Psalm 111:10 · Featured Study
The Fear of the LORD
Six books of the Bible, written centuries apart by a poet, a king, a psalmist, a preacher, a prophet and a physician, say the same sentence: the fear of the LORD is where wisdom starts. It is the Bible's most repeated claim about how a person comes to know anything true, and it is also its most misread, because the same passages that command trembling promise friendship, and the one person Scripture says delights in the fear of the LORD is the Messiah himself.
Nicolas Poussin, The Judgment of Solomon (1649) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Summary
This page lines up six verses across the canon that all name the fear of the LORD as wisdom's start, then holds trembling and friendship together as one response, not two.
- Lines up the same claim from Job, Proverbs (twice), Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, and Acts
- Sets verses about trembling beside verses about God's friendship, and shows how they fit together
- Studies the Hebrew word yirʾah and why English needs two words for the one it uses
- Lists eight promises the Psalter attaches to those who fear the LORD
- Brings together Bevere, Sproul, Tozer, and Spurgeon, voices from different traditions landing in the same place
One Sentence, Six Books, Six Different Men
the same claim, said independently across the canon, each entry colored by its own place in it
“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.”
The climax of the Bible's great poem on where wisdom is found, after a chapter that follows miners into the earth for silver and sapphire and reports that wisdom is not down there. The answer, when it comes, is not a place but a posture.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.”
The motto verse of the whole book, planted in its opening paragraph, before a single proverb is given, the reader is told what the prerequisite is. Fools, the same verse adds, despise wisdom and discipline.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
The same sentence again at the hinge of Proverbs, where Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly each set a table and call to the same passers-by. The second line is the tell: the fear and the knowledge of God are one thing, not two.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts gain rich understanding.”
The Psalter's version, and it lands as the last line of an acrostic hymn about God's works, so that the alphabet itself runs out at exactly this claim. Where Proverbs makes it a preface, Psalm 111 makes it a conclusion.
“Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.”
The verdict at the end of the Bible's most restless book. After twelve chapters of testing every avenue, pleasure, work, wisdom, wealth, the Preacher's summary is two imperatives, and the first is this one.
“The Spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD… And He will delight in the fear of the LORD.”
The load-bearing verse of the whole topic. The shoot from the stump of Jesse, the Messiah, is described as resting under this same Spirit, and his DELIGHT is in the fear of the LORD. Whatever the phrase means, it is something the sinless Son takes pleasure in. That rules out cringing.
“The church… walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was multiplied.”
The New Testament does not retire the phrase after the cross. Luke uses it to describe the healthiest season of the early church, and puts it in the same clause as comfort and growth.
The Paradox
the same texts command trembling and promise the inner circle
The trembling
“Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling”, joy and trembling issued as a single command, in one verse, without apology.
“My flesh trembles in awe of You; I stand in fear of Your judgments”, from the psalm that spends 176 verses adoring God's word.
“Woe is me, for I am ruined”, the prophet's response to seeing the throne is not composure but collapse. Every biblical encounter with unmediated holiness looks like this.
The intimacy
“The LORD confides in those who fear Him, and reveals His covenant to them.” The BSB's “confides”, the KJV's “secret” and the ASV's “friendship” all render one Hebrew word, sod, a private council, the inner circle where the plan is discussed.
God's ḥesed is measured, as high as heaven is above the earth, and from everlasting to everlasting, and both times the measurement is toward THEM THAT FEAR HIM. The fear is not the opposite of the love; it is the address the love is delivered to.
“The LORD is pleased with those who fear Him, who hope in His loving devotion”, fear and hope named in the same breath as the two things God enjoys about a person.
The two columns are not a contradiction to be resolved by softening one of them. They are what happens when a creature meets the Creator and survives: the trembling is the accurate reading of the size of God, and the friendship is the astonishing thing God does next. Psalm 130 makes the logic explicit and inverts every instinct: “But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be feared”. Not so that you may be forgiven, fear Him; the fear is what forgiveness produces. Judgment makes people hide. Mercy is what makes them tremble.
“The secret - His love and favour, which is called his secret, Job xxix, 4 Prov. iii, 32, because it is known to none but him that enjoyeth it.”
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Bible (1765), on Psalm 25:14 — public domain
Yirʾah
one Hebrew word, and why English needs two
Hebrew does not have separate words for terror and reverence. Yirʾah covers the whole range: the fright of a man before a lion and the awe of a worshipper before a throne, and the reader has to let the context decide. That is not a defect in the language; it is a claim about the subject. Before the God of Israel the two responses are not different emotions, only different distances.
Which is why the decisive verse is Isaiah 11:3. If the fear of the LORD were merely dread of punishment, the sinless Messiah could not be said to delight in it. Whatever yirʾah is, it is something perfect love does, permanently, and the New Testament keeps it, telling a church that has received an unshakeable kingdom to serve God with reverence and awe.
fear, reverence, awe, the noun in Ps 111:10 and Prov 1:7; the same word carries dread and reverence, and context decides
steadfast covenant love, measured, in Ps 103, toward exactly those who fear him
instruction, what the fear of the LORD leads a person to keep (Ps 111:10b)
What Is Promised to Them That Fear Him
the Psalter's own ledger of consequences
Read the eight together and the shape is unmistakable: what God attaches to the fear of him is not distance but access, his counsel, his pity, his pleasure, his measureless lovingkindness, and a household with blessing in it. The Psalter treats the fear of the LORD as the door into the house, not the fence around it.
The Voices
a Reformed theologian and a charismatic teacher arriving at the same place
The Fear of the Lord (1997) · The Awe of God (2023)
Bevere's central distinction is between being afraid OF God and being afraid TO be apart from him, dread that drives away versus awe that draws near. He argues the modern church lost intimacy precisely by discarding trembling, not by keeping it.
The Holiness of God (1985)
Sproul reads Isaiah 6 as the trauma of holiness: a good man disintegrates in the presence of a holy God, and only then is cleansed and sent. His summary of the stakes, lose the awe and you lose the dependence, is the Reformed statement of Psalm 111:10.
The Knowledge of the Holy (1961) · The Pursuit of God (1948)
Tozer's argument is that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us, and that a low view of God is the root of a hundred lesser evils. The fear of the LORD, in his register, is simply an accurate view of God arriving in a human being.
The Treasury of David, on Psalm 111 (public domain)
Spurgeon presses that Psalm 111 puts the sentence at the END: the whole acrostic has recited God's works, and only after seeing them does the psalmist say where wisdom begins. Fear, for Spurgeon, is not the price of admission but the first evidence that the works have been seen.
Note what the roster does here. Sproul writes from the Reformed tradition and Bevere from the charismatic; they share almost no vocabulary and would disagree in a dozen other rooms. On this they converge exactly, that awe is the root of dependence, and that a church which trades trembling for comfort loses the intimacy it was trying to protect. Cross-tradition agreement of that kind is worth more than either voice alone.
Word studies
The Hebrew and Greek under this study, each word in its own room.
Keep studying
Read it2
On this page
Studies7
Symbols1