RCL reading for Sunday, May 24, 2009:
Excerpt from the New Revised Standard Version
via Oremus (http://bible.oremus.org)
Psalm 1
1 Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
STUDY GUIDE
What does the passage tell us about God?
What does the passage tell us about human beings and the relationships between people?
What does the passage say about the relationship between God and human beings?
How does the passage call us to change?
Adapted from “Theological Bible Study,” from In Dialogue with Scripture: An Episcopal Guide to Studying the Bible, ed. Linda L. Grenz (Episcopal Church Center, 1993), p. 96.
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Ken Brown says ...
ReplyDeleteThe psalmist draws a striking contrast between two lifestyles. One is characterized as dedicated , productive and righteous, The other is pictured as dry and wasted and wicked. The entire psalm is an example, capsule in vs. 6, of antithetic parallelism. These are the thought rhymes of Hebrew poetry. O the blessedness of the personh who has a focus on “the Torah of Yahweh”, the writer’s sacred Scripture. The revelation of God’s nature, will and way will bless any heart. LORD, KJV put it, translates the significant divine person Name of Israel’s God. Used some 6000 times in the Old Testament, it always bears the ideas of eternal existence, all sufficiency and divine immanence. Verse 6 says the LORD “watches over” which translates a verb suggesting “knowledge which stands in a living and intimate relation to its object, and is at one and the same time a turning towards it and an embracing of it, in love”. (Delitzsch)