When Life Feels Unfair: A Guide to Divine Justice
What’s Psalm 37 about?
Ever watched someone cut corners and get ahead while you’re doing the right thing and struggling? David wrote this psalm for exactly those moments – it’s his masterclass on why patience with God’s justice beats anxiety about life’s apparent unfairness every single time.
The Full Context
Picture an aging King David, looking back over decades of watching both righteous and wicked people, reflecting on a question that has haunted humanity since Cain and Abel: why do bad people sometimes seem to prosper while good people suffer? This isn’t theoretical theology for David – he’s lived through Saul’s murderous jealousy, Absalom’s rebellion, and countless moments when doing right felt like a losing strategy. The psalm emerges from this lived experience, written likely in David’s later years when he had the perspective to see how God’s justice actually unfolds over time.
What makes Psalm 37 unique is its literary structure – it’s an acrostic poem in Hebrew, with verses beginning with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This wasn’t just artistic flourish; it was a memory device, helping people internalize these truths about divine justice. The psalm serves as both personal meditation and community instruction, addressing the universal human struggle with theodicy – how a good God can allow apparent injustice to persist. David’s approach is practical rather than philosophical, offering concrete behaviors and perspectives for navigating seasons when righteousness seems unrewarded.
What the Ancient Words Tell Us
The opening command “al-titchar” – “do not fret” – is fascinating because the Hebrew root charah literally means “to burn” or “to be hot.” David isn’t telling us to suppress our emotions; he’s warning against the internal combustion that happens when we obsess over injustice. It’s the same word used when Cain’s face fell before murdering Abel – that slow burn of resentment that consumes us from within.
Grammar Geeks
The word “fret” in Hebrew (charah) appears three times in the opening verses, creating this rhythmic warning against the burning anxiety that comes from fixating on others’ apparent success. It’s the same root used for anger, but here it’s specifically about the smoldering resentment that eats away at our peace.
When David says the wicked will be “cut off” (karath), he’s using covenant language. This isn’t just about death – it’s about being severed from the source of life itself. Meanwhile, the righteous will “inherit the land” (yarash), using the same term for Israel’s inheritance of the Promised Land. David is painting a picture of ultimate belonging versus ultimate exile.
The promise that “the meek shall inherit the earth” in verse 11 uses anavim – not weakness, but strength under control. These are people who have power but choose restraint, who could retaliate but don’t. It’s the opposite of the aggressive self-promotion that seems to get people ahead in the short term.
What Would the Original Audience Have Heard?
For ancient Israelites living under the covenant, this psalm would have resonated with their national story. They’d seen Egypt’s power crumble, witnessed Pharaoh’s army swallowed by the sea, and watched seemingly invincible nations disappear from history. The language of inheritance would immediately connect to their experience of receiving the Promised Land – not through military might, but through God’s faithfulness to His promises.
Did You Know?
Archaeological evidence shows that many of the powerful nations contemporary to David – the Philistines, Edomites, and Moabites – left virtually no lasting cultural impact, while the “meek” Israelites produced literature, law, and spiritual insights that shaped world civilization for millennia.
The agricultural metaphors would hit differently for people whose survival depended on successful harvests. When David talks about the wicked withering “like grass” and being “cut down like green herbs” (verse 2), they’d picture the dramatic difference between the flash of spring growth and the deep roots that survive drought years. They knew firsthand that what looks impressive in the moment might not last through the dry season.
The promise of daily bread in verse 25 – “I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread” – would resonate deeply with a people who experienced God’s provision through wilderness wanderings, where manna appeared daily regardless of human effort or deserve.
Wrestling with the Text
Here’s where things get uncomfortable: David claims he’s never seen the righteous abandoned or their children begging bread. Really? Never? What about Job’s suffering, or the martyrs, or the countless believers throughout history who have experienced genuine want and persecution?
Wait, That’s Strange…
David’s absolute statement about never seeing the righteous forsaken seems to contradict other parts of Scripture and human experience. Is this hyperbole, limited perspective, or something deeper about how God defines “forsaken”?
The key might be in how David defines “forsaken” (azav). This isn’t just about temporary hardship – it’s about being utterly abandoned, cast off permanently. David may be making a distinction between seasonal difficulty and ultimate abandonment. He’s seen righteous people go through tough times, but he’s never seen God completely write them off or leave them without hope of restoration.
Another wrestling point: the psalm’s confident tone about justice can feel almost naive to modern readers who’ve witnessed genocides, systematic oppression, and generations of suffering. But David isn’t writing from a place of privilege – he’s writing as someone who’s been hunted, betrayed, and watched his own children rebel against him. His confidence comes not from easy circumstances but from long observation of how God’s justice actually works over extended timeframes.
The tension between “wait for the Lord” and our desire for immediate justice remains one of faith’s great challenges. David’s solution isn’t philosophical but practical: focus on your own faithfulness rather than others’ apparent success.
How This Changes Everything
What transforms when we really internalize this psalm is our relationship with time itself. Instead of living in the constant anxiety of keeping score – measuring our progress against others’ apparent success – we begin to operate on God’s timeline. This isn’t passive resignation; it’s active trust that frees us to focus on what we can control: our own character and choices.
“The secret to peace isn’t getting justice faster; it’s trusting justice deeper.”
The psalm reframes prosperity entirely. True security doesn’t come from accumulating wealth or power but from being rooted in unchanging character. When David promises the righteous will “dwell in the land” and “feed on His faithfulness” (verse 3), he’s pointing to a stability that external circumstances can’t touch.
This shifts how we handle both success and failure. Success becomes stewardship rather than achievement – we’re managing resources that ultimately belong to God. Failure becomes redirection rather than defeat – temporary setbacks in a longer story of faithfulness. The comparison game that drives so much of our anxiety simply loses its power when we’re playing for different stakes entirely.
Perhaps most radically, it changes how we view our enemies. Instead of plotting revenge or burning with resentment, we can actually feel sorry for people whose apparent success is built on foundations that won’t last. This isn’t superiority – it’s the genuine grief of watching someone build their house on sand.
Key Takeaway
When life feels unfair, the answer isn’t to obsess over others’ apparent success but to deepen your roots in what actually lasts – faithfulness, integrity, and trust in God’s ultimate justice.
Further Reading
Internal Links:
External Scholarly Resources:
