Ultimate Consequences (1:5–6)

How one lives and where one takes a stand has life-shaping consequences. The final set of comparisons sets out the contrasting ways and consequent result of the lives of the righteous and the wicked. The use of “two ways”—of righteousness and wickedness, wisdom and folly—is a characteristic teaching tool of biblical wisdom. Such a contrast provides readers with both positive and negative examples for life. This is the reason that so much of the proverbial literature (esp. that in Prov. 10–31) employs the poetic form of opposing parallelism.

The appearance in these verses of words and ideas from the opening verse suggests the psalmist is intentionally balancing the beginning admonition with this concluding one. Verse 1 cautions the reader to beware of seeking and accepting the influence of three categories of persons—the “wicked,” the “sinners,” and the “mockers”—or of taking up residence there. Here the two most general of these categories—the “wicked” and “sinners”—return as examples of those who will be unable to “stand” in the final judgment. Nor will these guilty ones be able to associate with the assembly of those who are declared “righteous” (1:5b baʿadat ṣaddiqim; cf. 1:1b baʿaṣat rešaʿim) in that same judgment. The similar wording is intended to drive home the fact that the one who enjoys the “counsel of the wicked” will ultimately be cut off from any association with the “assembly of the righteous.”

The way of the righteous. The “way” (derek) of a person is a chosen life path that, if left unchanged, determines one’s ultimate goal. Biblical wisdom literature often contrasts the way of the righteous and the wicked (wise and fool) as a way of demonstrating the consequences of evil and encouraging righteousness (cf., e.g., Prov. 10:9, 16, 24; 15:19, 24, 26, 29; 16:4, 7, 17, 25). Here at the end of Psalm 1, the reader is presented with a choice: the way of righteousness that God oversees or the way of wickedness that will ultimately perish. The verb that the niv translates “watches over” is ydʿ (“know”). Knowing in Hebrew understanding is not simply intellectual knowledge of information about something or someone. Rather, knowledge is the end result of experience and relationship. Thus, the “way of the righteous” is one that God knows well from experience because he has traveled it before and knows all its twists and turns. He is the great pathfinder who has blazed the safe and secure trail for those who come behind. By contrast, the way of the wicked seeks to explore territory in which God is absent and consequently will lead to separation from God and destruction.