Study sheet
Psalm 1: The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked
Two ways, two influences, two outcomes
Key verse
Loading Psalm 1:3…
The psalm's central image, and the one verse that shows the whole argument at once: a life described entirely by what supplies it.
Introduction
Psalm 1 opens the Psalter with instruction rather than prayer or praise. It sets out two contrasting ways of life. Verses 1 to 3 describe the : refusing corrupting counsel, delighting in the instruction of the LORD, meditating on it continually, and, like a tree planted by water, bearing fruit in season and remaining stable. Verses 4 to 5 deny all of it of the wicked, who are like chaff driven by the wind and who will not stand in the judgment. Verse 6 closes with the LORD's own contrast between the two ways.
How the chapter is built
The way of the righteous. What is refused, what is loved instead, and the tree that image produces: planted, watered, fruitful in season, unwithered.
The way of the wicked. Not so. The tree image is reversed into chaff driven by wind, and verse 5 says what that instability cannot survive.
The LORD's final contrast. Two ways named side by side. The LORD knows one. The other perishes.
Key themes
- The two ways
- Delight in God's instruction
- Rootedness and instability
- Fruitfulness
- Judgment
What the chapter teaches
- What shapes a person matters, and the psalm treats it as the first question.
- Delight in God's instruction produces a life different in kind, not just in behaviour.
- The psalm contrasts rootedness with instability.
- Fruitfulness is connected to where the life is planted and what feeds it.
- The psalm ends with two ways and two outcomes.
Verses worth marking
Loading Psalm 1:2…
The turn of the psalm. here is first a matter of delight, and the meditation follows from it.
Loading Psalm 1:3…
The psalm's central image, and every clause in it describes supply rather than effort.
Loading Psalm 1:6…
The closing contrast, and the only verse in which the LORD is the one acting.
Carry it with you
- Before you accept advice or influence this week, compare it with the instruction of Scripture and ask honestly whether it is leading you toward the way described in Psalm 1:1-3 or away from it.
- Choose one passage and go over it more than once at two set times in the day, morning and last thing, since Psalm 1:2 describes attention that returns rather than a single sitting.
- Name your supply out loud. Psalm 1:3 describes a tree by its water, so write down what your thinking has actually been fed by this month, in the order of how much time each thing took.
- Look at where you are seated rather than only at what you have done. Psalm 1:1 moves from walking to sitting, so identify one setting you have grown settled in and decide whether it is one you would choose again.
- Take the phrase in its season seriously in a season with no visible fruit. Rather than concluding something is wrong, check the supply the way Psalm 1:3 does, and keep the tree where the water is.
Scripture interprets Scripture
- Deuteronomy 30:15-20 — Moses sets life and death, blessing and curse, before Israel and calls them to choose life. The two ways of Psalm 1:6 are the categories Israel already knew.
- Joshua 1:7-8 — The instruction of the LORD is not to depart from Joshua's mouth, and he is to meditate on it day and night. Almost the wording of Psalm 1:2, given to a man facing a task he cannot manage on his own.
- Jeremiah 17:5-8 — The same two pictures, a shrub and a tree planted by water, tied explicitly to where a person's trust rests. It guards Psalm 1 from being read as moral effort.
- Matthew 7:13-27 — Two gates, two roads, two trees and two foundations. Jesus keeps the structure of Psalm 1 and attaches it to hearing and doing his words.
- John 15:1-8 — Fruitfulness comes from remaining in Christ, and apart from him nothing can be done. The same logic of supply that Psalm 1:3 pictures with a watered tree.
- Psalm 92:12-14 — The flourish like a palm and still bear fruit in old age, another psalm using planted and fruitful together.
Memory verse
Loading Psalm 1:2…
This is the verse the psalm turns on. Carrying it means carrying the moment the description stops being about what is avoided and becomes about what is loved.
Summary
Psalm 1 opens the Psalter by teaching rather than praying. It describes a person shaped by the instruction of the LORD, compares him to a tree beside water, and then denies every part of that picture of the wicked, who are chaff in the wind.
The psalm ends with two ways rather than two verdicts. The LORD knows the way of the . The way of the wicked perishes.
Questions to take back to the text
- What does the blessed person refuse to do in the opening verse of the psalm?
- What replaces the influence described in verse 1?
- What makes the tree different from the chaff?
A short prayer
LORD, You know the way of the righteous. I have taken counsel this week from people and places I never examined, and I have sat comfortably where I should not have settled. Give me delight in Your instruction, not duty only, so that I turn it over in the morning and again at night. Plant me where Your water runs. Let me bear fruit when the season comes and not fret in the months between, and keep my leaf from withering when the heat arrives. Show me plainly which way I am walking, and hold me on the one You know. Amen.