Psalm 1—The Infinite Tree

"The word of God growls and rages. I writhe and wait."

Rendition

Blessed is the one
Who does not walk in the path of the guilty,
Nor makes his stand with the rebels,
Nor dwells with those who deride the Lord;
But all his desire is on the torah,
It growls through him day and night.

He is like the Tree
That God planted by Eden’s split streams,
The gift of its fruit is never late,
Its leaves are changeless and costless.
All his work flourishes.
Not so the rebels,
They are withered already, like dead leaves.
They carry their exile within them,
Pursuing the wind.

When the Lord judges all things,
They will not rise.
When the Lord gathers the family of the just
They will not be found.
God knows those who cherished his way,
And gives to the wicked the perishing they sought.

Notes on the Rendition

Note #1—Meditate or Growl?

ESV—1:2 “But his delight is in the law of the Lord/and on his law he meditates (hagah) day and night.”

The Hebrew word hagah occurs 24 times in the Bible and can be translated as “to moan, growl, utter, muse, mutter, meditate, devise, plot, speak.” To limit our understanding of hagah to mean only “meditate” diminishes the full meaning Psalm 1 is conveying.

• For example, in Job 27:4 it is translated as “utter” in the ESV— “My lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter (hagah) deceit.”

• In Psalm 2:1, hagah is rendered as “plot”— “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot (hagah) in vain?”

• Still, in Psalm 71:24, it is translated as “talk”— “And my tongue will talk (hagah) of your righteous help all the day long.”

• And in Isaiah 31:4, hagah becomes “growl”— “As a lion or a young lion growls (hagah) over his prey…”

As so often happens when we come to the Bible, our modern ways of thinking get in the way of understanding the sense of this Psalm in Hebrew.

We tend to think of meditation as a solemn, solitary, and, of course, quiet activity. There is not much of growling to your typical modern meditation session. In the ancient Hebrew understanding, meditation on the torah would have been a vocal event.

To reflect this, in my rendition above, I changed the wording of verse 2 to:

“But all his desire is on the torah,
It growls through him day and night.”

I wanted to use the word growl to stretch our imaginations when it comes to what it means to meditate on God and his ways and to bring in a rounder sense of hagah from the Hebrew. I also wanted to nod to the reality of how much conflict and wrestling is often involved when we come to the Bible. I bring that idea out in the poem below even more with lines like:

The word of God growls and rages. 
I writhe and wait.
I moan and meditate and suffer.

Note #2—The Tree of Life in Psalm 1…?

ESV—1:3 “He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.”

At first glance, the psalm seems to be saying that the person who meditates on God’s law is like well-watered tree, but if you notice the specific images in the verse, you see that it is saying much more.

Why is the tree planted next to streams (plural)? Why not just one? Is this tree in a delta? Why is its timely fruit noted? Why do its leaves never wither? Is it an evergreen? Should we be envisioning a pine tree in a bayou?

In order to understand what the psalmist is getting at, you need to look for a few clues elsewhere in the Bible.

Genesis 2 paints a picture of the garden in Eden with some striking similarities to the images of Psalm 1.

There is a river in Eden that breaks into multiple streams in the Garden before it flows out into the other lands. The text also notes that the Tree of Life is in the midst of the Garden. So, just as in the psalm, you have a tree next to multiple streams.

As you look for other moments in the Bible that the Tree of Life is mentioned, you will notice a pattern: the Tree of Life is often mentioned together with several unique “markers”. They are:

1. It is often next to a river or multiple rivers/streams.

2. It has miraculous or unfailing fruit.

3. Its leaves have special properties, such as healing or, as in the case of Psalm 1, never withering.

Consider Revelation 22: 1, 2 as a case in point:

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

The writer of Psalm one is using symbol-laden language to indicate that the person who meditates on the torah will become the Tree of Life.

In my rendition, I wrote it this way:

He is like the Tree
That God planted by Eden’s split streams,
The gift of its fruit is never late,
Its leaves are changeless and costless.

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Notes on the Poem

The core image of this poem grew out of a 6-week stay at a chateau in Ventenac, France in the Languedoc region. We were there on a work exchange—we came to help cook and care for the students who came to the chateau on a series of poetry retreats. When we weren’t working, we got to enjoy the beautiful house and vineyards. And we got to write a bit ourselves.

I spent several mornings on the balcony that overlooked the vineyards and the valley. An enormous wisteria had grown over the balcony and it dropped its blossoms while we were there. By the end of our stay, I was ankle-deep in wisteria blossoms and the smell was so thick you could almost chew on it. Across the valley, at the farthest edge of sight, you could barely make out the ghostly outline of the Pyrenees. Many of these images made it into the poem.

The poem is rooted in the twin images of the wisteria from the chateau and the Tree of Life from Psalm 1. It stands at the gateway of the project as Psalm 1 stands at the start of the Psalter. It was the first poem I wrote after deciding to undertake the project of writing a poem for every Psalm, and, as such, I was nervous about beginning. I hoped I would find water the deeper I went. I hoped I would be able to go deep enough to make something of value and find enough water to finish something so ambitious. This poem was the result of the tangle of images, fears, and hopes.

Poem—The Infinite Tree

There is a balcony under wisteria;
Up the hillside, across the vineyards,
Past the windmills in Languedoc. 
You can see the Pyrenees on a clear day
Across the bright expanse of memory.
You can hear the whisper of psalms 
Until you are ready to begin
What there is to begin.

“No one waters the wisteria,” She scoffs,
“That thing has roots in the canal by now.”
The petals drop like ripe fruit
That I have never tasted.
The darkling is behind me
And before me, but is not here.

I came to the valley to dream and listen.
The word of God growls and rages. 
I writhe and wait.
I moan and meditate and suffer.
I pray the seed’s prayer at night, alone,
Waiting for the infinite tree
To drop its petals into my mouth.
I pray 
That I will find water the deeper I go.

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Psalms: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 62, 63, 65, 66, 73, 74, 75, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 100, 107, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 140, 142, 147, 148.

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