Psalms 37:21–26

Psalms 37:21 — "The wicked borrow and do not pay back" The contrast opened here is not merely financial. In the ancient Near Eastern world, borrowing carried a weighty moral obligation (cf. Deut 15:1–11). To refuse repayment is to violate hesed — the covenant loyalty that binds the community together. The wicked person takes from the common fabric of trust and gives nothing back; this is presented not simply as imprudence, but as a symptom of a disordered soul that receives everything (from God, from neighbor) and renders nothing in return. The verse implicitly accuses the wicked of ingratitude toward God Himself, since all that anyone possesses is ultimately on loan from the Creator.

Psalms 37:22 — "Such as are blessed by him shall inherit the land" The phrase "inherit the land" (yîreshû-'āreṣ) is one of the structural refrains of Psalm 37, appearing in verses 9, 11, 22, 29, and 34. It echoes the Abrahamic and Mosaic promises (Gen 12:7; Deut 4:1), rooting the individual's destiny in the covenantal history of Israel. The "blessing" is not passive luck but an active bestowal by Yahweh upon those who walk in His ways. Critically, this verse pairs with verse 21: the wicked take but lose; the blessed receive and inherit. The distinction is between grasping and receiving — between self-assertion and openness to the divine gift.

Psalms 37:23 — "A man's steps are established by Yahweh" The Hebrew kûn ("established," "made firm") carries the sense of something set in order, prepared, or ordained. This is not fatalism but a vision of participatory providence: the righteous man walks, and God confirms his path. The word steps (mits'ādê) is concrete and bodily — it is not merely the inner intention but the actual physical journey of a life that God directs. Proverbs 16:9 is the closest parallel: "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps." The Catholic tradition reads this as the cooperation of human freedom with divine grace — neither is cancelled by the other.

Psalms 37:24 — "Though he stumble, he shall not fall" Here the Psalmist introduces a crucial qualification. The righteous life is not a life without stumbling — it is a life in which stumbling does not become catastrophic falling. The hand of Yahweh (yād YHWH) is the implied agent: "for the LORD upholds his hand." This verse is pastorally rich: it does not promise immunity from moral or material difficulty, but assurance of divine support within it. Augustine saw here a portrait of the soul in the pilgrim Church (Ecclesia peregrinans) — always in danger of falling, yet sustained by grace. The verse anticipates the theology of perseverance: the just man falls seven times and rises again (Prov 24:16).

Psalms 37:25 — "I have been young, and now am old" This is among the most personally direct moments in the entire Psalter. The Psalmist speaks from personal witness — this is not deduction but testimony. The claim that "I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his children begging bread" has puzzled interpreters who know the experience of righteous suffering (cf. Job). The Church Fathers, including Chrysostom, read this as speaking of ultimate, not temporal, abandonment — the providence of God which never finally deserts the just, even through suffering. The verse grounds faith in memory and experience, a deeply Catholic epistemology of tradition: truth is received and handed on through lived witness.

Psalms 37:26 — "All day long he deals graciously and lends" The righteous man becomes a mirror of God's own character. Where the wicked borrows and does not repay (v. 21), the righteous lends — that is, gives freely, releasing resources without clinging. "All day long" (kol-hayyôm) suggests unceasing, habitual generosity rather than occasional charity. The word ḥônēn ("deals graciously") is the same root as ḥēn (grace) — the righteous person participates in and distributes divine grace. His children, too, become a blessing: the fruit of a righteous life extends beyond the individual into the next generation, a sign that God's blessing is generative and communal.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage with particular richness through the lens of grace, providence, and the universal destination of goods.

Providence and Human Freedom: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§302–308) teaches that divine providence operates through secondary causes, including human free acts. Psalm 37:23 is a liturgical illustration of this teaching: God "establishes the steps" of the righteous not by overriding their choices but by working in and through them. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q. 22, a. 3) affirms that providence extends even to singular contingent events — every step — without eliminating creaturely agency.

The Universal Destination of Goods: The refusal to repay in verse 21, and the generous lending in verse 26, directly invoke what the Catechism (§§2401–2406) and Gaudium et Spes (§69) call the universal destination of goods. Created goods are entrusted to humanity, not owned absolutely. The wicked person treats borrowed goods as his own; the righteous person holds his own goods as entrusted for others. Pope St. John Paul II (Centesimus Annus, §30–31) explicitly grounds social justice in this principle.

Perseverance in Grace: Verse 24 anticipates the Council of Trent's teaching on perseverance (Session VI, Canon 16): that the just can fall but are upheld by God's sustaining grace, and that final perseverance is a gift to be sought in humility and prayer. Augustine (Enchiridion, 107) saw God's upholding hand as the very definition of operating grace — not merely given once but sustaining moment by moment.

Experiential Witness and Tradition: Verse 25 embodies what Vatican II's Dei Verbum (§8) calls the living Tradition of the Church: truth handed on through the lived experience of the faithful across generations, the sensus fidelium made audible in a single elderly voice.

For the contemporary Catholic, these verses offer a quiet but searching challenge to the dominant culture of financial self-interest and spiritual self-sufficiency. Verse 21 asks: do I treat the gifts I have received — of talent, time, money, faith, community — as possessions to accumulate, or as goods received in trust? The Psalmist's portrait of the righteous person as one who lends and deals graciously "all day long" invites an examination of whether generosity is occasional charity or a habitual disposition of the heart.

Verse 23–24 speak directly to Catholics navigating anxiety, failure, or moral stumbling. The promise is not that the path will be smooth but that it will be held. In an age of performance culture — where stumbling is treated as disqualifying — the Psalm insists that God's guidance of a life is not cancelled by its falls. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the ecclesial embodiment of this verse: the righteous person rises, sustained by the hand of Christ.

Finally, the elderly Psalmist of verse 25 calls contemporary Catholics to value and seek the testimony of older believers — parents, grandparents, spiritual directors, the saints — as irreplaceable carriers of witnessed truth. Memory and testimony are not nostalgia; they are the architecture of living faith.