Psalm 1

1:4 - Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff

But what are the wicked not so?

One way of understanding this terse incomplete statement is to see it as the counterpoint to everything that has thus far been said about the blessed, i.e., they take no delight in the Lord's law, they are not like trees planted by streams of water, their leaves wither, etc. By deliberately not specifying the predicate1 the statement permits, even invites, us to read these things—still so fresh in our imagination from reading the preceding verses—back into it. The next line affirms us in this reading.

In the Hebrew text the two lines of this verse are joined by the particle ki, which may be interpreted 1) causally, i.e., as providing the reason why the wicked are not so, or 2) emphatically, which most English translations render adversatively with the conjunction but. In a poetic line such as this, it probably has both senses. However it is translated, the thrust of the sentence is the same: for the wicked there is only the certainty of impermanence, transience, insignificance, wastedness, and evanescence, which is the fate of chaff, to which they are likened next. Chaff is the husk left behind after grains have been threshed. In the willowing process the threshed grains are tossed into the air whence the grains fall and gather in a heap to the floor while the chaff are blown away by the wind and scattered. They have no useful purpose except sometimes to be used as kindling for a fire. They are just useless trash. It is not, therefore, difficult to see why chaff should become a common simile in the Old Testament2 for what is ultimately useless, futureless, significance-less, of what cannot and does not hold together, a sharp contrast to the righteous for whom all things cohere and prosper.