Week 15 Psalm 37
In Psalm 37 David splits his time fairly equally between talking about the two main groups of people in the world. They are: a) Bad people and b) Good people.
Out of the 40-verses in the psalm approximately 20-verses talk about Bad people and the other 20-verses are about Good people.
I was interested in what David said about the consequences of a Bad person living a Bad life. (I wasn’t too interested in finding immediate results since it’s pretty clear that a Bad person can have some pretty decent results even though being bad. I was more interested in the longer-term repercussions of Bad living.)
David mentions maybe a dozen and a half products of a Bad life (some of them are repeaters). He says that Bad people will:
wither like green plants
soon die away
be destroyed
be no more…will not be found
have their swords pierce their own hearts
have their power broken
perish…they will go up in smoke
pass away and be no more.
A couple of the repercussions David mentions are a bit vague (for example they will not be found). But the majority are definitive & decisive – death destruction & complete disappearance.
It’s discouraging seeing examples of how some people get-away-with-murder. So 37 is a reminder that people getting-away-with-murder is a temporary condition. And since temporary isn’t permanent – eventually temporary ends.
Note: quotes from Psalm 37: 2 9 10 13 15 17 20 36 (NIV)