Ps. 37.25-26 (I was young and now I am old)

“I was young / and now / I am old – but / I have not seen / the righteous forsaken – or / his posterity / seeking food. – Every day / they are generous / and lending – and their posterity / have become / a blessing.” There are three points at which the psalmist speaks in his own capacity as an “I”. The first was in vs. 10-11 where he says he ‘will watch’ the wicked’s ‘place carefully but he wont be there.’ The second, is here. The third is in vs. 35-36, and it is very similar to 10-11: he speaks of searching for the wicked and realizing he is ‘no more’, ‘he could not be found’. The uniqueness of this section is obvious: whereas in 10-22 and 35-36 he is speaking o the (absence of the) wicked, here is speaking of the presence of the righteous. This is an important point to emphasize as it tracks the theme of the psalm. The wicked, as the first section so eloquently states, are short-lived (“they are like grass that withers...like green sprouts that die quickly”). They are, almost by nature, insubstantial and ephemeral. The righteous, by contrast, are preserved during the hiatus of the wicked’s ascendancy and are, in the end, made permanent in ‘the land’. Even when their existence seems most thin and attenuated’, they are ‘preserved from famine’ and, manna-like, given bread to eat.

The contrast is striking: in one the psalmist sees the effect of the curse (‘they are no more’ and ‘cut off’), in the other, he sees how they ‘become a blessing’. In one the result is quick and devastating (once luxurious, now they are no more), in the other there is a constant permanence and care (‘I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his posterity seeking food’).

The emphasis on ‘posterity’: This the first time ‘posterity’ has been mentioned. Until now it was possible to see the ‘blessing’ that resides in having trust in Yhwh as being limited to the individual. Likewise, the curses may have seemed to have been applicable to only the wicked perpetrating the deeds. Here, we find that within each of the sections previously reflected on there is an added depth of ‘posterity’ implied within them. So, when we read, in the first section, about the wicked being ‘cut off’ and ‘dying quickly’, what we now come to learn is that that involves the destruction of the wicked’s posterity. This is clearly seen in the only other verse that mentions ‘posterity’, vs. 28 (“The unjust are destroyed forever, and the posterity of the wicked is cut off.”). It is another way of talking about their ‘memory’ being destroyed; they have no children to carry them on. As to the righteous, this is what we have meant all along by Yhwh granting ‘the land’ in perpetuity—it is generational perpetuity (we have mentioned this before).

‘Receiving and giving’: we noted in vs. 21 how the righteous are ‘generous and giving’ in such a way that they mimic or mirror Yhwh’s ‘giving’ of them the land. The wicked, by contrast, borrow but don’t repay. The contrast was deliberate: the wicked have an obligation to repay but don’t, whereas the righteous have no obligation to give and still provide. Here, when the wicked are not used as a foil, the righteous are now described as ‘lending’. This was an obligation set down by the Torah: to lend to those in need without taking interest. In the event that someone asks to borrow shortly before the jubilee, when all debt were forgiven, the righteous man who follows Torah is not to grumble to himself but to generously lend. Here, the righteous man exemplifies this incredible generosity to others.  Likewise, the first section (vs. 25), although framed in the negative emphasizes that the righteous are ‘given to’ and provided food. Hence, this verse mirrors Yhwh’s ‘giving of the land’ in vs. 21. And, what deserves note here, is that the profound generosity of the righteous is supposed to be seen as a participation in Yhwh’s generosity. Hence, the giving of the land could be seen as a way in which Yhwh does not ‘grumble at the last minute’ before lending the land to his righteous ones. Finally, this generosity is something that ‘spills over’ into the next generation: “or his posterity seeking food.” There is here the sense that the blessings performed by one generation are ‘noted’ and carried forward into the next. That is full of interesting implications: for those who later find themselves in the land, they are made aware of the fact that they are living on the merits earned by their predecessors who ‘emptied themselves’ in a very similar way that Yhwh empties himself in providing the land. One might even say that their ‘father’s righteousness’ becomes a river, flowing into them (and, one they are to drink from themselves). The wicked, on the other hand, ‘store up wrath’ and dam the river to their future generations.