Hallelujah. 1 א Happy the man who fears Jehovah, ב [Who] delights exceedingly in His commandments. 2 ג Mighty on the earth shall his seed be, ד The generation of the upright shall be blessed. 3 ה Wealth and riches are in his house, ו And his righteousness stands fast for aye. 4 ז There riseth in the darkness light to the upright,-- ח Gracious and pitiful and righteous is he. 5 ט Well is the man who pities and lends, י He shall maintain his causes in [the] judgment. 6 כ For he shall not be moved for ever, ל In everlasting remembrance shall the righteous be held. 7 מ Of evil tidings he shall not be afraid, נ Steadfast is his heart, trusting in Jehovah. 8 ס Established is his heart, he shall not fear, ע Until he looks on his adversaries. 9 פ He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor, צ His righteousness stands fast for aye, ק His horn shall be exalted with glory. 10 ר The wicked man shall see it and be grieved, ש He shall gnash his teeth and melt away, ת The desire of wicked men shall perish.
"Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect," might be inscribed on this picture of a godly man, which, in structure and substance, reflects the contemplation of God's character and works contained in the preceding psalm. The idea that the godly man is, in some real sense, an image of God runs through the whole, and comes out strongly, at several points, in the repetition of the same expressions in reference to both. The portrait of the ideal good man, outlined in this psalm, may be compared with those in Psalms xv. and xxiv. Its most characteristic feature is the prominence given to beneficence, which is regarded as eminently a reflection of God's. The foundation of righteousness is laid in ver. 1, in devout awe and inward delight in the commandments. But the bulk of the psalm describes the blessed consequences, rather than the essential characteristics, of godliness.
The basis of righteousness and beneficence to men must be laid in reverence and conformity of will towards God. Therefore the psalm begins with proclaiming that, apart from all external consequences, these dispositions carry blessedness in themselves. The close of the preceding psalm had somewhat overpassed its limits, when it declared that "the fear of Jehovah" was the beginning of wisdom and that to do His commandments was sound discretion.
This psalm echoes these sayings, and so links itself to the former one. It deepens them by pointing out that the fear of Jehovah is a fountain of joy as well as of wisdom, and that inward delight in the Law must precede outward doing of it. The familiar blessing attached in the Old Testament to godliness, namely, prosperous posterity, is the first of the consequences of righteousness which the psalm holds out. That promise belongs to another order of things from that of the New Testament; but the essence of it is true still, namely, that the only secure foundation for permanent prosperity is in the fear of Jehovah. "The generation of the upright" (ver. 2) does not merely mean the natural descendants of a good man--"It is a moral rather than a genealogical term" (Hupfeld)--as is usually the case with the word "generation." Another result of righteousness is declared to be "wealth and riches" (ver. 3), which, again, must be taken as applying more fully to the Old Testament system of Providence than to that of the New.
A parallelism of the most striking character between God and the godly emerges in ver. 3_b_, where the same words are applied to the latter as were used of the former, in the corresponding verse of Psalm cxi. It would be giving too great evangelical definiteness to the psalmist's words, to read into them the Christian teaching that man's righteousness is God's gift through Christ, but it unwarrantably eviscerates them of their meaning, if we go to the other extreme, and, with Hupfeld, suppose that the psalmist put in the clause under stress of the exigencies of the acrostic structure, and regard it as a "makeshift" and "stop-gap." The psalmist has a very definite and noble thought. Man's righteousness is the reflection of God's; and has in it some kindred with its original, which guarantees stability not all unlike the eternity of that source. Since ver. 3_b_ thus brings into prominence the ruling thought of the two psalms, possibly we may venture to see a fainter utterance of that thought, in the first clause of the verse, in which the "wealth and riches" in the righteous man's house may correspond to the "honour and majesty" attendant on God's works (cxi. 3_a_).