Catholic Commentary
Beatitude and Wonder: Trusting in God's Innumerable Works
4Blessed is the man who makes Yahweh his trust, and doesn’t respect the proud, nor such as turn away to lies.5Many, Yahweh, my God, are the wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are toward us. They can’t be declared back to you. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be counted.
Psalms 40:4–5 describes the blessed state of those who trust in God rather than in the proud or those who pursue idols, and celebrates God's countless wonderful works and plans that exceed human ability to enumerate. The passage transitions from proclaiming this blessedness to direct doxological address, reflecting how genuine trust naturally generates intimate worship and praise.
Trust in God is the architecture of a blessed life — and that trust itself opens your eyes to see the infinite wonders already surrounding you.
Christian exegesis, from Origen onward, reads Psalm 40 as a Messianic psalm in which David speaks prophetically in the person of Christ — a reading given apostolic warrant by the Letter to the Hebrews (10:5–7), which places verses 6–8 on Christ's lips at the Incarnation. In this Christological light, verse 4's beatitude resonates with the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus reconstitutes the 'ashrey form around himself. The "wonderful works" of verse 5 then find their supreme expression in the mysteries of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection — the mirabilia Dei that Paul declares no eye has seen and no mind has conceived (1 Cor 2:9). The Church's liturgical tradition, especially in the Exsultet of the Easter Vigil, echoes this doxological overflow precisely when it exclaims the "truly necessary sin of Adam" and the "happy fault" — a moment when the enumeration of God's wonders exceeds all human reckoning.
Catholic tradition illuminates these verses at several distinct levels. First, the beatitude of verse 4 stands within the broader biblical theology of beatitudo — human happiness — which the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1718–1719) identifies as ordered ultimately toward God alone. St. Augustine's famous opening of the Confessions ("Our heart is restless until it repose in Thee") is the patristic amplification of verse 4: the very structure of the human person is such that trust placed anywhere other than in God produces disorder, while trust placed in God produces the shalom that 'ashrey describes. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 2–3), systematises this insight: no finite good — wealth, honour, power, pleasure — can constitute beatitude because the intellect's reach exceeds every created object.
Second, the doxological wonder of verse 5 speaks directly to the Catholic understanding of admiratio — wonder — as a theological and intellectual virtue. Vatican I's Dei Filius affirms that God's works in creation and history genuinely manifest His power and divinity (cf. Rom 1:20), and Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes (§34) sees in human engagement with the created order a participation in uncovering those wonders. St. John Paul II, in Fides et Ratio (§1), opens with precisely this posture: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of truth" — an echo of the psalmist's wonder.
Third, patristically, St. Ambrose and St. Hilary of Poitiers both comment on this psalm Christologically, noting that the "innumerable works" find their consummation in the mystery of the Word made flesh — the greatest of all God's mirabilia, which is why John's Gospel closes with the confession that the world itself could not contain the books that would need to be written (Jn 21:25).
Contemporary Catholics live in an age that offers an unprecedented proliferation of surrogate trusts: financial portfolios, political ideologies, therapeutic frameworks, social media affirmation — each quietly positioning itself as a source of ultimate security. Verse 4 does not ask the reader to despise legitimate goods but to audit the architecture of the soul: where has my foundational trust actually been placed? A practical examination of conscience drawn from this verse might ask: When I am most anxious, what do I instinctively reach for first? When that is named honestly, verse 5 offers the remedy — not a technique, but a deliberate turning of attention to the mirabilia Dei already present in one's own life. Keeping a gratitude journal of God's wonders in personal history (answered prayers, providential meetings, moments of grace) is a concrete way of inhabiting verse 5. The psalmist's confession that the works "cannot be told" is itself liberating: Catholic prayer does not require us to comprehend God's plan, only to wonder at it with trust. Eucharistic adoration is perhaps the liturgical space where both movements — trust and wonder — converge most naturally for a Catholic today.
Commentary
Psalms 40:4 — The Beatitude of Trust
The Hebrew 'ashrey — rendered "blessed" — opens with the same jubilant declaration found in Psalm 1:1, functioning not merely as a wish but as a proclamation of objective, divinely-granted well-being. To be 'ashrey is to stand in a condition of flourishing that the world cannot manufacture or revoke. The psalmist specifies the precise ground of this blessedness: making Yahweh ("the LORD") one's mivtach, one's "trust" or "refuge" — a word with architectural connotations, as of a fortified rampart in which one shelters. The beatitude is immediately sharpened by two negative contrasts: the blessed man does not turn to rehabin ("the proud" or "the arrogant") and does not go aside to sate kazav ("those who go astray after lies"), most naturally understood as a reference to idols and those who worship them (cf. Ps 31:7). The structural logic is decisive: trust in Yahweh is not merely one option among many — it requires a turning away from every rival claimant to the heart's allegiance. The Fathers read this as a portrait of the soul properly ordered, where the will's adhesion to God liberates it from the tyranny of every created substitute.
Psalms 40:5 — The Doxology of Wonder
The grammatical shift from third person (the blessed man) to second person address ("you, Yahweh, my God") is theologically significant: authentic trust generates intimate doxology. The psalmist moves seamlessly from proclamation about God to direct speech to God — the natural movement of a soul that has truly trusted. The phrase rabbôt 'asita ("many [things] you have done") encompasses the entire sweep of God's saving activity in history: creation, the Exodus, the covenant, providential rescue of the individual — all gathered under the single word niphlʾotecha, "your wonders" or "your marvellous works." The root pele' in Hebrew denotes what is beyond ordinary human capacity, the astonishing, the categorically surprising — the same root used of the crossing of the Red Sea and of the divine Name revealed to Manoah (Judg 13:18). Crucially, the psalmist confesses that these works and God's "plans" (machshevotecha) for humanity cannot be enumerated: "were I to declare and speak them, they are more than can be told." This is a form of apophatic praise — the very inability to count God's works becomes itself an act of worship. The infinite outstrips every catalogue.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses