Psalm 1

1: 1 - Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

The psalm opens with a beatitude, like Jesus's Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5), a declaration of those who are blessed. The Hebrew adjective 'ashrey, 'blessed,' used here is to be distinguished from baruk (derived from the verb barak) which essentially means 'endowed with power for success, prosperity, fecundity, or longevity."1 Baruk is a benediction. 'ashrey, on the other hand, is more a congratulation, and it is used only of humans, never of God. 'ashrey avers that the person is to be envied as someone who is what everybody ought—or should hope—to be. He is the exemplar of the good life. As a result, the word is often translated "happy."

What then makes such a person?

First, by means of a hard-edged contrast between what such a person does not do (v1, "he does not walk in the counsel of the wicked . . .") and what he habitually does (v2, "but his delight . . . and on it he meditates . . ."), the psalm asserts that such a person is, above all else, righteous. This picture is then elaborated in v3a by an extended metaphor ("He is like a tree . . ."). The stanza is brought to a conclusion by an all-encompassing assertion in v3b that "everything he does prospers'.

With three negative predications, v1 asserts that such a person has nothing to do with the wicked. The three negative verbs 'does not walk, does not stand, does not sit' are cast in the perfective mood, thus depicting these as the deliberate choices and consistent habits of such a person.2

Halak, 'walk,' is the primary Hebrew verb for describing a person's behaviour and lifestyle; the ideal is, of course, to "walk in the way of the Lord." To 'walk in the counsel of the wicked' is the most pointed way of expressing the opposite of the constant call in the Old Testament to 'walk in the way of the Lord.'3

In modern parlance, to "stand in the way" of someone is to obstruct or hinder him. The Hebrew expression—'to stand in the way of sinners'—speaks rather of standing in solidarity with those whose ways are inclined towards evil. "To stand in the way of sinners" is to be one of them.

The noun letsim, 'mockers' or 'scoffers,' is found most frequently in the book of Proverbs, where it is paired frequently with fools, the simpletons, and the wicked. Prov 21:24 comes as close as we can to a definition of the mocker: "The proud and arrogant man, Mocker' is his name; he behaves with overweening pride." The mocker sneers at what is right and just, and his presence invites trouble; "Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; quarrels and insults are ended," declares Prov 22:10. His may not be the most grievous of sins but he is the most incorrigible of sinners. With persons like him, the blessed man does not share the company; their presence is to be avoided.

Some expositors see a progression in this series of verbs of increasing distancing away from God, advancing from an initial, perhaps occasional, concession to the advice of the wicked to camaraderie in the ways of the sinners, and the eventual culmination in residing (yashav) in the dwelling (moshav) of the scoffers. Other commentators argue against such a progression on the grounds that the three lines should probably be understood as parallels. Parallelism by itself, however, does not disallow such a progressive interpretation. However we understand the relationship between the three lines, they and the perfective tense in which the verbs are cast, make a simple point, i.e., "the righteous decisively do not fellowship with unrighteousness, while the three nouns (counsel, way, seat/dwelling) draw 'attention to the realms of thinking, behaving, and belonging, in which a person's fundamental choice of allegiance is made and carried through."4