Psalms 1:4

_THE UNGODLY ARE NOT SO: BUT ARE LIKE THE CHAFF WHICH THE WIND DRIVETH AWAY._ (Job 21:18; Hosea 13:3; cf. Matthew 3:12.) In the East threshing floors are placed on a height; the threshed grain is thrown aloft for the wind to carry the chaff away. THE UNGODLY ARE NOT SO - the negation of all that characterizes the righteous; saying more than the most detailed description. "Not so" in character; "not so" in destiny (DeBurgh)....

The Psalmist might, with propriety, have compared the ungodly to a tree that speedily withers, as Jeremiah likens them to the heath which grows in the wilderness, (Jeremiah 17:6) But not reckoning this figure sufficiently strong, he debases them by employing another, which represents them in a light still more contemptible: and the reason is, that he does not keep his eye on the prosperous condition of which they boast for a short time, but his mind is seriously pondering on the destruction which awaits them, and will at length overtake them. The meaning, therefore, is, although the ungodly now live prosperously, yet by and by they shall be like chaff; for when the Lord has brought them low, he shall drive them hither and thither with the blast of his wrath. Besides, by this form of speech, the Holy Spirit teaches us to contemplate with the eye of faith, what might otherwise seem incredi...

4-6 The ungodly are the reverse of the righteous, both in character and condition. The ungodly are not so, ver. 4; they are led by the counsel of the wicked, in the way of sinners, to the seat of the scornful; they have no delight in the law of God; they bring forth no fruit but what is evil. The righteous are like useful, fruitful trees: the ungodly are like the chaff which the wind drives away: the dust which the owner of the floor desires to have driven away, as not being of any use. They are of no worth in God's account, how highly soever they may value themselves. They are easily driven to and fro by every wind of temptation. The chaff may be, for a while, among the wheat, but He is coming, whose fan is in his hand, and who will thoroughly purge his floor. Those that, by their own sin and folly, make themselves as chaff, will be found so before the whirlwind and fire of Divine wrat...

Verse Psalms 1:4. _THE UNGODLY_ ARE _NOT SO_] The _Vulgate_ and _Septuagint_, and the versions made from them, such as the _AEthiopic_ and _Arabic_, double the last negation, and add a clause to the end of the verse, "Not so the ungodly, not so; they shall be like the dust which the wind scatters away _from the face of the earth_." There is nothing solid in the men; there is nothing good in their ways. They are not of God's planting; they are not good grain; they are only _chaff_, and a chaff that shall be separated from the good grain when the fan or shovel of God's power throws them up to the wind of his judgments. The manner of _winnowing_ in the eastern countries is nearly the same with that practiced in various parts of these kingdoms before the invention of _winnowing machines_. They either throw it up in a place out of doors b...

THE UNGODLY ARE NOT SO - literally, “Not thus the wicked.” For the word ungodly, see the notes at Psalms 1:1. The statement that the “wicked are not so,” is a general statement applicable alike to their character and destiny, though the mind of the author of the psalm is fixed immediately and particularly on the difference in their destiny, without specifying anything particularly respecting their character. It is as true, however, that the ungodly do walk in the counsel of the wicked, and stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of the scornful, as it is that the righteous do not; as true that they do not delight in the law of the Lord, as it is that the righteous do; as true that the wicked are not like a tree planted by the channels of water, as it is that the righteous are. This passage, therefore, may be employed to show what is the character of the ungod

EXPOSITION 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...

THE UNGODLY [ARE] NOT SO,.... They are not as the good man is; their manner and course of life are different; they walk in the counsel of ungodly men, like themselves, and take counsel against the Lord, his Anointed, and his people: they stand in the way of sinners, and steer their conversation according to the course of the world, and sit in the seat of the scornful; laugh at divine revelation, lampoon the Scriptures, deride good men, make a jest of religion and a future state: they have no delight in the law of the Lord, they cast it away from them, and despise it; and are so far from a constant meditation on it, that they never read it, nor so much as look into it, nor is it ever in their thoughts. They are not like to a tree, as described in Psalms 1:3: if they are like to trees, it is to dry trees, and not green ones, to trees without any sap, moisture, and verdure, and which are on...

ANALYSIS AND ANNOTATIONS I. THE GENESIS SECTION: BOOK ONE:Psalm 1-41 Psalm 1-8 Psalms 1 The Godly and the Ungodly _ 1. The godly, his character and his fruit (Psalms 1:1)_ 2. The ungodly in comparison with the godly (Psalms 1:4) The first eight Psalms are the Psalms in embryo, just as the opening Chapter s of the book of Genesis are the Bible in a nutshell. Throughout the Psalms we can trace the subjects of these eight Psalms, the godly and the ungodly; but especially the great theme of the Psalms, Christ, the Perfect Man, the King rejected, the suffering of the righteous during the time of His rejection, the King enthroned and all things put under His feet. These are the leading themes

BOOK I. PSS. I- XLI. I. The Jewish Saint. This and Psalms 2 (see, however, on Psalms 33) are the only Pss. in Book I. which have no title or superscription. In Acts 13:33, there is very ancient authority for reading in the first Ps., though the Ps. quoted stands second in the Psalter, as we have it. Origen had seen Psalms 1 joined with Psalms 2 in a Heb. copy, and the same arrangement is still found in some Heb. MSS. Probably then Psalms 1 was prefixed as an introduction to the rest of the Psalter after its completion. But it is not one with Psalms 2, nor even resembles it. It expresses the general spirit of the Psalter admirably. For that very reason it does not reach a high level. It has nothing of the spiritual tone which is so striking in 4, 73, and in other Pss. Rather it represents the current orthodoxy of its time, which must have been a very late one. It is legalistic, and accen...

ARE NOT SO, &C.. not so the ungodly. LIKE THE CHAFF. The other comparison. See Psalms 1:3. Compare Psalms 35:5. WIND. Hebrew. _ruach._ App-9....