Psalms 92

Psalm 92 carries a title no other psalm has, "a song for the Sabbath day," and once you know that, the whole psalm reads like a day of rest. It begins not with a request but with a verdict: it is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing to his name in the morning and again at night, with strings. The reason is simple gladness. God's deeds have made the singer happy; his works are great and his thoughts are deeper than anyone can follow. Then the psalm looks at the one thing that can spoil a Sabbath, the prosperity of the wicked, and it answers with a picture that the whole Bible uses: they are grass. Grass comes up fast, covers everything, and is gone by the end of the season. The fool cannot see that, because he only looks at the short view. The LORD, by contrast, is exalted forever, and the psalmist has seen his own enemies fall. The last movement of the psalm is the one people remember. The righteous are not grass but trees, a palm and a cedar of Lebanon, the tallest and oldest trees in the world the psalmist knew, planted in the courts of the LORD's house, still green and still bearing fruit when they are old. The point of that fruit is given in the final verse: to declare that the LORD is upright, a Rock in whom there is no wrong. The psalm is a Sabbath because it does what the Sabbath is for, stopping long enough to see how things really are.