Bird's-eye view
In these two verses, David draws a sharp, ethical line in the sand that reveals two distinct spiritual realities. This is not merely good financial advice, though it is certainly that. This is a diagnostic test of the heart. The way a man deals with his debts and his resources reveals his fundamental orientation to God's covenant. The wicked man is a taker and a defaulter; his life is characterized by a black hole of consumption. The righteous man, in stark contrast, is a giver; his life is a fountain of generosity. And David immediately gives us the ultimate reason for this difference. It is not because one is naturally more responsible than the other. It is because one is blessed by God and the other is cursed by God. These two financial dispositions are the fruit of two ultimate destinies: inheritance for the blessed, and utter ruin for the cursed.
This passage, therefore, connects our day to day economic activity directly to our eschatology. Your bank statement is a theological document. The wicked man acts as though this world is all there is, and so he grabs what he can and breaks his promises without a thought. The righteous man knows he is an heir of a coming kingdom, and so he is free to be gracious, open-handed, and faithful to his word. His generosity is a preview of the glorious inheritance that is his in Christ.
Outline
- 1. Two Economic Policies (Ps 37:21-22)
- a. The Wicked: A Life of Default (Ps 37:21a)
- b. The Righteous: A Life of Grace (Ps 37:21b)
- c. The Reason: Covenant Blessing and Curse (Ps 37:22)
- i. The Blessed Inherit (Ps 37:22a)
- ii. The Cursed Are Cut Off (Ps 37:22b)
Context In Psalms
Psalm 37 is an acrostic psalm, a collection of wisdom sayings designed to encourage the righteous not to lose heart when they see the apparent prosperity of the wicked. The central command of the psalm is "Fret not thyself because of evildoers" (v. 1). David repeatedly contrasts the short-lived success of the wicked with the ultimate, lasting vindication of the righteous. The wicked are like grass that will soon wither (v. 2), while those who wait on the Lord will inherit the earth (v. 9). Our passage (vv. 21-22) provides a concrete, tangible example of the character difference between these two groups. The psalm is intensely practical, showing that the grand theological realities of God's justice and faithfulness are worked out in the nitty-gritty of everyday life, including how we handle our money.
Key Issues
- The Ethics of Debt
- Righteousness and Generosity
- The Nature of God's Blessing and Curse
- The Doctrine of Inheritance
- Covenant Faithfulness
The Great Economic Divide
The Bible does not have a separate category for "financial ethics" that is walled off from our worship or our doctrine. It is all of a piece. How you handle your money is how you handle your life, and how you handle your life is a direct reflection of what you believe about God. David here presents us with two fundamentally opposed ways of life, and he uses borrowing and giving as his diagnostic tools. These are not two points on a spectrum; they are two different species of man, destined for two entirely different ends.
Verse by Verse Commentary
21 The wicked borrows and does not pay back, But the righteous is gracious and gives.
The first clause is brutally simple. The wicked borrows and does not pay back. This is theft, plain and simple. It is a violation of the eighth commandment. The man who takes a loan makes a promise, a solemn vow, to repay. When he defaults on that promise, he has lied and he has stolen. This reveals a heart that is faithless and chaotic. He sees the world as a resource to be consumed for his own benefit, and his neighbor as a mark to be exploited. He is a covenant-breaker in the marketplace. This is not just a financial failure; it is a moral and spiritual one. He is unreliable, untrustworthy, and therefore, wicked.
The contrast is not simply that the righteous man "pays his debts." That is the bare minimum of civic decency. The bar is set much higher. The righteous is gracious and gives. The righteous man is not defined by the absence of vice, but by the presence of active virtue. His character is not a sterile neutrality. He is not just a non-thief. He is a fountain of generosity. His hands are open. Why? Because he is "gracious." The word points to the source of his character. He has received grace, and so he dispenses grace. He is a conduit of God's own character. He is not grasping and anxious because he knows who his Provider is. His giving is the overflow of a heart that is secure in God's covenant love.
22 For those blessed by Him will inherit the land, But those cursed by Him will be cut off.
The word "For" at the beginning of this verse is the hinge on which the entire passage turns. It provides the ultimate explanation for the behaviors described in verse 21. The righteous man is generous because he is blessed by God. The wicked man is a thief because he is cursed by God. This is not fatalism; it is covenant theology. Our actions are the fruit, not the root, of our standing before God.
Those blessed by Him will inherit the land. The blessing of God is not an abstract feeling; it has a concrete result. It culminates in inheritance. In the Old Testament context, this was the literal land of Canaan, the place of God's presence and provision. But the promise always looked forward. This is the promise that the meek will inherit the earth (Matt 5:5). The righteous man can afford to be generous in the here and now because he knows his future is secure. He is an heir of the world. He is playing the long game, and his inheritance is guaranteed by God Himself.
The contrast is stark and final. But those cursed by Him will be cut off. The curse of God also has a concrete result. To be "cut off" is the language of excommunication and death. It means to be severed from the covenant community, to be cast out from the place of blessing, to have one's name and lineage blotted out. The wicked man who defaults on his loan is demonstrating that he is already cut off in his heart from the commonwealth of Israel. His financial faithlessness is a symptom of his ultimate spiritual bankruptcy. His destiny is not inheritance, but dispossession.
Application
This passage forces us to ask some uncomfortable questions. Does our financial life reflect the character of the righteous or the wicked? Are we faithful to our word? Do we pay what we owe? If you are in debt, are you working diligently to repay it, or have you adopted the wicked man's shrug of indifference? The first step is to call sin what it is. Defaulting on your word is not a "financial strategy," it is theft.
But the contrast is not just about avoiding wickedness. Are you gracious? Are you a giver? Does your money flow out from you to bless others, or does it only flow in to be consumed? A tight-fisted Christian is a theological contradiction. We who have been given everything must be the most generous people on earth.
The ultimate application, as always, is the gospel. Every one of us is the wicked borrower. We have incurred a debt of sin before a holy God that is so massive we could never hope to repay it. We are spiritual defaulters, destined to be cut off. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the truly Righteous One. He owed nothing, yet He was gracious and gave everything, even His own life, to pay our debt in full. He took our curse upon Himself on the cross so that we, the bankrupt, might be "blessed by Him" and receive the inheritance of the saints. It is only when we grasp this great exchange that we are truly set free from the grasping, anxious, faithless spirit of the wicked. Because we have been given an unshakeable inheritance, we are now free to become conduits of that same grace, to be gracious and to give.