Introduction to Psalm 1

Many believe that Psalm 1 was intentionally placed at the beginning of the Psalter as a kind of introduction to the Psalter. In fact, in some early manuscripts, Psalm 1 is off-set in a different colored ink.

As an introduction to the Psalter, Psalm 1 hints at the major preoccupation of the entire Psalter: Ethical conduct.

Ethics is not what we normally associate with poetry, but it makes sense according to the Hebrew way of thinking: Just knowing something is not enough to motivate human action. We know a lot of things, much of it just miscellany and junk information. How do we separate – internally cherish – those things that really matter, that we want to direct our lives. The Hebrew answer:

We impress it on our souls through speaking it out loud and capturing it in powerful language. We crown ideas with language.

It’s a process worth considering, regardless of religious affiliation, because if we don’t consider how ideas affect us and whether we can or should control that process, we may just become victims of the slickest and flashiest ideas out there, which are often manufactured on multi-million-dollar advertising budgets, and which (as the Psalm indicates) are often destructive.