IT is remarkable that neither the first nor the second psalm has any title. Titles are so much the rule in the first and second books of the Psalter, that, when they are absent, their absence requires to be accounted for. As thirty-eight out of the forty-one psalms in this section are distinctly assigned to David, we must suppose that the compiler did not view this psalm as his. Perhaps he did not know the author. Perhaps, if he was himself the author, he shrank from giving himself the prominence which could not but have attached to him if his name had, in a certain sense, headed the collection. Reticence would have specially become Solomon, if he was the author.
Commentators have generally recognized that this psalm is introductory and prefatory. Jerome says that many called it "the Preface of the Holy Ghost." Some of the Fathers did not even regard it as a psalm at all, but as a mere preface, and so reckoned the second psalm as the first (in many manuscripts of the New Testament, the reading is "first psalm" instead of "second psalm" in Act 13:33). The composition is, as Hengstenberg observes, "a short compendium of tile main subject of the Psalms, viz. that God has appointed salvatlon to the righteous, perdition to the wicked; this is the great truth with which the sacred bards grapple amid all the painful experiences of life which apparently indicate the reverse."
The psalm divides naturally into two nearly equal portions. In Psa 1:1-3 the character and condition of the righteous are described, and their reward is promised them. In Psa 1:4-6 the condition of the wicked is considered, and their ultimate destruction predicted.
Psa 1:1
Blessed is the man; literally, blessings are to the man. But the Authorized Version exactly gives the sense (comp. Psa 2:12). That walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.
The margin gives, "or wicked," and this is probably the best rendering of the word used (רשׁעים). The righteous man is first described negatively, under three heads.
(1) He "does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly:" i.e. he does not throw in his lot with the wicked does not participate in their projects or designs;
(2) he standeth not in the way of sinners; i.e. he does not take part in their actions, does not follow the same moral paths; and
(3) he sitteth not in the seat of the scornful; i.e. has no fellowship with them in the "scorn" which they cast upon religion. The word used for scornful (לֵץ) is Solomonian (Pro 1:22; Pro 3:34; Pro 13:1), but in the Psalter occurs only in this place.
Psa 1:2
But his delight is in the Law of the Lord.
The righteous man is not described positively, under two heads.
(1) He delights in the Law (camp. Psa 109:16, 47, 77; Rom 7:22).
(2) He constantly mediates in it. The "Law" intended—תוֹרה, not התּוֹרה—is probably not the mere Law of Moses, but God’s law, as made known to man in any way.
Still, the resemblance of the passage to Jos 1:8 shows the Law of Moses to have been very specially in the writer’s thoughts. In HIS Law doth he meditate day and night; compare, besides Jos 1:8, the following: Psa 63:6; Psa 119:15, Psa 119:48, Psa 119:78, Psa 119:97. Constant meditation in God’s Law has characterized all saint.
Psa 1:3
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. The comparison of a man to a. tree is frequent in the Book of Job (Job 8:16, Job 8:17; Job 14:7-10; Job 15:32, Job 15:33, etc.), and occurs once in the Pentateuch (Num 24:6). We find it again in Psa 92:12-14, and frequently in the prophets. The "rivers of water" spoken of (פַּלְגַ־מָיִם) are undoubtedly the "streams" (Revised Version) or "canals of irrigation" so common both in Egypt and in Babylonia, by which fruit trees were planted, as especially date-palms, which need the vicinity of water. That such planting of trees by the waterside was known to the Israelites is evident, both from this passage and from several others, as Num 24:6; Ecc 2:5; Jer 17:8; Eze 17:5, Eze 17:8, etc. It is misplaced ingenuity to attempt to decide what particular tree the writer had in his mind, whether the palm, or the oleander, or any other, since he may not have been thinking of any particular tree. That bringeth forth his fruit in his season. Therefore not the oleander, which has no fruit, and is never planted in the East, but grows naturally along the courses of streams. His leaf also shall not wither. Compare the contrary threat of Isaiah against the wicked of his time, "Ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water" (Isa 1:30). And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper; rather, perhaps, in whatsoever he doeth he shall prosper.
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