Psalms 73

Wesley: Clean heart—true Israelites who love God and serve in spirit and truth. God is good to Israel opens the psalm as confession before complaint.

Goodness to the pure in heart is affirmed first. Grace invites purity of heart as living response, not a claim that merit earned the good.

Calvin: Yet God is good to Israel—to the right of heart. After agitation, faith breaks out: God is gracious to genuine saints, not every name on the roll.

Israel is limited to the upright in heart; hypocrites are cut off. Providence is confessed against the flesh’s misgiving.

Wesley: Feet almost gone—faith in providence nearly overthrown; steps nearly slipped.

Asaph is honest about how close he came to falling. Where they meet: saints can almost stumble without God casting them off; the confession itself is already returning.

Calvin: And I—even the well-taught almost slipped. Temptation that affronts God’s honor assails even those schooled in godliness.

Shared warning—all are in danger of falling unless upheld by God’s hand.

Wesley: Envy of the arrogant at the wicked’s prosperity—the temptation named.

Envy is confessed as sin’s edge, not excused. Both traditions hear: prosperity of the wicked wounds faith; grace still calls envy what it is.

Calvin: I envied the foolish when I saw the wicked prosper—temptation to join their way and doubt God’s ordering.

Envy of the ungodly is perilous folly opposite the fear of God.

Wesley: No bands—they are not dragged to death by sentence they deserve; strength firm.

Easy death and sleek bodies fuel the scandal. Shared realism—outward ease is not denied.

Calvin: no bands to their death; strength vigorous—they seem exempt from the diseases that bind others to God’s yoke.

God sometimes places the wicked on a stage of ease to try faith.

Wesley: Not in trouble as other (good) men frequently are; not plagued like others.

The comparison stings the righteous sufferer. Common reading: exemption from common trouble is the temptation’s fuel.

Calvin: not in the trouble common to man—special exemption that looks like privilege.

Beholding despisers at ease while the godly labor is a sore trial.

Wesley: Pride as necklace; violence as garment—ornament and clothing of the prosperous wicked.

Pride and violence worn openly. Shared moral clarity—prosperity without repentance hardens into display.

Calvin: pride compasses as a chain; violence covers as raiment—they glory in audacity; pride is violence’s mother.

Abuse of kindness meets divine forbearance that faith must interpret aright.

Wesley: Eyes swelling with fatness; hearts overflowing with follies—pampered excess.

Abundance without God breeds folly. Both confess: fatness of eye images insolent prosperity.

Calvin: eye going out for fatness; thoughts exceeding bounds—glutted prosperity projects pride.

Shared diagnosis—ease intoxicates until imagination mounts above ordinary bounds.

Wesley: Speak—boasting of oppressions; loftily threatening.

The wicked speak malice from their lofty height. Oppression is not quiet; it advertises itself.

Calvin: insolent talk of extortion; they speak from on high as if little gods.

Unbridled speech reveals hearts that forget they are men.

Wesley: Mouth against the heavens—blaspheming God and deriding providence; tongue walking through the earth—liberty to reproach all.

Heaven and earth both targeted. Strutting tongue is rebellion, not mere manners.

Calvin: mouth set against the heavens; tongue walking through the earth—contumely against God and men.

Presumption imagines heaven and earth subject to it.

Wesley: Turn—to the wicked company; Waters—full cup of prosperity wrung out as if all blessings poured on them.

People drawn toward ease’s cup. Shared grief—prosperity can pull even the visible people aside.

Calvin: his people return hither; waters of a full cup wrung out—many swayed by the temptation, vexed when religion seems to yield no advantage.

The scandal of ease can shipwreck or shake those counted among God’s people.

Wesley: The wicked (and the tempted) ask whether God knows—knowledge in the Most High doubted.

Atheism of practice voiced as question. Either reading: ‘How does God know? Is the heart’s dark suggestion under envy.

Calvin: How doth God know?—even believers can be shaken to doubt providence when disorder dazzles; they must disburden into God’s bosom.

Not only the profane deny care; true believers are tempted unless wonderfully preserved.

Wesley: Behold—psalmist summing up: ungodly prosper, increase in riches.

The summary presses the ‘why’. Both sides agree: ease and increasing wealth of the wicked is stated without varnish.

Calvin: Behold these ungodly—yet at ease forever, heaping riches; long duration wears the righteous’ patience.

Shared pictorial envy—wicked cherished while the upright are scourged.

Wesley: In vain—tempted to think religion unprofitable; clean heart and washed hands describe true religion’s parts.

Cleansing heart and hands is piety felt as wasted. Both traditions see: the temptation is not against ritual only but against sincere holiness.

Calvin: purified heart and washed hands in vain—daily scourge makes innocence seem unrewarded.

Purity of heart joined to upright conduct; the complaint is the trial’s language, not final dogma.

Wesley: Stricken all day; rebuked every morning—continual chastening while the wicked rest.

Morning-by-morning rebuke vs. their ease. Shared solidarity with sufferers who keep integrity under stripe.

Calvin: scourged daily; chastisement every morning—no end of calamity for the upright in his feeling.

The contrast with v. 12 fuels the crisis that sanctuary will answer.

Wesley: Offend—speaking thus would grieve, discourage, and tempt God’s children to revolt.

Love for the generation restrains bitter speech. Envy’s conclusion must not be preached to the children.

Calvin: If I speak thus I have transgressed—behold, the generation of thy children remains; God still reserves a people.

Shared bridle—doubts are not published as settled truth against the church.

Wesley: To know—to find out the reason of this providence; too painful / wearisome.

He admits his weariness before clarity came. Unaided reasoning cannot settle the scandal of prosperity.

Calvin: applied mind to know—yet trouble/unprofitable labor until the sanctuaries; carnal reason sinks under the confusion.

Natural understanding fails; illumination must come from elsewhere than ourselves.

Wesley: Until—consulted the word of God; sanctuary and oracle in hard cases. Their end—prosperity short.

Entering God’s presence and Word turns envy to discernment. Shared hinge—sanctuary clarity, not private cleverness, ends the wearisome task.

Calvin: until I entered the sanctuaries—school of God (Word and Spirit). End = God’s judgments delayed yet sure, not mere exit from life.

Eyes must be opened; Word given due authority; last day may still await visible punishment.

Wesley: Slippery places; cast down to ruin—footing of the prosperous is ice.

After sanctuary, judgment’s footing is seen. Both note: ease was never solid ground.

Calvin: set in slippery places; cast into destruction—short lift so the fall is heavier; secret providence manages what looked random.

Shared watchtower view—faith now sees the ice under the wicked’s dance.

Wesley: Terrors—God’s dreadful judgments unexpectedly seizing; desolation in a moment.

Sudden consumption awakens wonder. Common confession: moment-destruction answers ‘forever’ ease.

Calvin: destroyed in a moment; consumed with terrors—suddenness corrects our dullness about divine judgment.

Unlooked-for ruin teaches what prosperity hid.

Wesley: Dream on waking; despise their image—felicity a shadow, raised to shame.

The glory of the wicked is exposed as a phantom. Both readings hold: waking under God ends the pleasant dream of vain life.

Calvin: dream after awaking; God makes their image despised—outward show is appearance, not substance.

Illuminated minds are less dazzled; phantoms vanish when God rouses.

Wesley: Pricked—deeply wounded with disquieting thoughts; heart grieved.

Confession of embitterment without excuse. Envy left a wound God heals by truth.

Calvin: heart in a ferment; pierced in reins—soured envy and emulation against God’s ways.

Believers’ disquiet is sharper because they know God is Judge.

Wesley: Foolish and ignorant; as a beast before God—self-rebuke for brutish reasoning.

Honesty about folly opens the door to ‘nevertheless.’ Shared: envy made the psalmist beastlike in judgment.

Calvin: foolish, ignorant, as a brute with thee—perverse envy from ignorance; blame on himself, not on providence.

When we quarrel with providence, our understanding is the perverse part.

Wesley: Nevertheless—though just cause to cast off, kindness continued; held—that faith might not fail.

Held right hand = sustaining care through the almost-slip. Shared miracle—continual with-ness after beastly folly.

Calvin: nevertheless continually with thee; held my right hand—secret grace kept him from open blasphemy and total apostasy.

God’s fatherly eye and hand uphold when we barely know it.

Wesley: Guide with counsel; afterward receive to glory—present leading and final reception.

Counsel now, glory afterward—path of trust. Guidance is personal and forward-looking.

Calvin: guide with counsel; at length receive into glory—future confidence after restoration; glory spans earthly foretaste to heaven.

Wisdom from God, not self-reliance, and grace unto glory.

Wesley: Heaven and earth—none desired besides God; exclusive satisfaction.

Desire recentered after envy of riches. God alone fills what prosperity falsely promised.

Calvin: whom in heaven but thee; none on earth besides—satisfied with God alone; unlawful to desire another object beside him.

Sanctuary profit is exclusive cleaving; creatures must not share the throne of desire.

Wesley: Flesh and heart failing; God strength and portion forever—rock when self collapses.

Portion forever outlasts sleek bodies of vv. 4–12. Shared climax—God himself is the lot of the godly.

Calvin: flesh and heart failed; God strength of heart and portion forever—nothingness without God; portion = abundant sufficiency and perfection of happiness.

Cast wholly on God when powers decay; portion language excludes rival trusts.

Wesley: Far from thee perish; go a whoring—revolt to wickedness, spiritual whoredom.

Distance and unfaithfulness meet an end. Both agree: nearness vs. farness is the moral geography of the psalm’s close.

Calvin: who depart perish; destroyed those who go a whoring—scattering hope among many objects; spiritual adultery vs. exclusive faith.

Apostates who will not fix on God alone are named adulterers in heart.

Wesley: Good for me to come close to God; Lord GOD as refuge; telling his works—nearness ends envy’s story in praise.

Drawing near is good and freely claimed as refuge for witness. Shared telos—nearness, not riches, is the good; testimony follows trust.

Calvin: good to draw near; trust in the Lord Jehovah to recount his works—steadfast communion even if all others wander; confidence fixed so the hand may hold.

Gather affections from evil examples; hope in him never wants matter for praise.