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 season this psalm addresses
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.
Rest is the fourth step, not the first
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.
What "rest in the Lord" says in Hebrew
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 prospering wicked man as a test of us
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.
Where fretting leads, and where resting leads
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.
Waiting for Him and waiting on Him
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.
Summary
- 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.