As patriotic duty requires, every two years my wife and I tune in for at least a couple of hours during the Olympic Games. Designed to represent the pinnacle of sport, the games provide a rare opportunity for viewers to expand their vocabulary to include such idiosyncratic words as luge or slalom and perhaps to discover that breakdancing is now considered as worthy of inclusion as the 200-meter butterfly. Children fix their gaze on the greatest athletes in the world and become their own play-by-play announcers, imagining the gold is on the line while the ball is in their capable hands. The integrity of the games is tarnished every few years, however, following the discovery that a country was raising its chances of victory by dosing its athletes with banned substances.
Consider also the all-American game of baseball, where household names such as Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds set home run records and won victory after victory while taking steroids. Oftentimes, those who violate the rules are caught and prohibited from competition, but the sports fan must acknowledge this reality: Sometimes cheaters win.
Even outside the world of professional sports, cheaters often achieve in broader society. People we work with may lie on their résumés to secure a higher-paying job. Students in our classes may discover a copy of the exam on the professor’s desk and use it to prepare for their upcoming test. So-called pastors may use AI to generate a sermon that stirs their hearers to heap applause and acclaim on them. Cheaters often do get ahead in life. The closer we look, the clearer this becomes, resulting in a common temptation to anger—at them, but worse, at God. Not only is that not fair, we think, but I wish I could have that kind of success too. Our blood boils as we hold this root of bitterness deep within our hearts: You are not giving me enough, God!
King David observed the world around him and witnessed this dynamic at work. Sometimes, the tools of the wicked— deceit, violence, and theft—bring a measure of earthly success. As we open our Bibles to Psalm 37, we are provided with a rich entrée of perspective sufficient to quiet our hearts, which begin to grow frustrated or even to long for the success, wealth, and ill-gotten power of others. In this psalm, the inspired psalmist teaches us that though the wicked may flourish for a time, true wealth and true prosperity belong to the people of God.
Psalm 37 weaves together three strands that will serve as the form of this article and the next: First, injustice seems to roam free. Second, justice is coming. Third, because injustice seems to roam free and because justice is coming, Psalm 37 calls us to wait humbly upon the Lord. This article considers the first two.
Injustice Seems to Roam Free
The first place this thread is evident in Psalm 37 is in its opening verse: “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers!” (Ps 37:1). Take note of the word “fret.” Do you see how many times it appears in this psalm? We find it in verse 1, again in verse 7, and a third time in verse 8. When we hear the word “fret,” we think of worry or anxiety, someone folding his hands in nervous silence, drumming his fingers on the kitchen counter. The Christian Standard Bible translates the Hebrew here as “agitated.” Consider a couple of other places we find the Hebrew word חרה: “He has kindled his wrath against me,” Job says (Job 19:11, emphasis added). Or again in chapter 32, “Then Elihu the son of Barachel…burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job” (Job 32:2, emphasis added). Cain grew hot with anger in Genesis 4:5, and the wrath of Yahweh burned in Exodus 22:24; the same Hebrew word lies behind these. While “worry” is certainly within the semantic range of the word, we should not think of a mild-mannered anxiety; we should sense a growing heat under our collars, a gritting of the teeth.
David presupposes that the faithful face two related temptations: anger at the wicked and envy of their prosperity. It is an altogether human reaction. Believers become angry when they see injustice coupled with the abounding temporal prosperity of the unrighteous, and this is a powerful call to abandon Yahweh. After all, what benefit do the godly experience when they follow their Lord? Unlike so many prosperity preachers, Scripture does not proclaim to us that pleasures forevermore can be found here and now, but rather at the right hand of the Father (Ps 16:11). Yet we are often tempted to view blessing delayed as blessing denied, a sentiment likewise expressed in a later psalm:
All in vain have I kept my heart clean
and washed my hands in innocence.
For all the day long I have been stricken
and rebuked every morning. (Ps 73:13–14)
We look at the world around us and see the ungodly prospering, growing in wealth or in power, and begin to view their position as superior to ours. We begin to think that our tithing would better be spent by investing in a more luxurious retirement or purchasing things to make our lives more comfortable. Men are quick to call the wisdom of God foolishness and suggest that followers of Christ are childish and fruitless. It is then a short leap before our hearts begin to accuse God, You are not giving me enough. The righteous are caught between two worlds, feeling dissonance in their members between the blessings God has promised and what they experience daily.
The same command is reiterated six verses later: “Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices” (Ps 37:7)! Unlike the ungodly, the way of the faithful is not his own. We walk in good works prepared for us, following the Chief Shepherd. God did not create us that we should live wholly for ourselves. We are to reflect the glory of God back to him and into the world in which we live. Also, we must find our chief enjoyment in God above any of the good gifts he bestows. Nevertheless, the uneasy tension the psalm forces us to consider remains. The man whose whole life is bound up in wickedness, whose every thought is idolatry, prospers.
In verse 12, the difficulty David is teaching us about becomes even more acute. He draws our attention not only to the prosperity of the wicked but also to their oppression of the righteous. “The wicked plots against the righteous,” he writes. He “gnashes his teeth at him” (Ps 37:12). Here the righteous are not simply disengaged bystanders, watching as the worldly grow in earthly prominence. Instead, the righteous have become prey for the godless. Their plotting and angry stares at the righteous move into the realm of action, as
The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows
to bring down the poor and needy,
to slay those whose way is upright. (Ps 37:14)
When they are not seeking the lives of the righteous, the wicked defraud them, borrowing without repayment (Ps 37:21), but again violence reappears as the ungodly “watches for the righteous and seeks to put him to death” (Ps 37:32).
As we see with David, our hearts are prone to start wondering, Why do the wicked plot and behave this way? More potently, Where are you, God? Do you not care about this? The minor prophet Habakkuk likewise struggles with this idea:
Why do you make me see iniquity,
and why do you idly look at wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me.…
The law is paralyzed,
and justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
so justice goes forth perverted. (Hab 1:3–4)
As the disciples watch waves crash over their hull and their master sleeps, they exasperatedly ask him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38). Do you care about this, God? Does this bother you? I thought you gave good gifts to the righteous, but here we are suffering—for what? Little kids do this to their parents, lamenting injustice when their siblings take something that does not belong to them. They run into the kitchen and grab your pant leg and refuse to let go until you rectify the situation. David experienced this tension that we now feel as he composed the psalm. How does Scripture instruct us amid a fallen world? The second thread of this wisdom psalm appears: promised future justice.
Justice Is Coming
The coming justice of the Creator is spread throughout the psalm, first occurring in the second verse. “For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb” (Ps 37:2). A common picture of the fragility of human life is displayed here, reminding us that despite all our efforts, the years of our lives are seventy or perhaps eighty (Ps 90:10). No one on earth, from Benjamin Franklin to Warren Buffett, could deny the temporary nature of earthly life. You may have heard that Buffett, one of the wealthiest men on the face of the earth, has stepped away from his position as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the only non-tech company to reach a valuation of over one trillion dollars in the stock market. Despite his larger-than-life stature as a giant in the investment and business world, he too understands that his earthly life cannot last forever. Hence, he included this line in a departing letter to shareholders: “Father time always wins.”1 The same is true for all men, whether righteous in Christ or destitute without him: Our “days are like an evening shadow,” and we “wither away like grass” (Pss 102:11; 103:15).
Why should Christians reject being envious or bitter when the wicked are elevated? Such a view neglects the fragility, the transience, of human life. The wicked “prospers in his way” and “carries out evil devices” with seeming impunity, but it will not always be this way (Ps 37:7). One day, the wicked will be “cut off”; the psalmist says, “In just a little while, the wicked will be no more” (Ps 37:9–10). The wicked will one day face the justice they have long denied to others, and the evil they devised against others will be as many coals placed on their own heads: “Their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken” (Ps 37:15). The power and prestige that the ungodly today possess will tomorrow be turned to shame and dishonor.
It is now the beginning of harvest in the Midwest. Fields that a month ago proudly boasted full heads of wheat and rich green crops now lay bare. Row upon row of corn bows toward the earth. The sunflowers that in weeks past filled the land with rippling gold now sit lifelessly waiting for the harvester. “The enemies of the Lord are “like the glory of the pastures,” which “vanish . . . like smoke” (Ps 37:20). Lest we imagine that the enemies of God will simply disappear, shuffling off this mortal coil into vast nothingness, Scripture elsewhere reminds us that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb 9:27). Such is the testimony of God through the psalmist: “The arms of the wicked shall be broken”; they shall “be cursed by him” and are “cut off” (Ps 37:17, 22). Five times in this psalm “cut off,” is repeated, invoking perhaps the strongest image of the justice of God. After the floodwaters receded, Noah entered into a covenant with the Lord, wherein Yahweh promised “never again shall all flesh” be “cut off by the waters of the flood” (Gen 9:11). This phrase appears also in the context of the Abrahamic covenant, where uncircumcision is equated with being “cut off” from Israel as a covenant-breaking act (Gen 17:14). Time and time again, in the Pentateuch in particular, being “cut off” from Yahweh and from his people is an act of divine judgment. So it is in the mind of David: The chief consequence of sinful disobedience is to be separated, set apart for God’s justice.
Verse 12 gives us an interesting linguistic picture of this eschatological reality. Today, “the wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him” (Ps 37:12). In the Septuagint (LXX), the word for “gnashes” is Βρυχω. We see the same word in the description of the unrighteous cast into the lake of fire in the New Testament. “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing [βρυγμος] of teeth” (Matt 13:42). Those who once ground their teeth in anger at the righteous, plotting their destruction, will one day gnash their teeth in the fires of hell at the Righteous One.
Both the judgment of the wicked and the vindication of the righteous will occur on that day. As we conclude the first part of our read of Psalm 37, the exhortation of Scripture is that Christians must take the long view. Though the wicked thrive for a time, though the righteous may suffer at their hand, the justice of Yahweh is not idle. In the second installment, the justification of the righteous and the call to grateful patience will be before us.
Note
- John Melloy, “Warren Buffett Steps Down as Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway: ‘Father Time Always Wins,’” CNBC, September 18, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/18/buffett-stepping-down-as-berkshire-chairman.html.
©Seth Adams. All Rights Reserved.
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Seth Adams
Seth Adams is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California, an honorably discharged naval officer, and now, the Campus Minister of Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. His wife and three young children enjoy sanctifying one another, cheering when we all sit still during family worship, and looking for pheasants along the road during car rides.
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