The Book of Psalms

Word Study

"transgression," Hebrew pesha (פֶּשַׁע), rebellion. David begins by tracing the wickedness of the wicked back to its taproot, and the root is rebellion -- not weakness or ignorance, but a will set against its rightful King. Beneath the flattery, the lying words, and the mischief plotted in bed (vv2-4) lies this one thing.

"saith," ne'um (נְאֻם), an oracle, a solemn utterance. The word rendered "saith" is striking; it is the formal word for a divine oracle, the "thus saith the LORD" of the prophets. But here it is not God whose oracle is heard; it is transgression itself that speaks. Where the godly man has God's word in his heart, the wicked man has an oracle of sin in his heart.

"fear of God," pachad elohim (פַּחַד אֱלֹהִים), dread and reverence of God. What that false oracle dictates is that God need not be feared. Cut off the fear of God, and every other restraint falls with it.

"before his eyes," leneged einav (לְנֶגֶד עֵינָיו). "There is no fear of God before his eyes." Nothing stands in his line of sight to check him. The absence of the fear of God is not a neutral gap; it is a rival voice, a false prophecy whispering that there is no one to answer to.

Explanation

The verse borrows the language of prophecy and turns it inside out. Ne'um is the word stamped on the prophets' messages, "the oracle of the LORD"; David hears, instead, "the oracle of transgression." Sin has become a preacher with its own pulpit in the wicked man's heart, and its whole sermon is that God is not to be feared. And notice where the psalm says this fear is missing: "before his eyes." The problem is not that the wicked man lacks the facts about God but that he has stopped keeping God in view; he has removed God from his line of sight, and having done so, "flatters himself in his own eyes" (v2), his own eyes now the only court he answers to. Take God out of view, and a man becomes his own flattering judge.

Gospel Focus

"There is no fear of God before his eyes", the Apostle Paul makes this the final and clinching line of his indictment of the whole human race. In Romans 3 he strings together a chain of Old Testament verses to prove that all are under sin, and he ends the catena with this one: "There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Romans 3:18). It is the summary of them all, for the loss of the fear of God is the fountain from which every other sin flows. The remedy is not merely to be frightened into better behaviour but to be given a new heart in Jesus Christ, in whom the fear of the LORD is restored as reverent love. Christ Himself was the man on whom "the spirit... of the fear of the LORD" rested (Isaiah 11:2-3), the one human being who kept God always before His eyes; and by His Spirit He writes that same reverence on the hearts of His people, "I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me" (Jeremiah 32:40). Where sin once dictated its oracle, the Spirit of Christ now speaks, teaching the redeemed to keep God before their eyes and to fear Him in love.

Word Study

"how excellent," Hebrew mah-yaqar (מַה־יָּקָר), how precious, how costly. With verse 5 the psalm turns abruptly from the wickedness of man to the greatness of God, and the change is like stepping out of a cellar into open sky. God's mercy is "in the heavens," His faithfulness reaches "unto the clouds," His righteousness is "like the great mountains," His judgments are "a great deep" (vv5-6). Then verse 7 sums it up in wonder: "How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God!" The word yaqar means precious and costly, a treasure of great price.

"lovingkindness," chesed (חֶסֶד), steadfast covenant love. The treasure being weighed is God's steadfast covenant love -- not a passing kindness but the loyal love by which He binds Himself to His people.

"put their trust," yechesayun (יֶחֱסָיוּן), take refuge. The response to such mercy is trust: "therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings." They run to God for shelter, and it is the preciousness of His love that draws them.

"shadow of thy wings," tzel kenafekha (צֵל כְּנָפֶיךָ). They hide beneath His wings as chicks beneath the mother bird, or as the worshipper beneath the outstretched wings of the cherubim over the ark.

Explanation

Watch the scale of these verses and then the sudden shift. In verses 5-6 David measures God's attributes against the whole vertical span of creation: mercy as high as the heavens, faithfulness up to the clouds, righteousness as immovable as the great mountains, judgments as unfathomable as the sea. It is a deliberate attempt to say the unsayable, that God's love and justice are immeasurable in every direction, up, out, and down. And then, in verse 7, all that immensity narrows to something a frightened creature can fit inside: "the shadow of thy wings." The love too vast to measure is also small enough to hide under. That is the wonder David is pressing, the immense has made itself intimate; the mercy that fills the heavens stoops to become a covert for a single trembling soul.

Gospel Focus

"The children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings", the sheltering wings of God are opened to sinners in Jesus Christ, who longed to gather His people as a hen gathers her chickens (Matthew 23:37). The costly, "precious" lovingkindness of this psalm is the very love that "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Romans 8:32); the price of yaqar mercy was the blood of Christ, "the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish" (1 Peter 1:19). In Him the immeasurable love of God comes down to a place we can enter: those who trust in Jesus are hidden in Him, "your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3), sheltered under wings that were themselves stretched out and pierced upon the cross. The invitation of Psalm 36 is the invitation of the gospel: flee from the cold house of sin, where transgression whispers its oracle, and take refuge under the wings of the God whose costly mercy fills the heavens and yet stoops to cover you in Christ.

Word Study

"fountain," Hebrew meqor (מְקוֹר), a spring, a source welling up. The section that began with hiding under God's wings now describes the feast enjoyed there: the sheltered are "abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house," and given to drink "of the river of thy pleasures" (v8). Verse 9 names the source of it all: "For with thee is the fountain of life." God does not merely give life; He is its wellspring.

"of life," chayyim (חַיִּים). The spring is a spring of life itself -- the ever-flowing source from which all life comes, so that nothing lives except out of Him.

"in thy light," be'orekha (בְּאוֹרֶךָ). Then a second, quieter marvel: "in thy light shall we see light." God is not only the source of life but the medium of all true seeing.

"shall we see," nir'eh (נִרְאֶה). As the eye can see nothing without an outside light, so the soul perceives nothing rightly except in the light of God.

"light," or (אוֹר). The same word ends the line as began it: light seen in light. He is both what we see by and what, at last, we most long to see.

Explanation

These verses are quietly full of Eden. The "river of thy pleasures" is, in Hebrew, the river of adanim, a word from the same root as Eden, the garden of delight, whose river "went out of Eden to water the garden" (Genesis 2:10). Add the "fountain of life," which echoes the tree of life and the water of life, and the "fatness of thy house," and the picture is unmistakable: the psalm relocates paradise to the presence of God. What was lost at the gates of Eden is found again in communion with the LORD. And the closing line makes a claim worth pausing over: "in thy light shall we see light." It is not only that God shows us things; it is that all seeing whatsoever depends on Him, as sight depends on a light outside the eye. Take away His light and we are not merely uninformed but blind; every true perception we have ever had was borrowed from His shining.

Gospel Focus

"With thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light", both the fountain and the light are given to us in Jesus Christ. He is the fountain of life, who cried, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (John 7:37), and promised "a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14); the river of God's pleasures flows to us in the living water of His Spirit. And He is the light in whom we see light: "In him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4); "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). We come to know God, and everything else truly, only in the light of Christ, for "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). And the Eden lost to us is restored in Him, for the story ends where it began, at "a pure river of water of life" and "the tree of life" in the city of God (Revelation 22:1-2). Come to Jesus, the fountain and the light, and drink, and see.