Page 58 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

The resulting advice to wicked people is likewise strong. Serve
Yahweh with fear. Pay homage to his son, the king. Refuse and the
result is destruction. Accept and be blessed (2:10-12). Is that all
there is to it? Don’t I need to keep his laws, the reason for all that
meditation? Don’t I need to strive to walk and stand and sit
properly? Is it as simple as taking refuge in his son? But there is
that word “blessed” again at the beginning of the last sentence in
2:12. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” Is the Psalm writer
telling me that I should be blissful trusting in God’s king, that
Figure 31: Refuge from hurricane blessedness comes from trusting in God’s king and nothing else?

The word “blessed” functions as a “bookend” at the beginning of Psalm 1 and at the end of Psalm 2. The
two occurrences are a tip-off about the writer’s intent. We suspect that the two psalms go together. Now
we need to dig a little deeper and look for other connections between them. The list is both lengthy and
convincing in the original Hebrew.

Psalm 1 word Psalm 2

1:1 blessed 2:12d
1:1d to sit/enthroned 2:6
1:2b to meditate/plot 2:1
1:2b day/today 2:7c
1:3a, 4b like a 2:9b
1:3 upon/by 2:6
1:3 yield/make 2:8a
1:3c season/now 2:10
1:3e whatever/all 2:12d
1:5a judgment/rulers 2:10b
1:1c, 6a, 6b way 2:12b
1:6b destruction 2:12
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As we link the two psalms, our understanding expands. Instead of meditating on God’s law, the wicked
are meditating on how to rebel against God’s law. Instead of sitting in the company of mockers, someone
else sits in heaven and laughs at the feeble attempts of the wicked. This same one is guaranteed the
nations for an inheritance, a guarantee like a tree yielding its fruit. We begin to wonder if both Psalm 1
and 2 are about the same person. One and the same person is “the righteous” opposed by a world full of
“the wicked.” Both psalms speak of a great conflict to take place between the blessed, righteous man
and the wicked, ending with the destruction of the latter (1.1; 2.12) and the victory of the former (1.3;
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2.9).”

93 Robert L. Cole, “Psalms 1-2” in The Psalms, eds. Andrew J. Schmutzer & David M. Howard (Chicago: Moody,
2013), 187.
94 Robert L. Cole, Psalm 1-2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012), 50.
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