Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Fountain of Life
Psalms 36:1-12
1 For the Chief Musician. By David, the servant of Yahweh. A revelation is within my heart about the disobedience of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes. · WEB
Four verses on the interior life of a wicked man, then five on the size of God's kindness, and the psalm never joins them.
A revelation is within my heart about the disobedience of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes Psalms 36:1.
The psalm opens with the mechanism rather than the behavior. The diagnosis is a missing fear, and Paul places this verse at the end of his chain of quotations proving universal guilt, as the summary of all the rest Romans 3:18.
For he flatters himself in his own eyes, too much to detect and hate his sin Psalms 36:2.
The most acute line in the psalm. The problem is not that he approves of his sin; it is that he cannot see it, and the reason he cannot is that he is flattering himself. Self-deception is presented as an achievement requiring continuous effort, and the twelfth psalm's flattering lips have been turned inward.
He plots iniquity on his bed. He sets himself in a way that is not good. He doesn't abhor evil Psalms 36:4.
On his bed — the same setting the fourth psalm recommended for honest self-examination Psalms 4:4, used here for planning. The quiet hour is available for either.
Your loving kindness, Yahweh, is in the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like a great deep Psalms 36:5–6.
The change is total and no transition is offered. Four verses of a man's shrunken interior, and then four dimensions of God, measured against the biggest things there are: sky, mountains, the deep. The psalm sets a self-flattering heart beside the height of the heavens and lets the reader do the arithmetic.
Yahweh, you preserve man and animal Psalms 36:6. Placed at the end of the list of immensities, and it is the smallest and most surprising item on it.
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the abundance of your house. You will make them drink of the river of your pleasures Psalms 36:8.
The verse is unusually indulgent by the standards of this collection. Abundance twice, a river, pleasures — the word is the plural of Eden. What is offered is not sufficiency but excess.
For with you is the spring of life. In your light we will see light Psalms 36:9.
Two of the most compressed lines in the Psalter. Life is not a possession God has but a spring he is, and light is not something we bring to the examination of God — it is the medium in which anything is visible at all, including itself.
There the workers of iniquity are fallen Psalms 36:12. The psalm ends by looking back at where it started, and reports the outcome in the past tense.
settled What this mark means