God is installing a son. And son and image are themselves connected ideas in the book of Genesis. To be a son of God is to be an image of God. So also, here's another interesting thought, connections between the middle of Psalm 1 and 2. Everything the good life person does in Psalm 1, he makes successful. Yatzliach. You go through and look through the uses of Yatzliach, what it usually means is someone who has had a successful career that generates abundance for themselves and then for their family and for their neighbors to share. It's interesting that the middle of Psalm 2 is about the divine son who's given the whole world as his inheritance. for like his career future as it were so both are images of success in the abundance that results and the abundance in psalm 2 is the king inheriting yeah the abundance of all creation the wealth of the nations the wealth of nations okay in psalm 1 the wicked that are the opposite of the fruitful tree are like chaff and they just blow away yeah which is you know dry In a similar way, any rebel nations that want to keep spreading violence on the land, the sun will bring justice and smash them like a potter, a potter's vessel. So dry pottery. Both are objects that are dry and brittle. Yeah, it's interesting to compare these two because chaff, you're just like, yeah, no big deal. There's no purpose for chaff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just goes away. Oh, yeah. Pottery is meant for a purpose. It's meant for a purpose. Yeah. And it's tragic when pottery. When you drop your pot. Yeah, that's horrible. Oh, man. I could write a whole history of my favorite coffee mugs that I've dropped and broken on the floor. You know, you get a cool handmade one at some gift shop on vacation. You're like, oh, and then six months later you drop it. Oh, it's so sad. It is sad. Anyway, I get attached to my coffee mugs because I love my first cup of coffee in the morning. You're also sounding kind of clumsy here. this happens enough that you could write a history of it. Well, okay. I'm being a little generous. I also, I have roommates that dropped stuff. Yeah. And a lot of valuable ceramic goods have been dropped in my house. But I like this contrast that you're drawing. It's really cool. Yeah. And in one sense, you could think of the wicked as like, yeah, well, they've come to nothing. Yeah. But in Psalm 2, it's like, hmm, how tragic. Yeah. When pottery is... When a pot... Yeah. It's made for a purpose. People come to roles of responsibility and they have the chance so that their leadership can fit into a beautiful purpose of God in the world. To share God's wise, generous rule in the land. And when that gets distorted, it's a real tragedy. Yeah. And then the other contrast is the chaff is blown away in the passive. Yeah. The wind just blows it away. The wind just takes it away. In Psalm 2. Yeah. Divine Son is going to smash. Yeah. That's a significant contrast. So notice, no repeated words between the middle of Psalm 1 and the middle of Psalm 2. But you can see meaningful relationships that provide cool meditations. Let's look at the end of Psalm 1 and 2. Okay. The end of Psalm 1 reads like this, verses 5 and 6. Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous ones. because Yahweh knows the path of the righteous, but the path of the wicked will perish. So maybe let just try and summarize that in our own words real quick There gonna be a final day of sorting out what really is someone who lived by the wisdom of Yahweh and created good and what are the people creating chaos and failure. And it's court language. The word wicked actually comes from the language of ancient Israel's courts. To be guilty or in the wrong. That's interesting. And to be righteous means you're declared to be in the right. And then the word judgment is that word justice. Man, it feels like we could have a better word than the wicked then. It just means the one in the wrong? Ah, in a courtroom setting, yeah. Yeah, we could go to a number of passages in Exodus or Deuteronomy and the prophets. And you've got a figure called the judge, the shofait. And he makes a declaration. And there's the rasha, the one in the wrong. And then there's the tzaddik, the one in the right. The righteous and the wicked. so the one and the wrong will not stand in the judgment you did it wrong yeah yeah man you your whole life was a series of decisions that was set on a trajectory and led to a result that just produced a lot of sadness and hurt in the world it's not what god made humans for it's in the wrong yeah no one's whole life is ever that way sure okay no so now we're back to the fact that someone is a form of ancient wisdom instruction it is created that character of the person who imagined their whole life okay yeah so as a characterization there's someone who's their whole life has led to chaff yeah in that final judgment moment there's an ultimate sorted nope that's not it that's not the way to be human never was and so you're on the wrong side versus right side there will be an assembly of people declared right yeah verse six comes along and uses a non courtroom kind of metaphor metaphor the path to make the same point again yeah we knows the path yeah this is a way to walk the path of life that's united with the knowledge of god because it's yahweh's path yahweh knows it because that's how yahweh walks as it were that's the path of being the tree. Yeah, yeah. Which trees don't walk paths, but that's there an end. Yeah, right. So there's one type of path. The other path is the path of the wicked, and that is a path that will perish. Yeah, will perish. That is, come to nothing. Come to lostness. Yep. Okay. All right. That's the end of Psalm 1. The end of Psalm 2. And now, O kings, be wise, show discernment, be warned, judges of the land, serve Yahweh with fear, rejoice with trembling, kiss the sun lest he become angry, and you perish in the path, for his anger burns hot in an instant. How good is life for those who take refuge in him? So the path. There's the perishing in the path. Like a real clear hyperlink. It's a unique phrase. It's Hebrew word derech in the verb avad. It's only used right here in these two poems next to each other. You can go onward into the Psalms and you're going to have to go a long ways before these words occur again. So these are unique phrases. And so let's draw these two moments of perishing in the past together in our minds. Yeah. One is a person in Psalm 1. Yeah. It's a more individualized picture. Yeah. And this person's standing for the judgment and the judgment is the path you walked is just a path that leads to nothing. Leads to ruin. You've reached the end of it. You've reached the ruin. Yeah. And it's not Yahweh's path, because Yahweh has a path that leads to life and fruit and all that. And that's the path of the righteous. We hop over to Psalm 2 and instead of the wicked, we've got the kings and the judges of the land who are in rebellion. The raging kings are brought up again. And unless they kiss the son, that is honor, the son as their authority, they will perish in the path. So similar phrase, recognizing the divine son as your authority and guide. That's put on parallel to knowing Yahweh. Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's right. In Psalm 1, when you're on the path, Yahweh knows you, knows your path. There's a unity there. That's put in parallel of kissing the son. Wow, that's a great, I've never noticed that. Like half a dozen paragraphs in the Gospel of John are leaping to my mind. How you relate to me is how you relate to the one who sent me. Jesus says that like 10 times in the Gospel of John. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. If you know me, you know the Father. If you kiss the sun, Yahweh knows you. Yeah, knows your path. That's cool. That's cool. That's really interesting. Yeah. So the way to avoid a life that leads to nothingness or lostness is both to be known by Yahweh and to kiss the sun. That's how you avoid perishing in the path. Yeah, there you go. Now, all of a sudden, though, I come to the last line of Psalm 2. How good is life? For those who take refuge in him. Yeah. Psalm 1 begins with how good is life. It begins. And Psalm 2 ends with how good is life. Yes. It's like, obviously, we got to think of these. Yeah. It's connected. So somebody wants me to read Psalm 1 and 2 as a unit, not just by linking them in four-word parallelism. We just read through Psalms 1 and 2 next to each other, part by part. Yeah. And there's a lot of action going on. Yeah. A lot of invitations to meditate. And just in case you missed it, you get this bonus line at the end of verse 12 that matches uniquely the first word of Psalm 1, as if it's a little bookend. Yeah. Yeah. So the good life of Psalm 1 is meditating on Torah that leads you to avoid destructive ways of life that perish in the past and leads you to Yahweh's instruction that plants you like a tree. Psalm 2, the good life, is for people who recognize the Son as their authority. And then what they find is, instead of being their cruel overlord, what he is is their refuge and protector. The end of Psalm 2. So Psalm 1 is primarily working in the Eden language and imagery of Genesis 1-3. Every human sits before their own tree of knowing good and bad. You have a decision to make. Will you trust God's command? Right? The instruction of Yahweh. The instruction of Yahweh. And one leads to the tree of life. The other leads to being blown out into exile where you return to the dust. Yeah. That's kind of Psalm 1. One leads to not just eating of the tree of life, becoming a tree of life. Becoming a tree of life. This is wild. It's great. Yeah. Psalm 2 comes along, and it's more taking its language and imagery from the stories of the prophets, both the former prophets, specifically the story of David, who set up the capital in Jerusalem. And then God made a promise to David, 2 Samuel 7, a seed will come from you, I will be a father to him, and he will be my son. He'll rule forever and ever, and oppressor nations won't disturb my people anymore. And I'm going to plant them in Jerusalem. So it itself has like Eden echoes. Psalm 2 comes along and works within that story world. But it's very similar because God's word to David of a promise of a king forces the rebel kings of the world to give up their violence and reckon with the messianic kings, their authority. Yeah, that's the hope. That's the hope. That's the decision put in front of the kings in Psalm 2. The decision put in front of the reader in Psalm 1 is, which path do I want to take? The path that leads to exile and death or the path that leads to becoming a tree of life? Psalm 1 seems to be written to just the normal person. Everyone's going to walk the path of life. Everyone has to make calls between good and bad. You can do it in a way that's united with the wisdom of Yahweh and become a tree of life. Yeah. In Psalm 1, every reader of the poem gets to be like an Adam and Eve with your chance at the tree. Yeah. Yeah. Psalm 2 is like, there's this very small crew of violent warrior kings just making a mess with the world. But they think they run the world. And they think they run the world. And in a way, it looks like they do. Yeah. But actually, they don't. And they don't. They don't. They're accountable to someone greater than them. Yeah. And they have their own counsel of wickedness, and they're raging, and God's kind of had enough with them, and they need to acknowledge who's truly in charge, which is Yahweh and this son. Or they've met the end. Yeah. Yep. They'll come to nothing. They'll perish in the past. So that's Psalm 1 and 2. Somebody put those two poems next to each other, knit them together, so that we would do exactly what we just did. Okay. That's what they're there for. Now, these are just the first two poems at the beginning of a whole long biblical book called the Book of Psalms. Okay. Are you ready to zoom out? Mm-hmm. So So we long ago made a video overview about the book of Psalms. And what I noted in that overview video, we're looking at the poster. you could go to the Bower Project website and look at the poster, or you could watch the video, whatever, is that Psalms 1 and 2, Psalm 1, it has the word Torah in it. Yes, the Torah of Yahweh, the destruction of Yahweh. Yep. Psalm 2 is all about the promise that God made to David about a seed, a king that would come from his line. That's the key idea in the prophets. That's the key idea in the prophets. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Okay. Psalm 1 is connected to Torah. Psalm 2 is connected to the prophets. And you're taking for granted the understanding of the Hebrew Bible. That's right. That it's broken up into three parts. Torah, prophets, and then the writings. Yeah, you got it. Psalms is the beginning of the writings. And you're saying Psalm 1 and 2 is a big wink to you saying, I want you to keep in mind all of the Torah and all the prophets. All the prophets. Psalm 1, Torah, Psalm 2, prophets. You got it. Okay. Yep. Okay. That's one thing that's going on. All right. Second is basically God's commands that are meant to give wisdom and life as a theme. It's a major theme throughout the whole rest of the book of Psalms. Constantly. And God's promise to David to deal with the violence of the nations is going to be a major theme brought up. And they're right next to each other here in Psalms 1 and 2. There are going to be places where these two things get put right next to each other elsewhere. I drew attention to this in the video. So, for example, the psalm scroll is divided into five parts. Yeah. And the five parts all have the same little conclusion. The last sentences of Psalm 41, Psalm 72, Psalm 89, Psalm 106 that say, May the Lord God of Israel be blessed forever. Amen and amen. That ends each collection of poems. They're often called the books. Yeah, book one, book two, book three. Yeah, and there's five. Which is kind of like the five books of Torah. Like the five books of Torah. But it's like a messianic Torah because also connected all through psalms that emphasize God's instruction are closely connected psalms meditating on God's promise to David. For example, in book one, there's this really cool set of poems where Psalm 19 is at the center. Psalm 19 is all about the word of the Lord the word and the commands and the statutes of God that give you wisdom, that make you pure, that lead you to life and you're like, oh, it's just like a restatement of Psalm 1 and then right after it, Psalm 19, come a collection of poems called 20 to 23 that are all about a king who is going to encounter resistance from hostile nations and God's going to rescue that king from death and exalt him as the ruler over the nations. You're like, oh, that's just like Psalm 2. And it is. Except now it's called Psalms 19 to 23. And this pattern just repeats itself. This idea of Torah and Messiah, Torah and prophets is just going to get recycled and developed throughout the whole Psalm scroll. So Psalms 1 and 2 truly are like an introduction to the main themes of the Psalm scroll. Meaning, as you travel through the psalm scroll, always have those two psalms on your mind? Yep. Yeah. And you're going to find your mind being brought back to Psalms 1 and 2 constantly to inform. But also the plot about the king is going to develop. You're going to find out that this king doesn't just come to his rule over the nations easily. He actually... It fills in the story of the son. Yeah, fills in the story of the son. Yeah. And does it fill in the story of the tree? It fills in the story of the good life person who, because they don't walk in the counsel of the wicked, life actually becomes pretty complicated for them. Yeah. Someone makes it sound pretty simple. And the simple binary, righteous and wicked, success or failure, all that gets problematized. And you end up with righteous people doing God's word who suffer and terrible things happen to them. And they cry out to God and it seems like God's never listening. So these are what we call the lament. So that's such a wonderful example. Do you remember how you were kind of resisting the simplicity of Psalm 1? Yes. I was resisting the binary nature of Psalm 1. And then I also was feeling the tension of Psalm 2 of just this like overpowering, just the discomfort of the like warrior God image. It's great. So good. Raining through the sun is just going to shatter the nations like pottery. It's great. And you are not the first one to feel like those statements are by themselves inadequate. They're important things to say. They're just the like introductory notes that become melodies that you continue to discover. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What if that reigning ruler divine son king himself allows himself to be trampled by the violent kings and identifies with the poor and the oppressed And then through that suffering that how he becomes the king of the nations Wow. That's explored in the Psalms. Yeah. I just summarized Psalms 20 through 23. Psalm 73. How good is the Lord for those who fear him? But as for me, the poet of Psalm 73 says, I looked out and I see the wicked succeeding and the poor are oppressed and where are you, God? And that's like, I read Psalm 1 and it didn't work out. So I'm going to take up this issue with God. And that's Psalm 73. So what I loved, and I didn't want to say it earlier because this is where... This is the way you journey through this. Yeah, every time you have a problem with something you're reading in the Bible, you're not alone. And the issue's been raised for you on purpose. And as you keep reading, you realize like, whoa, the biblical authors felt how I'm feeling too. I was starting to feel that as we talked through Psalm 2. I tried to like just tell myself, I think I'm supposed to be feeling irritated. Yeah, that's good. About some of this. And that's okay. Yep. Yeah, that's totally okay. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe just one more zoom out at the end here. Is that all right? Okay. So we've already paid attention to how Psalms 1 and 2 are connected all the way back to Genesis 1 through 3, the Eden language. How it's connected to God's promise to David in the middle of the prophets, 2 Samuel chapter 7. Also, this phrase, meditating on Torah, God's Torah, day and night that leads to success, that phrase appears one other time in the Hebrew Bible. and it's at the beginning of a major section of the Hebrew Bible called the prophets, the middle section from Joshua chapter 1. Joshua is the first scroll of the prophets. Yes, yeah. The prophets begin after Deuteronomy, which is the fifth and final book of the Torah. And then you get a collection of the prophets. Joshua judges Samuel and Kings, and then the writing prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12. Okay. So Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Those weren't prophets. Those are names of books. Each of those books is telling you who was the leader of Israel during those periods. Joshua. Joshua, then the Judges, then Samuel, and then Samuel, and then the Kings. Oh, okay. Yeah. But it's Israel's history in the land told from the perspective of Israel's prophets. Okay. So they begin the book of the prophets. Yeah. It's a prophetic retelling of Israel's history. And these are sometimes referred to as the... Ah, the former prophets. Okay. Former prophets are telling you the story of Israel and the land. Okay. The latter prophets are then the writing prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, that are poetic collections of different prophets who lived during the story told to you by the former prophets. Okay. Together they make up the collection of the prophets. All right. The prophets begin... With Joshua. With Joshua. The first line of Joshua is, after Moses died, Yahweh said to Joshua, the son of Nun, saying, Moses is dead. So get up, lead the people across the Jordan River in the land. I'm going to give the land to my people. God says, I'm going to fight for you. If anybody is hostile, picks a fight with you, I'll protect you. I'll take care of you. Verse 6, be strong and courageous. I'm giving the land as an inheritance. That's interesting. That's what God promised the divine son. To the son. Psalm 2. Yeah. The land. Verse 7. Only be strong and courageous to keep diligently the whole Torah that Moses, my servant, commanded you. Don't turn aside from it to the right or to the left so that you may have success for wherever you go. Success. This scroll of the Torah will not depart from your mouth. You will haggah. Meditate on it day and night. So that you can keep everything written in it, then you will have success. It's the same word as Psalm 1. Okay. And prosper. So, yeah. You read these together and clearly Psalm 1 was riffing off of this. Yeah. The opening of the Psalm scroll is coordinated with this picture of Joshua. Which is the beginning of the prophetic scrolls. That's right. So Psalm 1, in a way, is coordinated with the picture of Joshua as Israel's leader, leading them into the promised land, not taking counsel with the wicked, trusting only God's instruction that he meditates on. And it leads to Israel's successful entry into the land where they settle and make homes and gardens and all that. Yeah. So Joshua is like a narrative illustration. This can go well. Yeah. Somebody who lived the reality of Psalm 1. So that's a little coordinated connection. That's interesting. That's the beginning of the prophets. If I turn to the end of the prophets. Later prophets. Yeah. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then you get the 12 called the minor prophets. Who's the last of the 12? Malachi. Malachi. Yeah. And if I turn to the end of the book of Malachi. Okay. What are we going to find? In Tanakh order, the ending of Malachi is right before Psalm 1 and 2. Psalm 1, yeah. and what do I find at the end of Malachi? Malachi 4, verse 1. Look, the day is about to come. Day of judgment. Burning like an oven. Every arrogant and evil doer, rasha. Oh, that's the rasha. People who does rasha. Okay, so there's another word, the wicked, the evil doer. The one who does evil, okay. Every arrogant and evil doer will become like stubble. Stubble? Before fire. Different word than chaff, but same basic idea. What is a stubble? Stubble would be like you've cut your grass and then the dried grass three days later. That's stubble. Yeah, that's the stubble. Okay. And the day that is coming will burn them up, says Yahweh of hosts. it that is the coming day will not leave behind for them root or ranch. So a purifying fire is coming. The day of Yahweh is coming. It's like the judgment at the end of Psalm 1. And it's connected to the hot anger of Psalm 2. Exactly. It borrows the language of heat and fire from Psalm 2, but connects it with the idea of the final sorting of Psalm 1. So those whose way of life has produced in the world pain, oppression, and hardship for others, all of that is going to get consumed in the great purifying day of Yahweh. But, verse 2, for you who fear my name, serve the Lord with fear. That was the end of Psalm 2, right? Serve the Lord with fear. For those, the sun, and it's not the word S-O-N. No. Actually, the sun, the light in the sky. The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out leaping like fat little calves. This makes me uncomfortable, verse 3. You will trample down the wicked. they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I'm going to act. The people who trampled you, the people who, right, you've been under their boots for so many generations. Remember that biblical literature comes from the underground. It's going to get inverted and reversed. So this is a picture of the day of Yahweh coming. And in a way, it's a very poetic, metaphorical way of describing the end of both Psalm 1 and 2. and even using some of its language. Verses 4 through 6. Remember the Torah of my servant Moses. Oh, yeah. You know, the one I commanded him on Mount Horeb, all the rules and regulations. That's how all the prophets began in Joshua. Yeah. Remember the Torah of Moses. Exactly right. And here we are again. My servant Moses. Look, I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet. Oh, okay. He's coming again. Need to go meditate on his story. Okay. Yeah. Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great awesome day of Yahweh, and he's going to turn back the hearts of the fathers to their sons, the hearts of sons to their fathers, so that I don't come and strike the land with a curse. So there's a lot going on here. My point is Malachi ends using similar language of Psalms 1 and 2 and similar ideas of there's a coming, the day of Yahweh, that will sort out the righteous and the wicked and how you respond in the present now to God's Torah given through Moses will foster hope and faithfulness as you await that future sorting out. It's very similar to what Psalm 1 and 2 are trying to do. There's nothing in Malachi about a son or a king, is there? No. The promise of a king coming from the line of David is not explicitly a part of the conclusion of Malachi. It is a part elsewhere in the prophets, especially Isaiah, which is at the beginning of the prophets. So Isaiah and Malachi stand at the beginning and ending of the latter prophets. And really into the day of Yahweh and to the promise of the coming king from the line of David, Malachi ends on the note primarily about the day of Yahweh. So when we back out on the highest level, Psalm 1 and 2 have been brought together as the introduction to the Psalm scroll, as the introduction to the third major part of the Hebrew Bible writings, and linked together to the beginning and endings of the Torah and of the former prophets and of the latter prophets. Okay. So basic point is, what's the meaning of Psalms 1 and 2? and it seems like they've been given an intentional layer of meaning at every one of the levels of zoom yeah somebody sat down and thought and shaped the language of these poems and if you learn how to meditate on these poems on all those levels individually together zoom out zoom out a little more every layer seems intentional like an invitation to meditate any part of the bible is worth sitting and meditating on and really absorbing. But it seems like there's maybe passages like this that sit at seams that are doing so much work and connecting. Extra loaded. Extra loaded. Yeah, load bearing, maybe, like in a building. It would do you well to spend even extra time really absorbing these ideas and letting them stick with you as you read the Bible. Yeah. Psalm 1 and 2 are an invitation to ask two questions perpetually as I kind of move through these next few days. And maybe this will hopefully stick with me. How good is life for the man? Like, what's the good life? And then why all the raging? Right? Like, I could walk through my city. Where's the good life? And I could ask one of those two questions, or both at the same time. Yeah. Why is there so much pain and suffering and so much chaos? Why all the raging? and meditate on that and meditate on the hope of the messianic king. And then I can also be thinking about like, as I walk down the street, what is the good life here? How do I step into the instruction of Yahweh in this moment? Those two lenses, Psalm 1 and 2, they really do invite you into a universe of thought. Yeah, a way of not just seeing the world, but a way of living. Being in the world. Yeah, how good is life for someone who lets Psalm 1 and 2 just really take up space in their mind? And you'll find all the parts of the Bible coming alive in new and interesting ways. And that's just the Hebrew Bible. We didn't even talk about how important Psalm 2 is for Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. It's one of the most re-quoted and alluded to Psalms in the New Testament. It's actually second only to Psalm 110. Okay. So what we should do then is explore how Psalm 2 gets quoted and used in the New Testament in light of all of these hyperlinks. It's super cool. Great. Let's do that next. Thanks for listening to Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we're going to look at how Psalm 2 is quoted in the New Testament. And the first person to quote Psalm 2 is God, calling out from heaven during the baptism of Jesus, saying, You are my son. Jesus' status as the son is not happening in this moment. Rather, this moment on the mountain and the baptism, then, are little flash openings into the true identity of Jesus, going farther back than any of our brains can imagine. the eternal identity of God. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit, and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we create is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hello. My name is Eclesio, and I'm from Miami, Florida. Hi, my name is Jackson, and I am from Estacada. I first heard about Bible Project at school. I first heard about the Bible Project a couple years ago, and it's been lit ever since. I use the Bible Project for hanging out with my wife. We'll be watching the Bible Project to learn more about God. I use Bible Project for learning stuff. My favorite thing about Bible Project is the Bible videos. 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