Confide in Jehovah, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on faithfulness;
Psalm 37 speaks to a moment when the wicked seem to be winning and God's people feel the pull to fret or run. Verse 3 answers with four short commands. The last one is the hardest to translate: the ESV has "befriend faithfulness," while others read "feed on faithfulness" or "you shall be fed."
Verses 1 and 2 warn against fretting over evildoers. Verse 3 gives the positive answer.
The first exhortation is to peacefulness of spirit, and it is general and applies to the state of the mind. "Fret not yourself." When self-will and the desire of present satisfaction mixes itself with the love of righteousness... one is apt to fret oneself because evil has its way. All this is unbelief and self-will... Then comes the positive direction in what spirit we are to walk. What is the resource against the power of evil? "Trust in the Lord, and do good."
Each attitude works like a root, and each grows its own crop.
The fretful spirit is like a root out of which springs a good deal of evil. Confidence in God is a root out of which nothing but good springs. It sets the heart at rest. It calms the spirit. It frees us from fretting. Evildoers may be very irritating and annoying, even provoking in the extreme. But the Lord is on high, and He has not loosened His grip on things.
The order in the verse matters. Trust that leaves conduct untouched is not the trust this verse means.
"Trust in the Lord, and do good." This is the divine order. But to talk of trusting in the Lord while doing evil turns the grace of our God into an excuse for sin. It puts us completely into the hands of the devil, who only seeks our moral ruin... When we have a good conscience, we can lift up the head and move on through all sorts of difficulties. But trying to walk the path of faith with a bad conscience is the most dangerous thing in the world.
When evil looks unstoppable, the instinct is to get out. One writer shows what God says instead:
To the outward eye the wicked and the persecutors prosper, and get their own way without any hindrance. So the temptation would be to run, to look for refuge outside the borders of the land, where evil seemed to be winning. No, says the Spirit of God: "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on faithfulness." Feed on God's faithfulness, sure that He will not forget His tested and oppressed people, and that in His own time He will deal with their oppressors.
As a fugitive, David moved his parents to Moab for safety. Should he stay outside the land himself?
No; the word is David's own, once he had learned the lesson: "Dwell in the land, and truly you shall be fed." The land was Israel's inheritance, God's gift. Nothing, then, could take it from the faith that laid hold of it.
One writer weighs the renderings:
The simplest meaning seems to be "and nourish faithfulness," or "feed in security."
One writer applies it to Christians now:
We do not expect to "dwell in the land," for heaven is our home, but the words that follow apply to us, "truly you shall be fed"... If we do sincerely trust in the Lord then truly we shall feed on faithfulness — God's faithfulness. We shall so experience His faithfulness that it becomes our very food and drink.
Trust is the first of four steps in this psalm, and each prepares the next.
In Psalm 37 there are four conditions of soul in connection with this, and each is dependent on the other, or each is fitness for the next. "Trust in the Lord;" "Delight yourself in the Lord;" "Commit your way to the Lord;" "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him;" that is, wait till He acts for you.
And the promise does not rest on the strength of our grip:
Still we must never forget one thing. His trustworthiness does not depend in the least on how strong or weak our trust is. "If we are faithless, He remains faithful — for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). So here is a happy fact: those who are weak in faith, and so do not trust Him fully, still find Him wholly true.
- Fret → Trust. Fretting over evildoers mixes self-will into the love of righteousness. It is unbelief. Trust is the resource against the power of evil.
- Trust → Good. The order is fixed: trust first, then do good. Claiming to trust God while doing evil hands you over to ruin.
- Trust → Stay. "Dwell in the land" is a command not to flee. The inheritance is God's gift, and nothing can take it from the faith that holds it.
- Trust → Feed. The closing phrase reads better as feeding on faithfulness. God's own faithfulness becomes our food and drink.
- Trust → Rest. Verse 3 opens a ladder: trust, delight, commit, rest and wait. And weak trust still finds Him wholly true, because His faithfulness does not depend on ours.
and delight thyself in Jehovah, and he will give thee the desires of thy heart.
Psalm 37 speaks into a setting where dishonest people do well and the faithful get pushed around, and there it gives a command with a promise attached. So the question is practical: does God hand us whatever we want, or does something happen to our wanting first?
This psalm speaks to a small group under pressure, not to people whose lives are easy.
The Psalm applies to the faithful few who are left in the last days... verses 1, 7 and 8 are meant to encourage the weak few. In that coming time of trouble for Israel, evil of every kind will surround them. From the outside it looks like the wicked and the persecutors are doing well. They get their own way, and nothing stops them.
Nothing around the psalm writer could produce this delight. It had to come from somewhere else.
The Psalmist saw nothing in his surroundings that awakened delight — quite the opposite. The evildoers pressed in on every side with their persecuting and irritating ways. When all this is going on it is good to trust instead of fretting. It is also good to find a spring of gladness that never fails, outside the world the evildoers control. That spring of joy is in the Lord Himself.
Verse 3 tells the reader to trust and do good. Verse 4 is the next step, and it shapes what a person wants.
But trust in the Lord will lead further, to "Delight yourself in the LORD" (v. 4). When we find our whole pleasure in Him, we will always be in step with His pleasure. If our delight is in ourselves, our desires will be selfish. If our delight is in the Lord, we will want what pleases Him.
The promise holds because delight changes the person praying. It also explains why some prayers go unanswered, and others only half answered.
Why is this? The answer is simple. When we delight in the Lord, we delight in His holy will. His thoughts become our thoughts, His desires become our desires. When our thoughts and desires are far from His, our desires are not fulfilled. When our desires are partly in keeping with His, then our desires are only partly fulfilled. When our desires wholly agree with His, then, and only then, are all our desires fulfilled. It is good to enjoy God's people, and to find joy in the work of the Lord. But if we delight in these instead of in the Lord, we are in for big disappointments.
These desires have the Lord Himself as their object. The next verse tells the same person to hand over their situation and wait.
Next, delight yourself in the LORD: He will give the desires of the heart. Holy desires, which have Himself for their object, will be satisfied. But opposition, shame, perhaps false accusation, is there. "Commit your way to the LORD." How true this is! He always, as people say, has the last word, if we only have the faith to wait for it.
Read on its own, the verse can sound like a formula for getting what you want. One commentator warns against pulling such promises out of the rest of Scripture.
We cannot take isolated portions but the whole word of God. "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Delighting in the Lord forms desires that agree with the mind of God. "He gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them" — older translations read "sent leanness into their souls" — so we need to be on our guard about what we ask... about many other things we can only say, "If it is the Lord's will." Then we trust His wisdom as well as His power. Some seem to think power is the only thing. But we want to trust His love and wisdom.
The exchange runs both ways. The return is larger than the asking, but a divided heart never knows it.
Christ cannot live in a divided heart. If He enters it, He claims to be the undisputed Lord of its affections... If we delight in Him, He will delight in us, and in giving us the conscious enjoyment of Himself He gives far more than the desires of our hearts (Ps. 37:4). It takes an undivided eye to see Him, and an undivided heart to hold Him fast.
- Trust — the command lands on people who are surrounded by evil and tempted to fret. Trusting the Lord and doing good comes first.
- Delight — you have to draw the gladness from the Lord Himself, because the surroundings offer nothing to be glad about.
- Desire — delighting in Him reshapes what you want. His thoughts become your thoughts, and He answers the desires that agree with His.
- Discern — read the promise with the rest of Scripture. God once gave a people what they asked and sent a wasting disease with it, so we trust His wisdom and love, not only His power.
- Receive — He answers our delight in Him with His delight in us, and gives back more than we asked: the enjoyment of Himself.
Commit thy way unto Jehovah, and rely upon him he will bring [it] to pass;
Psalm 37 speaks to people surrounded by wrongdoers who get away with it, and verse 5 answers that pressure. What does it mean to hand your way over to God, and what does He then "bring to pass"?
The psalm looks ahead to a day when God sets everything right in public. But it speaks to the long wait before that day.
Psalm 37 is closely tied to the way God rules this world directly. That rule will be proved true when the meek inherit the land and the wicked are cut off. The time for God to display that rule in public has not come. Evil will no doubt press harder just before He puts it down. Until then it is still the time of patience, and the evil is there.
Some Bibles print another wording in the margin: "roll." That picture turns the command into relief, not one more duty.
"Commit your way to the Lord," or, as the margin has it, "Roll your way upon the Lord." How often our circumstances are so puzzling and hard that our way seems blocked and impossible. Sometimes people misjudge us, crush us, even persecute us. What can we do? We can roll the responsibility of our way upon the Lord, and rely on Him. There is immense relief in this. He takes the load off our weak shoulders and puts it on His strong ones.
One writer saw the same picture in a weight too heavy to lift.
Sometimes the load of care seems too heavy to cast it anywhere. Then the Lord invites us to "roll your way upon the Lord" (Ps. 37:5, margin). As children in Canada, we made great snowballs in the winter. When they got too heavy to lift, we could still roll them. So roll that great load of care on Him, "because it is a matter of care to Him, concerning you," as the original Greek puts it.
The verse does not stand alone. It comes after two earlier commands, and that order is deliberate.
Committing our way to the Lord assumes, of course, that we are in the middle of trouble and testing from our enemies. Let us remember that it is not the first instruction, nor the second, but the third. It takes for granted that we are trusting in the Lord and finding our delight in Him. Then, and only then, will we be ready to roll our way upon Him and know that, as a happy result, "He will bring it to pass."
Read across the whole paragraph, these commands form one continuous answer to the temptation the psalm describes.
(vv. 3-11) Faith in the Lord is the way of escape from this snare. So the word to the godly soul is: "Trust in the Lord"; "Delight yourself in the Lord"; "Commit your way to the Lord"; "Be still before the Lord"; and "wait patiently for Him."
Committing is a single act. The trusting that follows is daily, and the verse joins the two.
In daily life we need this, because each day brings its own needs. Only the Lord can guide us well, so that we do not take a wrong step. Once we commit our way to Him, He expects full confidence in His leading. We are not to be afraid. We trust Him for every step, with the sure assurance of faith.
The outcome is that God makes your righteousness plain for all to see. That is His to give, and He is never rushed.
"Commit your way to the Lord." How true this is! He always has, as people say, the last word, if only we have the faith to wait for it. He will bring about the result the righteous heart desires, and make its righteousness clear.
Job shows what this looks like — and warns about the delay we create ourselves. (Job was the man who lost everything and was then accused by his own friends of deserving it.)
When his friends slandered Job, he felt it deeply. For a long time he fought for his own reputation instead of committing his way to the Lord. When he finally did this, God soon brought forth his righteousness as the light and his justice as the noonday.
The same command feels different to different people. The difference is not in their circumstances.
The instruction "Roll your way upon the Lord" is a hard saying where godliness is at a low ebb. Where it is a full-flowing tide it is easy, and a delightful relief.
- Setting — The psalm speaks to the time before God puts evil down. Until then it is "the time of patience, and the evil is there."
- Sequence — Committing is the third instruction, not the first. It assumes you are already trusting and already delighting in Him.
- Roll — The word pictures a load too heavy to lift. You roll it off your shoulders onto His.
- Then keep trusting — The handover is one act; the confidence for every following step is daily.
- He acts — In His own time He clears your name. He always has the last word, if you have the faith to wait for it.
and he will bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
Psalm 37 speaks to people who do right while wrongdoers prosper. Verse 6 is God's promise to the one who hands his case over to Him. Two questions follow: what does that vindication look like, and how long must it wait?
Verse 6 follows a condition. It belongs to the one who rolls his way onto the Lord, and it gives more than he asked for:
Commit your way to Him as well, and difficulties will disappear before Jehovah's sufficiency. Not only will your purposes come about; He will also make your righteousness plain as the light, and your right as the noonday.
Commentators note that the psalm builds in steps, and this one comes late. You cannot roll your way onto God without first trusting Him and delighting in Him:
Committing our way to the Lord assumes, of course, that we are in the middle of trouble and testing from our enemies. Let us remember that it is not the first item of instruction, nor the second, but the third. It takes for granted that we are trusting in the Lord, and finding our delight in Him. Then, and only then, will we be ready to roll our way upon Him, and know that as a happy result, "He will bring it to pass."
The same writer adds that the state of your soul decides how this command feels:
The instruction, "Roll your way upon the Lord," is a hard saying where piety is at a low ebb. Where it is a full-flowing tide it is easy and a delightful relief.
Job is the worked example. His own friends slandered him, and for a long time he fought back:
It is His holy pleasure to bring forth a full vindication of His saints, when His work of discipline in us is complete. Oppression and slander are very hard to bear, and twice as hard when they come from friends. When his friends slandered Job he felt it deeply, but for a long time he fought for his own character instead of committing his way to the Lord. When at last he did this, God soon brought forth his righteousness as the light and his judgment as the noonday. As soon as he condemned himself and justified God, his righteousness became clear. God Himself bore witness that at last he had spoken the thing that was right. Then his judgment was as the noonday, for he was vindicated before men and blessed by God.
Since the verse says He will bring it forth, fighting your own corner works against the promise:
However right you may be, fighting for yourself will hinder the vindication the Lord can give in His own time. From the very fact of your fighting, people will never give you credit for singleness of eye. It always stirs up opposition in others. Leave it in the hands of the Lord, and He appears. He will make it clear who is on His side and who is against Him.
One writer applies this to a Christian wronged by a church decision:
The church can make mistakes, and a decision, even one taken by the majority, may be wrong (2 Cor. 2:6). He who believes he is wrongly treated should commit his way in confidence to the Lord (Ps. 37:5-6). Humility, patience and a spirit of meekness are necessary in all.
The promise runs on God's timetable, not ours:
The time for the direct display of God's government has not come. No doubt the power of evil will press down harder just before God puts it down. Even now, though, it is the time of patience, and the evil is there. Until Christ comes, it is in principle the evil day.
That is why the full brightness of verse 6 is not always seen in this life:
God's righteousness is not fully seen in this life, either in rewarding those who do good or in judging those who do evil. Job's friends were wrong to argue otherwise. Now the people of God often have to endure suffering while the wicked prosper. But in the world to come everything will be brought to a conclusion. In the light of that day God's suffering people need not be angry with their enemies. They need not take revenge, or even defend themselves. They only have to wait God's time, when all will be dealt with in perfect righteousness.
- Commit — roll your way onto God, and He settles both the matter and your good name.
- Order — trust Him, delight in Him, then commit your way. Without the first two, the third feels impossible.
- Job — he stopped defending his character and justified God. Only then did his righteousness shine out, and God vindicated him before others.
- Silence — fight your own battles and you hinder God's vindication. You also make onlookers doubt your motives.
- Daybreak — this is still the time of patience. The light and the noonday are certain, but they come in God's time.
Rest in Jehovah, and wait patiently for him fret not thyself because of him that prospereth in his way, because of the man that bringeth mischievous devices to pass.
Psalm 37 speaks to a situation every believer meets: evil succeeds, and the person who ignores God gets ahead. Verse 7 answers with three commands — be still, wait, stop fretting — and commentators read it as one step in a sequence, not stand-alone advice.
The psalm looks to a day when God will openly set the world right, and that day has not come. Verse 7 speaks into the gap.
The time when God openly displays His government has not come. No doubt evil will press harder just before God puts it down. Even now, though, it is the time of patience, and the evil is here. Until Christ comes, it is in principle the evil day... These exhortations all rest on one certainty. Jehovah is above all the evil. He loves justice. He does not forget the righteous and those who trust in Him. In the end His way will have the upper hand.
Verse 7 comes after three earlier calls in the psalm, and each one prepares for the next. The writers quote an older translation, "Rest in the Lord," where the ESV reads "Be still before the LORD."
Psalm 37 gives four conditions of soul here. Each one depends on the other; each one fits you for the next. "Trust in the Lord." "Delight yourself in the Lord." "Commit your way to the Lord." "Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him" — that is, wait until He acts for you.
Once you hand the way over, rest follows. The matter is no longer yours to carry.
We have rolled our way onto the Lord, so the responsibility and weight of it are now His. Now we rest in Him and wait for Him to act. The wicked may still appear to flourish and bring his wicked schemes to pass, but that no longer frets us. God is completely able to deal with all that, in His own time and way. We wait patiently for Him and rest in the meanwhile. The whole business is off our hands — it is His, not ours.
The margin of some Bibles renders the phrase differently, and that wording explains what the rest actually looks like in practice.
The Hebrew idiom, "Be silent to the Lord," is very expressive. It suggests that we have truly committed our way to Him, and are ready to wait patiently for Him to act. So we have nothing more to say. When faith is low we become like complaining children. We fret because others seem better off than we are, and we keep interrupting our parents with questions and complaints. We are truly happy when faith is strong. Then, as far as questions and complaints go, we are silent to the Lord.
The psalm repeats this command, and one writer sees God's care in it for a person close to giving up.
God knows where the believer is in danger of breaking down before the day of deliverance dawns. So He encourages him to be quiet and to wait... The psalm stresses the call to be patient under evil. Three times in the first eight verses we meet the words "Fret not yourself": "Fret not yourself because of evildoers" (verse 1); "fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way" (7); "Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil" (8). We are so quick to make mistakes when we judge men and things!
Their success also exposes what is in us.
It may raise our anger to see wickedness prosper. We should treat this as a test of ourselves: do we have the self-control to refrain from anger and forsake wrath (v. 8)? Fretting will not profit us; it only harms us.
Rest is not giving up. It guards the heart from a reaction that would drag it into the very evil it hates.
Resting in the Lord keeps the soul from anger and wrath when it sees the wicked succeed in getting what they want. To fret would only lead the soul into evil. In the Lord's own time the evildoers will be cut off, and those who wait upon the Lord will inherit the land.
Later in the psalm a second kind of waiting appears, and the two are not the same thing.
We are not only to wait patiently for the Lord, but also to "wait on the Lord, and keep His way." Waiting for Him means exercising trustful patience until He intervenes. Waiting on Him means maintaining that holy fellowship and communion with Him that ensures obedience to His will, while we wait for His intervention.
- Trust — stillness is step four. Trusting, delighting and committing come first, and each one fits you for the next.
- Hand over — roll your way onto Him. The weight and the responsibility become His, and the business stops being yours.
- Be silent — the Hebrew idiom means having nothing more to say, instead of interrupting God like a fretful child.
- Refuse to fret — the command comes three times in eight verses. Fretting gains nothing, and it can pull the soul into evil.
- Wait for Him — wait until He acts. In His own time He will cut off the evildoers, and those who wait will inherit the land.