Psalm 73 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 73 (1928 BCP), Quam bonus Israel!, is the first psalm of Book III in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Psalter. It gives the Church words for a searching and recognisable trial: the apparently secure prosperity of the ungodly makes faithful suffering look pointless. The psalm neither suppresses that temptation nor lets it have the last word. In the sanctuary, the speaker learns to see the end of transient wealth and confesses that God himself is the strength of the heart and the lasting portion of the faithful.
Prayer Book Text
TRULY God is loving unto Israel: * even unto such as are of a clean heart. 2 Nevertheless, my feet were almost gone, * my treadings had well-nigh slipt. 3 And why? I was grieved at the wicked: * I do also see the ungodly in such prosperity. 4 For they are in no peril of death; * but are lusty and strong. 5 They come in no misfortune like other folk; * neither are they plagued like other men. 6 And this is the cause that they are so holden with pride, * and cruelty covereth them as a garment. 7 Their eyes swell with fatness, * and they do even what they lust. 8 They corrupt other, and speak of wicked blasphemy; * their talking is against the Most High. 9 For they stretch forth their mouth unto the heaven, * and their tongue goeth through the world. 10 Therefore fall the people unto them, * and thereout suck they no small advantage. 11 Tush, say they, how should God perceive it? * is there knowledge in the Most High?
The opening “Truly” is a confession recovered under pressure, not an abstract slogan. The psalmist names the attraction of an easy inference: if violent and blasphemous people flourish, perhaps God's justice is indifferent. But the apparent freedom of the prosperous produces neither innocence nor peace; it clothes them with pride and cruelty, and draws others into their way.
Lo, these are the ungodly, * these prosper in the world, and these have riches in possession: 13 And I said, Then have I cleansed my heart in vain, * and washed my hands in innocency. 14 All the day long have I been punished, * and chastened every morning. 15 Yea, and I had almost said even as they; * but lo, then I should have condemned the generation of thy children. 16 Then thought I to understand this; * but it was too hard for me, 17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God: * then understood I the end of these men; 18 Namely, how thou dost set them in slippery places, * and castest them down, and destroyest them. 19 O how suddenly do they consume, * perish, and come to a fearful end! 20 Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh; * so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city.
Verses 15–17 are the hinge. The psalmist does not solve the problem by pretending that pain and prosperity have been evenly distributed. He will not make his troubled conclusion public in a way that condemns God's children; he takes the perplexity into God's sanctuary. There he sees the “end” of a life built on possessions and status, which is as unstable as a slippery place and as insubstantial as a dream.
Thus my heart was grieved, * and it went even through my reins. 22 So foolish was I, and ignorant, * even as it were a beast before thee. 23 Nevertheless, I am alway by thee; * for thou hast holden me by my right hand. 24 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, * and after that receive me with glory. 25 Whom have I in heaven but thee? * and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee. 26 My flesh and my heart faileth; * but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. 27 For lo, they that forsake thee shall perish; * thou hast destroyed all them that are unfaithful unto thee. 28 But it is good for me to hold me fast by God, to put my trust in the Lord GOD, * and to speak of all thy works in the gates of the daughter of Sion.
The change is not self-rescue. Even when the speaker calls his envy foolish, he immediately says, “Nevertheless, I am alway by thee,” because God has held his right hand. The final contrast is therefore not between prosperous and unsuccessful people, but between forsaking God and holding fast to him. The answer to frailty—“my flesh and my heart faileth”—is not the denial of frailty but God as the heart's strength and portion.
Place in the 1928 Daily Office
The monthly Psalter assigns Psalm 73 to the Fourteenth Day at Evening Prayer, immediately after Psalm 72 concludes and Book III begins.
The Fourteenth Day. Morning Prayer. Psalm 71. In te, Domine, speravi. … Psalm 72. Deus, judicium. … BOOK III. Evening Prayer. Psalm 73. Quam bonus Israel!
That evening placement is fitting. The psalm brings the day's visible inequities into common prayer without converting worship into a catalogue of grievances. It directs the congregation from comparisons with other people's fortunes to the sanctuary, to God's counsel, and finally to public testimony in “the gates of the daughter of Sion.”
The sanctuary and the end of envy
Augustine reads the psalm under the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering, where this is Psalm 72. He takes its crisis seriously: the question is how God's justice can be confessed when the godly suffer and the ungodly prosper. His answer closely follows the psalm's turning point—not an explanation available through detached calculation, but sight gained in God's sanctuary.
“Until I enter into the Sanctuary of God, and understand upon the last things.” A great thing it is, brethren: now for a long time I labour, he says, and before my face I see a sort of insuperable labour, to know in what manner both God is just, and does care for things human … but only “until I enter into the Sanctuary of God.”
Augustine does not use the sanctuary to make present injustice unreal. Rather, the sanctuary stretches the worshipper's sight toward the “last things,” where temporary success cannot be mistaken for final blessedness. This makes Psalm 73 an important prayer for resisting both envy and cynicism.
“Because of deceitfulness You have set upon them: You threw them down while they were being exalted.” He has not said, You threw them down because they were lifted up … but in their very lifting up they were thrown down. For thus to be lifted up is already to fall.
His observation illuminates the Prayer Book's “slippery places.” The danger is not that material goods exist, but that pride and violence turn them into a false elevation. The psalm's moral vision therefore refuses to equate wealth with God's favour or adversity with God's abandonment.
God the believer's portion
Alexander Maclaren identifies the psalm's centre in its discovery that God's gift is God himself. His exposition keeps the psalm's emotional honesty—doubt and struggle—while showing why its final confession is more than consolation after disappointment.
Its solution … surpasses [that of Psalms xxxvii and xlix] in its clear recognition that the portion of the righteous, which makes their lot supremely blessed, is no mere earthly prosperity, but God Himself, and in its pointing to “glory” which comes afterwards, as one element in the solution of the problem.
Maclaren's point helps identify the theology of verses 23–26: divine counsel, glory, and God as portion belong together. The psalm is not an argument that the faithful will receive better earthly circumstances than their neighbours; it is a confession that communion with God is a good that changing circumstances cannot finally exhaust.
The pledge of continual communion with God is not our own vacillating, wayward hearts, but God's gentle, strong clasp, which will not let us go.
This accords with the psalm's own “Nevertheless”: God holds the right hand before the speaker can claim a settled heart. In the Daily Office, Psalm 73 therefore trains worshippers to bring real perplexity into prayer, to seek a truer measure of good in the presence of God, and to turn a recovered trust outward in praise.
See Also
External Links
- The 1928 BCP Psalter: Psalms 51–100
- Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 73
- Maclaren, The Expositor's Bible, Psalm 73
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, “Psalm 73. Quam bonus Israel!”; Justus Anglican, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, “Psalms 51–100”. The text, verse order, and punctuation were compared word for word with the local transcription at
sources/justus1928/Psalms2.htm. - ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, “Psalm 73. Quam bonus Israel!”; Justus Anglican, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, “Psalms 51–100”. Wording and verse order were compared with
sources/justus1928/Psalms2.htm. - ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, “Psalm 73. Quam bonus Israel!”; Justus Anglican, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, “Psalms 51–100”. Wording and verse order were compared with
sources/justus1928/Psalms2.htm. - ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Fourteenth Day, Morning and Evening Prayer; Justus Anglican, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, “Psalms 51–100”. The office headings and sequence were checked against
sources/justus1928/Psalms2.htm. - ↑ Augustine of Hippo, “Exposition on Psalm 73” [on Psalm 72 in the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering], §17, trans. J. E. Tweed, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series, vol. 8, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888); New Advent, “Exposition on Psalm 73”.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, “Exposition on Psalm 73” [on Psalm 72 in the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering], §18, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888); New Advent, “Exposition on Psalm 73”.
- ↑ Alexander Maclaren, The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Psalms, vol. II, Psalms XXXIX–LXXXIX (London, New York, and Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892), “Psalm 73,” opening analysis; online transcription.
- ↑ Alexander Maclaren, The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Psalms, vol. II, Psalms XXXIX–LXXXIX (London, New York, and Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892), “Psalm 73,” discussion of verses 21–26; online transcription.