Jeremiah would agree with that assessment. "Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord" (17:5). Jeremiah then introduces a metaphor that is very similar to that of the First Psalm. Those who trust their own strength are like shrubs in the desert, who live in parched places in the wilderness. But those who trust the Lord are like trees planted by water. There is, however, a major difference between Jeremiah's words and those of the First Psalm. Jeremiah says that those who trust the Lord are like trees planted by the waters that continue to give forth leaves and fruit even in a year of drought. Jeremiah had recently lived through a drought in the land, and he saw what it did to land and people. More important to him was the spiritual drought that had fallen over Judah. In the midst of it, Jeremiah will hold on to his faith in God, would bring forth "leaves and fruit." He invites others to do the same.

Jeremiah's poem concludes with a bleak passage that picks up his theme at the beginning: "The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?" Martin Marty wrote in the Christian Century (Nov 1, 2000, 1135) "that by whatever name one calls it, something like original sin afflicts both individuals and societies. Reinhold Niebuhr, in the main, was right about that. . . . In the real world we do best not to imagine edens or perfect beings but to deal with what Immanuel Kant and Isaiah Berlin called 'the crooked timber of humanity.'" There is a dark circle around the human heart.

There is a ray of hope in the midst of this darkness. Jeremiah concludes by saying, "I the Lord test the mind and search the heart. I give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doing." What "fruit of our doing" does the Lord find when he tests our minds and searches our hearts?"

PSALM 1: Our Book of Psalms is a collection of collections. The psalms were written over many centuries. They stretch from the days of Solomon's temple (about 950 BC) to the days after the Exile (about 350 BC.) Some of them may go back into Israel's past even before the temple was built. Psalms are of five types: hymns of praise, laments, thanksgiving psalms, royal psalms, and wisdom psalms. Within the book, there are five collections of "books." The last psalm in each collection ends with a doxology ("Blessed be the Lord") and the words "Amen and Amen."

The first collection begins with Psalm Two in our present Psalter. Psalm One, which we are to consider today, was placed here as the introduction to the whole Psalter. It expresses the devotional life of Judaism at its very best.

"Happy" is its first word, and the "happy man" is the one who delights in the law of the Lord. "Law" is not a good translation of the Hebrew phrase "torah." Torah fundamentally means "instruction." In contrast to scoffers who arrogantly refuse all instruction, happy persons delight in God's instruction, having it always before them, constantly being open to God's instruction. Even that does not fully express the meaning of Torah. What is at stake in reading the torah is the forming of one's identity, one's inner being, by learning how God deals with the world and with God's people. By delighting in God's dealing with us in Scripture, our inner character will be formed. The happy life involves our being constantly open to the word and will of God, thinking about it, brooding over it, humming its words under our breath, meditating upon God's instruction to us both day and night.

The psalm speaks of "The Two Ways." There is the way of the wicked, and there is the way of the righteous. As Terrien says, "the Hebrew conception of religion is that of a way of life. It is walk, not talk. The intensity of it is made clear in that there are only two ways, and these ways are mutually exclusive." It is either prosper or perish.

The wicked are like chaff, the useless seed-pods left over when the grain is harvested. The chaff is thrown up into the wind, and the wind drives it away. It has no use, no foundation, no grounding.

The righteous are different. Their lives are grounded in God and sustained by God. They are "like a tree planted by the rivers of the waters." If this psalm was written during the days of the Jewish exile in Babylon, the "streams of water" were irrigation ditches such as the ones that had been constructed in Babylon. If it was written in Palestine, it refers to the oases that appeared here and there in the otherwise dry land. But the result was the same. Where there was a canal or an oasis, fruitful trees grew up, trees with deep roots and always-flowing sources of refreshment. The righteous are like this. They have lives rooted deep into God's life, and they have flowing streams that will renew their strength. These lives produce fruit in due season.

There is a linguistic circumstance that caused the writer to use "chaff" in contrast to "streams." To us these two pictures, chaff and waters, do not seem to relate to each other. But in the Hebrew language both "chaff" and "streams" are two-letter nouns ending in the same letter. The contrast between the words, more than the similarity of the images evoked, brought these two ideas together in this psalm.

J. R. P. Sclater (IB4:20) gives us a contemporary interpretation of the psalm: "A man begins by entertaining godless ideas intermittently, when his mind is free to roam. He allows himself to wonder whether the counsel of the ungodly has not something to say for itself. We call it 'becoming realistic.' He then, tentatively at first and later as his usual rule, indulges in godless practices; especially he forgets worship, he turns a progressively blind eye to the Ten Commandments and the way of the Lord Jesus: he stands in the way of sinners. Before he knows where he is, his character is petrified, he sits in the seat of the scornful, a successful worldling for the time being, honored by those whose honor is dishonor. He even scorns godliness. And when a man cynically sneers at goodness he has reached his lowest point." The difference between the "wicked" and the "righteous" is a matter of the foundation of his life. The "wicked" desire no grounding in God. The "righteous" are rooted and grounded in God's love.