Truly have I purified my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency
Asaph has just described the easy life of people who ignore God. Now he turns the comparison on himself: keeping his heart clean looks like wasted effort. Commentators treat this honest complaint as both a real temptation and a verdict the Psalm will later overturn.
The two images — a cleansed heart and washed hands — cover the inward and the outward side of a godly life. One writer puts the complaint into everyday speech:
In verses 13 and 14 he describes the solemn effect on a godly soul of dwelling on evil while out of communion with God. He is tempted to think it is all in vain to have a clean heart and innocent hands. What profit is there in restraining my thoughts and keeping away from wickedness? After all, the wicked prosper, while I am plagued and chastened every morning.
The complaint is not a neutral report on the world. It is how things look from one particular position. The same writer sums that position up in three strokes:
This then is the picture presented by a soul out of communion. The wicked prospering, the godly suffering, and God indifferent. The government of God apparently completely gone from the earth.
Feeling this way is natural. Saying it out loud is another matter, and Asaph himself decides against it:
How natural this seems to anyone who knows anything of his own heart! But is it right to give way like this by contrasting one's own lot with the flourishing wicked? No, says the Psalmist, it is not. He would not speak like that, however great the temptation. If he really did, he would offend against the generation of God's children.
The complaint starts with what the eye takes in, and the mind then reasons from it. That process cannot give the sufferer what he needs:
The eye affects the heart, naturally, for joy or grief. But the result of the heart's reasoning about what the eyes see is always profitless and empty. There is nothing there capable of giving relief and compensation to a troubled spirit under the pressure of an evil day. Light is to be found in God alone.
Distress at evil is right in itself. But something else can travel alongside it — a wish for our portion now:
We see the ungodly having their way, so that God seems to have forgotten, and the heart is envious. But too often in our case it shows that the heart would still like its portion here — at least a portion here as well as one to come. The sorrow at the power of evil in the world is right. But in our minds it mixes with a liking for our own way and our own judgment in setting the evil aside… The ungodly prosper in the world. What a riddle! Where is God's government? What is the use of good?
Asaph reads his daily chastening as evidence that his clean heart bought him nothing. Others read the same daily dealing as the mark of a son:
There is also the solemn reminder that if we are without chastisement, which all share in, then we are illegitimate children and not sons… God chastises His children. Asaph did not understand this truth… His difficulty ended when he went into the sanctuary of God, and the Holy Spirit also answers and explains it in Hebrews 12:8.
One writer adds a purpose for the trial. God sent it as "a necessary 'trial of faith' — a faith that will triumph no matter how severe the trial" (L M Grant).
God had promised Israel prosperity in this life. So the contradiction hit Asaph hard. Our case is different:
It is not very surprising that in an ungodly world the ungodly prosper. What is surprising is that the godly should so often be upset as they watch it. There was some excuse for Asaph. He lived in a day when heavenly things were not clearly revealed. Back then God spoke of blessing His people Israel in their basket and in their store. We live in a day when heavenly things are clearly revealed. As Christians we have been plainly told that "through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God."
- The look — the complaint starts at the eye. He watches the wicked prosper, then reasons from what he sees.
- The loss — out of touch with God, he loses his confidence. The wicked prosper, the godly suffer, and God looks indifferent.
- The lie — that a clean heart and clean hands bring no profit. Natural to feel, but wrong to say aloud, since it would offend God's children.
- The light — relief is not found in the scene at all but in God alone, and Asaph's difficulty ended in the sanctuary.
- The lesson — the daily chastening he counted against himself is the mark of a son. The trial is meant to produce a faith that triumphs.
For all the day have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.
Psalm 73 records a man who kept his heart clean and found that it bought him nothing but pain. Meanwhile, people who ignored God lived at ease. Verse 14 adds up his side of that account. It raises the question the whole psalm exists to answer: is God good to His own?
The verse measures suffering by the clock. One writer notes that the trouble filled the day, then began again at daybreak:
"All the day long" he had been plagued, not only during the day, but again when a new morning broke (v. 14). It seemed never-ending, but God sent it to be a necessary "trial of faith" — a faith that will triumph no matter how severe the trial.
Verse 14 is not a bare report. It is evidence in an argument against the worth of his own godliness:
The outward prosperity of the wicked stands beside the suffering of the godly. So the soul is tempted to think that it is useless to have cleansed his heart and washed his hands. What benefit is there in having a pure heart and clean hands, if one is plagued all the day and chastened every morning, while those who are wicked prosper?
Everything the psalmist describes is accurate as far as it goes. What warped it was where he stood when he looked:
He lets us know how it came about that his confidence in God was so badly shaken. The secret comes out. He was occupied with evil while out of touch with God. So he had a limited and twisted view of the evil. He saw the prosperity of the wicked, and he saw the adversity of the godly. As a result he envied the portion of the wicked, he thought little of the portion of the godly, and he almost lost confidence in God… All that he says of the wicked is true, but it is not the full truth. It is the wicked as seen by a saint who is, for the moment, out of communion with God.
Commentators differ over who is talking in verses 13 and 14. Most read it as the psalmist's own private thought. Others read it as the words of a whole people who counted themselves God's and drew the obvious conclusion from their circumstances:
The enemies of God boast on unhumbled. The foolish and wicked are full of prosperity, untouched so far. So God's people (Israel is here viewed as a whole) join the ungodly, their heart not being for God, and say, "How does God know?" They compare what came of their being, as they supposed, God's people — that is, chastisement — with the untouched prosperity of those who did not care for God. "They say" reaches, I judge, to the end of verse 14.
The daily correction the psalmist resented was the very thing that proved he belonged. One writer states the rule behind it:
God never disciplines or strikes us unless there is something in us that requires it… So it is; God disciplines His children. "If you are left without discipline," says the Spirit, "then you are illegitimate children and not sons." Asaph did not understand this truth. So he says, "I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind." But of himself he says, "All the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning." (Psalm 73:3-14.) Going into the sanctuary of God removed his difficulty.
Have these words ever been your own complaint? One writer says the complaint itself shows where you stand:
"Nature shrinks," as we often say… "All the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning," may be its sore complaint. But what does that prove, except that we are outside the "sanctuary"? That is the one place where we can grasp what all this means. There we learn to see our nearness to God as the very thing that makes all this painstaking care and love necessary. That nearness also secures it to us.
- Sight. The believer measures his life against the comfort of the ungodly. He sees unbroken trouble, morning after morning, and no return at all for a clean heart.
- Slip. The fault lies in the viewpoint, not the facts. A soul taken up with evil while out of touch with God sees a limited and twisted picture, and almost loses confidence in Him.
- Speaker. Commentators differ on whose words these are — the psalmist's own, or those of a whole people who compared their chastening with the untouched ease of the wicked and asked, "How does God know?"
- Sonship. The daily correction he resented was the proof he wanted. God disciplines His children. A life without that discipline marks someone out as no son at all.
- Sanctuary. The complaint of verse 14 shows a man standing outside God's presence. Inside it, the same dealings read as nearness, care, and a trial of faith that will triumph.