Catholic Commentary
Redemption and the Beginning of Wisdom
9He has sent redemption to his people. He has ordained his covenant forever. His name is holy and awesome!10The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom. All those who do his work have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!
Psalms 111:9–10 presents God's redemptive action as the foundation for wisdom. The passage declares that God has actively sent redemption to His people through an eternal covenant, and that genuine wisdom begins with reverential fear of the Lord, which emerges not from abstract knowledge but from encountering God's saving acts.
God sends redemption as a permanent reality; wisdom begins not with learning but with standing in awe before the One who has already saved you.
The Hebrew יִרְאַת יְהוָה (yir'at YHWH) encompasses both reverential fear and worshipful awe — it is emphatically not dread of an enemy but the creature's appropriate response to the overwhelming holiness and majesty of the One who is both wholly other and intimately close. The "beginning" (re'shit, רֵאשִׁית) echoes the opening word of Genesis ("In the beginning"), suggesting that this fear is not merely the first step in a curriculum but the very principle from which all wisdom takes its origin — its generative source, not merely its starting point on a timeline.
The verse closes: "all who practice it have a good understanding." The verb "practice" (עֹשֵׂיהֶם, from עָשָׂה, 'asah — "to do, to act") grounds wisdom in embodied life. Biblical wisdom is never merely intellectual; it is the alignment of one's entire existence — moral, liturgical, relational — with the reality of who God is. For the psalmist, wisdom is not a private interior state but a public and practical orientation toward God expressed in deeds.
Catholic tradition reads Psalm 111:9–10 with a rich Christological and sapiential lens that deepens both verses profoundly.
On verse 9, St. Augustine in his Expositions of the Psalms identifies the "redemption sent" with Christ himself: "He sent His Word and healed them" (cf. Ps 107:20). The sending language maps directly onto the Johannine theology of the missio Dei — the Father's sending of the Son and Spirit as the inner logic of salvation history. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the Word became flesh to be our model of holiness" (CCC 459) and that through the Incarnation, "human nature was assumed, not absorbed" (CCC 470) — making the redemption of verse 9 not merely forensic but ontological, a genuine transformation of the human condition from within.
The covenant dimension ("He has commanded his covenant forever") resonates with Vatican II's Dei Verbum §14–15, which presents the Old Testament as permanently valid preparation for the Gospel. The "forever" of the Sinai covenant is not superseded but fulfilled in the New and Eternal Covenant (CCC 1965–1966).
On verse 10, St. Thomas Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle but transforming him theologically, identifies "the fear of the LORD" as a gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Is 11:2–3), the very initium sapientiae that disposes the soul for infused wisdom (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 19). This fear is not servile dread but filial fear — the reverence of a child who dreads offending a beloved Father (CCC 1831). Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini §35, similarly connects encounter with the living God in Scripture to the generation of genuine wisdom, insisting that lectio divina must produce not merely information but transformation. The fear of the LORD is thus not an archaic emotion to be outgrown but the permanent posture of the creature before its Creator and Redeemer.
For contemporary Catholics, these two verses issue a quiet but searching challenge. In a culture that prizes self-generated wisdom — self-help, life-hacking, therapeutic frameworks — verse 10 insists that wisdom has an irreducible precondition: the fear of the LORD. This means that no amount of reading, education, or self-reflection produces genuine wisdom apart from a living, worshipful relationship with God. The Catholic who attends Mass, goes to Confession, and prays the Liturgy of the Hours is not performing empty ritual — they are practicing the fear of the LORD that verse 10 identifies as wisdom's very source.
Verse 9 offers equally concrete comfort: redemption is something God has sent, not something we construct. In seasons of moral failure, spiritual dryness, or despair over the state of the Church or the world, the psalmist's proclamation is a counter-word: the initiative belongs to God. He has already dispatched deliverance. The practical invitation is to receive it — in the Sacrament of Reconciliation above all, where God's sent redemption becomes personally present and applied. Begin there, and wisdom will follow.
Commentary
Psalms 111:9 — "He has sent redemption to his people."
The Hebrew verb underlying "sent" (שָׁלַח, shalaḥ) carries the sense of purposeful divine dispatch — God does not merely permit redemption but actively commissions it outward toward His people. The noun "redemption" (פְּדוּת, peduth) belongs to the legal-economic vocabulary of ancient Israel, where a go'el (kinsman-redeemer) would purchase the freedom of a relative sold into slavery or reclaim forfeited ancestral land (cf. Lev 25:47–49; Ruth 3–4). Here the psalmist deploys this concrete imagery to describe God's own initiative: He acts as Israel's supreme Redeemer, not passively awaiting human effort but sending forth deliverance. The immediate referent in the psalm's horizon is the Exodus from Egypt — the paradigmatic act of divine redemption celebrated throughout the Psalter (cf. vv. 4–6, "He has made his wonderful works to be remembered… He gave them the heritage of the nations"). But the aorist force of the verb reaches beyond any single historical event; the perfect tense implies a completed and therefore enduring reality. What God has sent remains sent.
The second half of verse 9 adds a covenantal dimension: "He has commanded his covenant forever." The pairing of redemption and covenant is not accidental. In the Mosaic framework, God's act of deliverance at the Exodus is inseparable from the covenant ratified at Sinai. Redemption without covenant would be liberation without relationship; covenant without redemption would be obligation without rescue. Together they form the grammar of Israel's faith. The word "forever" (לְעוֹלָם, le'olam) signals that this covenant is not provisional — it possesses an eschatological horizon that no human infidelity can ultimately annul.
Typologically, the verse anticipates the New Covenant sealed in Christ's blood (Lk 22:20). The "sending" of redemption reaches its fullness in the missio of the eternal Son (Gal 4:4–5: "God sent his Son… to redeem those who were under the law"). The peduth of the Exodus becomes the apolytrōsis (ἀπολύτρωσις) of the Cross — Paul's preferred term for the redemption accomplished in Christ (Rom 3:24; Eph 1:7). The psalm thus stands at the intersection of type and fulfillment.
Psalms 111:10 — "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom."
This saying is among the most repeated maxims in the Hebrew wisdom tradition (cf. Prov 1:7; 9:10; Sir 1:14), but its placement here — the proclamation of redemption — is exegetically decisive. In Psalm 111, wisdom does not precede or produce the relationship with God; rather, the relationship established by God's redemptive act the fear that is wisdom's foundation. One does not earn access to God through becoming wise; one becomes wise precisely by standing in awe before the God who has already redeemed.