Psalm 1

The tree in this psalm is not a wild one. It is planted beside channels of water — hand-dug ditches that carried water from a spring or stream out to an orchard. In a land where the rain falls only part of the year and the summer burns everything dry, a tree with its roots in a channel is a tree that does not care what the weather does. That is the whole picture: not a tree that gets lucky, but a tree put where the water is.

The chaff comes from the other end of the farming year. Grain was beaten out on a flat, hard threshing floor, usually on a rise where the wind could reach it. The farmer tossed the crushed heads into the air with a fork; the heavy kernels dropped straight down, and the light husks blew off the edge of the floor. Chaff was worthless — it did not even make good fodder. It was simply gone.

The last verse pictures a courtroom. Israel's judging was done in the open gateway of a walled town, where the elders sat on stone benches built into the passage and travelers, buyers, and witnesses all funneled past. To say the wicked "shall not stand in the judgment" is to say they will not survive the hearing at the gate.

The word rendered "meditate" describes a low murmur — the sound of a person reading half aloud to himself. Scrolls were scarce and expensive, so learning meant hearing, repeating, and muttering the words until they lived in memory.