Catholic Commentary
Final Contrast: Perishing Apart from God vs. Flourishing in His Presence
27For, behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you.28But it is good for me to come close to God. I have made the Lord Yahweh my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.
Psalms 73:27–28 presents a contrast between those who distance themselves from God and face destruction, versus the psalmist's affirmation that nearness to God is the highest good. Asaph resolves his earlier crisis of faith by declaring that intimate communion with God, not worldly prosperity, constitutes true flourishing and salvation.
Distance from God is not a neutral position—it is a direction toward perishing; nearness to Him is not an add-on to life but the ground of all flourishing.
The psalmist adds: "I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all your works." The act of "making God a refuge" (maḥseh, shelter/stronghold) is not passive but deliberate — an act of will, a commitment. And this commitment overflows into proclamation: the one who draws near to God cannot remain silent. The sanctuary experience (v. 17) that broke the crisis open now becomes the source of witness.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
In the allegorical sense, these verses anticipate the New Testament theology of union with Christ. The "nearness to God" that Asaph experiences through the temple liturgy finds its fulfillment in the Incarnation, where God himself draws near to humanity in Jesus Christ (John 1:14). The contrast between perishing and flourishing maps precisely onto John 15:1–6: branches cut off from the vine wither and are thrown into the fire; those who abide in Christ bear much fruit. The anagogical sense points to the beatific vision — the ultimate, unmediated "nearness to God" that is eternal life.
Catholic tradition reads these two verses as a compressed theology of beatitude and damnation, and of the nature of the supreme good. Saint Augustine, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, meditates on verse 28 at length, identifying qirbat ʾĕlōhîm — closeness to God — with the very definition of happiness: "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee" (Confessions I.1). For Augustine, verse 27 describes the ontological condition of sin: to sin is to "turn away" (aversio) from God, and such turning away is itself the beginning of perishing. The soul that defects from the Supreme Good does not merely lose a benefit — it loses the ground of its own being.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God" (CCC §27). Psalm 73:28 is the lyrical expression of this anthropological truth: nearness to God is not optional for human flourishing — it is constitutive of it. The CCC further notes that man's beatitude "consists in" God alone (CCC §1723), echoing the psalmist's declaration that God is his "portion" (v. 26) and that closeness to God is his supreme ṭôb.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I–II, q. 2–3) argues that no created good — wealth, pleasure, honor, knowledge — can constitute the ultimate good of the rational creature; only God himself, as bonum universale, can satisfy the human intellect and will. Verse 28 is the experiential, Psalmic confirmation of this philosophical conclusion.
Saint John of the Cross understood verse 27 as describing the "spiritual death" that results from attachment to anything less than God — even good things pursued as ultimate ends become forms of distance. Pope Benedict XVI, in Deus Caritas Est §1, opens with the declaration that "God is love," and the entire encyclical can be read as an extended commentary on verse 28: the encounter with this loving God transforms all of life.
Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with what might be called "managed distance from God" — a functional atheism that maintains religious externals while progressively relocating the center of one's life in career, comfort, digital stimulation, or therapeutic self-improvement. Asaph's confession in verse 28 is a corrective that cuts precisely against this drift. It invites the Catholic reader to ask a searching, concrete question: What do I actually treat as my supreme good? Not in theory, but in how I spend time, attention, and emotional energy.
Practically, these verses commend the ancient Catholic practice of frequent, intentional recourse to the sacraments — especially the Eucharist, which is the Church's supreme act of "drawing near to God." The word qirbat (nearness/approach) used in verse 28 resonates with the Latin accessus ad altare — the approach to the altar. Every Mass is a participation in the nearness to God that Asaph declares to be his ultimate good.
Verse 27 is also a quiet but urgent reminder that spiritual indifference is not neutral — "far from God" is a direction, not a plateau. Families, parishes, and individual Catholics can use these verses as an examination of conscience: Are our choices, habits, and priorities drawing us closer to God, or quietly enlarging the distance?
Commentary
Verse 27: "For, behold, those who are far from you shall perish."
The opening particle kî hinnēh ("for, behold") signals that what follows is not a casual observation but a solemn, demonstrative conclusion — an almost legal declaration. The word translated "far" (rěḥōqîm) carries deep covenantal weight in the Hebrew Bible. To be "far from God" is not primarily a spatial metaphor but a relational and moral one: it describes the posture of those who, through idolatry, injustice, or willful rejection, have severed themselves from the living covenant. The verb "perish" (yōʾbadû, from ʾābad) is strong and comprehensive — it implies total ruin, annihilation, the loss of all that constitutes true existence. Asaph is not merely describing temporal misfortune; in the full arc of the psalm, which culminates in visions of the sanctuary and the "afterward" (ʾaḥarît, v. 17), this perishing has an eschatological dimension. Those whose lives are built on self-sufficiency and contempt for God will find that the very foundation of their being collapses. Critically, Asaph uses the third person — "those who are far from you" — not "from me." The orientation is theocentric. Destruction is defined not by social failure or suffering but by alienation from the living God.
The phrase also recalls Israel's covenant vocabulary: to be "cut off" from the LORD was the most severe form of judgment (cf. Lev 17:10; Num 9:13). Asaph extends this into a universal principle: the wicked whom he envied in vv. 3–12 are not flourishing — they are already on the path of perishing, even if temporal eyes cannot yet see it.
Verse 28: "But it is good for me to come close to God."
The contrast is introduced by waʾănî — "but as for me" — the same phrase that punctuated Asaph's confession of near-failure in v. 2 ("my feet had nearly stumbled") and his renewed identity in v. 23 ("nevertheless I am continually with you"). This repeated "but as for me" structures the entire psalm as a movement from crisis to resolution. Now it anchors the psalm's definitive conclusion.
Qirbat ʾĕlōhîm lî ṭôb — "drawing near to God is my good." The word ṭôb ("good") here is enormous. In Genesis 1, God surveys creation and calls it "good" (ṭôb). Here, Asaph identifies the supreme good not with prosperity, honor, health, or even life itself, but with qirbat ʾĕlōhîm — nearness to God. The noun qirbat (from qārab) is the same root used for Israel's priestly approach to the altar; the psalmist is drawing on cultic language to describe what has become for him a personal, existential reality. The "approach" that priests made in liturgical sacrifice is now internalized as the defining orientation of the soul.