Psalms 37:34, commentary and pictures

Those who patiently trust in the Lord and continue in obedience to His holy way will be lifted up to receive the land as their own, while the wicked are destroyed before their eyes. The land promised is the literal earth made new and purified by fire, the restored home of the redeemed wherein dwells righteousness, not a distant or shadowy realm. That inheritance is still future, an everlasting home of peace and kingdom glory in which the righteous will dwell forever and never be removed. To be cut off is to come to a complete end, to perish and cease to be and be removed from God's universe, rather than to live on in endless misery. This takes place together on this earth after the thousand years, when fire from God devours the wicked around the beloved city and by the same fire purifies the earth, while the righteous, sheltered unharmed within the New Jerusalem, behold the King in His beauty and witness their final destruction.

Psalm Context and Purpose

The psalm to which this promise belongs sets out two classes of character side by side and brings cheer and promise to earthly pilgrims on their way. It is a psalm of trust and confidence in God, carrying the assurance that wickedness will finally be overthrown and good will triumph. Its words meet the sorrows and afflictions of Hebrew captives, mingling the record of suffering with encouragement and assurance of divine help and final deliverance from persecutors.

The psalm helps explain affliction and the apparent difference between the wicked and the righteous in this life. The prosperity of the wicked is no measure of God's favor and no proof of their uprightness, while the faithful are assured that God will ultimately exalt them to the promised inheritance and let them see the wicked cut off. It is a portion for people in affliction to dwell upon as they trust God when they cannot see wisdom in what happens to them. In that darkness there is assurance that God orders all things for their salvation, and by it God encourages His faithful children.

The promise to wait on the Lord and be exalted to inherit the land is one of many repetitions in different words through the psalm that the meek and the righteous shall inherit the earth and be recompensed in the earth. Taken together, the psalm contrasts the future life of God's children with the end of those who finally refuse salvation. Their end is destruction, not eternal misery.

Waiting and Keeping Way

Those who patiently wait for the Lord and keep His way will be exalted to inherit the land and will see the wicked cut off. The Lord will ultimately redress wrongs and correct errors, so the reward of waiting faithfully is sure. The promise is joined to the assurance that the Lord saves, strengthens, helps, and delivers the righteous in trouble because they trust in Him.

Keeping His way means doing justice and judgment. His way is the way of holiness and obedience to God's commandments, and waiting on the Lord and keeping His way lead to exaltation, inheritance of the land, and life. Committing one's ways to the Lord includes respecting God's moral law and the natural laws revealed in Scripture. The faithful person cares for this life, follows the laws of health as far as they are understood, and trusts God to bring about what is for human good and His glory.

The righteous are accepted through Christ's merits as they partake of Christ's Spirit and produce the Spirit's fruits. These fruits are feelings and actions in harmony with God's law, and they are necessary for the atonement to avail for them. The verse applies to staying at God's side amid the outward demands of life, including waiting on God and following His way while being content with a small place if God is glorified. When the guilty go free in human courts amid public celebration, those who patiently trust God and continue in obedience can remain calm, because God Himself will lift them up to receive the land as their inheritance and will destroy the wicked before their eyes. That promise of inheriting the earth and seeing the wicked cut off is for the Christian, not for those who serve sin.

Inheritance of the Land

The land to be inherited is the restored home that Christ gives back to redeemed people after sin and sinners are no more, the literal renewed earth and new earth wherein dwells righteousness. It is the earth itself, not the moon or Jupiter or Venus, and not a misty realm beyond time and space, with the blessing reaching not merely to the temporal but into the great beyond. It is the old earth purified, coming after the present earth waxes old and the world passes away and its works are burned up when the Lord Jesus is revealed. Those who wait on the Lord and keep His way will be exalted to inherit that land and dwell therein forever, while the wicked are cut off and removed and do not inhabit it.

Renewed means made new as the new creature in Christ is renewed, not made from new materials, and the righteous will possess the land of promise and dwell securely in peace upon this earth renewed under renewed heavens forever to eternity. The renewed earth will be a literal earthly kingdom made new as a spiritual home for those who receive Christ as Saviour and King, and when sin and death are gone its people will have no sickness, sorrow, or oppression. The land of Israel to be inherited is the whole earth once typified by Palestine.

The inheritance is future, not simply prosperity or blessings or worldly goods in the present life, but the joys of the earth made new received after the final overthrow of the wicked. The saints have the promise of it now but have not yet received it, for they receive it after the wicked are cut off. The final overthrow of the wicked confirms that the promised inheritance comes afterward.

It is an enduring home on the renewed earth where the righteous inherit the earth and dwell there forever, while the wicked are cut off and destroyed. After the wicked are destroyed and sin's effects are wiped away, the purified earth becomes the saints' everlasting home in the new earth. There the righteous delight in abundance of peace and possess the everlasting kingdom, and once they enter it they will never be removed. The verse belongs to the contrast between the enduring reward of the upright and the end of the wicked, with the wicked cut off at the end of the thousand years and the faithful inheriting only after the wicked are destroyed.

The inheritance is given to those who wait on the Lord and keep His way and trust in Him, whom the Lord preserves, and they will be exalted to inherit the land and see the wicked cut off. It is the righteous reward as distinct from the portion of the wicked, whose destruction is their punishment, and the difference between their portions is seen in the fulfillment of that inheritance. The inheritance is the earth made new after its present accursed condition is destroyed, with the wicked finally removed and the land given to the willing and obedient.

The land promised to God's children of all ages is the whole new earth. It comes in the restitution and in the antitypical jubilee when God restores the earth as humanity's eternal home. It is future, comes when the wicked are removed, lasts forever, and supports the promise that the righteous will inherit the earth.

Destruction of the Wicked

To be cut off is to be utterly destroyed and brought to an end of existence, perishing, withering like grass, consumed into smoke, ceasing to be and having no place, removed from God's universe rather than preserved in endless life and punishment. The righteous will witness that destruction as the wicked are consumed on the earth by fire and worms until they cease to exist.

The destruction of the wicked and the inheritance of the earth by the righteous occur together on this same earth, for as soon as the wicked are burned up the righteous immediately possess the earth, dwell in the land forever, and delight in abundance of peace. The very earth where the wicked are punished is purified by the same fire that burns them and restored to its primitive beauty for the people of God to inhabit, which proves the wicked do not continue in misery alongside the saints. Both classes are recompensed in the earth where they did their deeds, the wicked cut off and punished here on this earth and not kept in misery forever in a separate place, and afterward the righteous exalted to inherit the land in the eternal reward and kingdom.

The righteous see the cutting off while they are on the earth within the holy city, protected while the wicked are punished and destroyed, present and unharmed during the fire. They behold it immediately before and in connection with its accomplishment, just before the creation of the new heavens and new earth, at the close of the one thousand years after the second resurrection. From their place of defense inside the city, the New Jerusalem, they fully behold the final punishment when fire is rained upon the wicked outside the city and they are burned up as thorns cut up and as the fat of lambs. They contemplate two things at once, their eyes seeing the King in His beauty in glory within, and their hearts meditating terror at a world on fire without, when the city of God stands on earth and the wicked surround it and see God's glory.

That seeing takes place at the perdition of the ungodly after the thousand years and after the second resurrection, when the wicked surround the beloved city and fire from God devours them. It is the utter destruction of the wicked by fire on this earth after the judgment, in the same fires that renovate the earth and bring the new heavens and new earth, also called perdition, second death, destruction, perishing, and the lake of fire. It comes after the second advent, after the saints have been changed to immortality and have spent a thousand years in heaven, when they return to earth and witness the fire that destroys the ungodly, the wicked surrounding the New Jerusalem, seeing the redeemed inside, and being consumed by fire from heaven. As the righteous behold that destruction it is an abhorrence to them, but the scene ends with the coming of the new earth, where bliss alone remains for its righteous occupants in an eternal kingdom of happiness on this earth made new.

The inheritance of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked both take place in the earth, with the righteous receiving their recompense after the wicked receive theirs. The fulfillment of the promise of the land comes after the wicked are cut off, which the righteous will witness unto everlasting death and then delight in peace.

Prophetic Timing and Fulfillment

The waiting and keeping give way to exaltation after the earth is cleansed by fire, when Christ and his saints take possession of the earth and dwell there forever and receive the kingdom to finish the controversy of Zion and to deliver his children from all bondage and from their last enemy and from the power of the tempter, which is the devil. The inheritance of the meek comes after Christ's coming and the resurrection of the saints and the destruction of the wicked in the regenerated earth, and for that reason it does not describe an earthly reign in which the wicked remain. The promised land is this earth renewed, given to the saints in connection with the second coming, possessed as the kingdom after the coming of Christ and the resurrection of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked.

The meek are exalted to inherit the land when the wicked are cut off after the binding of Satan and the destruction of sin, at the time of the new earth after sin and sinners are removed from the present accursed condition. The earth made new follows the destruction of its present accursed condition, the wicked are finally removed, and the land is given to the willing and obedient as soon as the wicked are consumed. The promise is fulfilled after the wicked are destroyed and the earth is renewed, and the renewed earth is the righteous lasting home.

The fulfillment comes at the close of the great day of the Lord, when Satan and all his evil host are utterly destroyed in the lake of fire and new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness arise in Edenic purity and loveliness, and the righteous inherit that renewed earth while witnessing the cutting off of the wicked. The cutting off is slaughter, the root meaning of Armageddon, fulfilled in the final wrath that ends this world's history in the seven last plagues culminating in the seventh. Then all nations are armed and universally engaged against each other on the field of Armageddon, and God visits them with pestilence and blood and rain, hailstones, fire and brimstone, while the land of Israel to be inherited is the whole earth once typified by Palestine.

The promise belongs to the final deliverance of God's people, who unlike ancient Israel's local deliverance from Egypt into Canaan will be delivered from the world and settled in their eternal inheritance in the earth made new. That dwelling is the new earth where righteousness dwells, its duration is eternal, and it fulfills the promise of life and well-being connected with honoring parents. The inheritance comes when the wicked are cut off, which the righteous will live to see as a most certain promise of God, receiving the earth as their home.

Doctrinal Connections and Assurance

The psalm implies a resurrection of the wicked, so that their final cutting off takes place in view of the righteous. Those who wait on the Lord and keep His way will be exalted to inherit the land and will see the wicked cut off. Only those who are righteous by choice will exist forever, because only love incarnate is fitted to reign forever.

A kingdom alloyed by idolatry, cankered by selfishness, and eaten by the leprosy of sin must pass away. Babylon's continued reign depended on individuals accepting the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, and its rejection of that gospel meant that kingdom would be superseded by another. After the wicked are destroyed, the earth will become the everlasting home of God's people.