“Blessed is the man…”

On the theological importance of accurate translation.

As a priest, I am ordained to preach Christ. We focus not on an idea, nor a set of deeds that we do but on a person. And to illustrate this, I want to explore Psalm 1, from the Old Testament, a psalm that has been considered a kind of introduction to the whole book of Psalms, setting the tone for how we should relate to God. But in my experience, this psalm is often interpreted in exclusively ethical terms, as a text telling us what we ought to be, and to do. Yes, the text does give us a pattern of the true religious life but to reduce the text to that is to make a secondary reading into the primary one. But what is the primary meaning?

Some years ago, I was made aware, by Norwegian theologian Dag Øivind Østereng, that this psalm is often translated inaccurately. Take, for instance, v.1 in the New International Version (NIV): “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked” (emphasis added). And if we go to the New Revised Standard Version, we read: “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked” (emphasis added). Here, we see that those, or the one, who does not follow the ways or advices of the wicked will be blessed. If, however, we go back to an older translation, such as the Revised Standard Version, we read something else: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked” (emphasis added).

Here, we do not find ‘those’ or ‘the one’ but ‘the man,’ which accurately translates the Hebrew text (following the Masoretic Text). The text uses ashrê hāish, with the definite article (hā). It does not say blessed is “the one,” “those,” or even “a man” but “the man…” Østereng made the point, and rightly, I think, that this psalm principally points to the Messiah (‘the man’) and only secondarily to us, as His disciples and members of His body. The psalm, then, talks about those who follow the will of God, and who are in a right relationship with God, but makes the point that there is only one human being who has actually lived out that psalm.

When it says “blessed is the man,” it is not a devaluation of women (or other men) but a focus on Christ, on God made flesh. He is not just a human being, like us, but He lived, and lives, the life we are called to live. He is a true human being, but more accurately He is the true human being. And as our representative, He reconciles us to God, in complete love and obedience.

Psalm 1, then, is principally about Jesus, the Messiah (‘the man’), and secondarily about us, living as His disciples, who are “conformed to the image of [the] Son” (Romans 8:29). The point, then, is not that we can live up to it, nor that it terminates in ethics, even if we should strive to live according to it, walking in “good works, which God prepared beforehand” (Ephesians 2:10). We are to be formed in Christ, not by our own powers but through the grace of the Holy Spirit. The psalm should not be understood moralistically but christologically. Christ is the embodiment of the psalm, and we can only hope to achieve anywhere near what it says in Him.