HTML edition for divineprinciplebible.com, continuing Psalms with chapters 36 through 40. Commentary is included only where the passages are especially significant for the contrast between wickedness and God’s lovingkindness, patient trust, delight in God’s law, and the offering of testimony after deliverance. Simple diagrams are added where they clarify the movement of the psalm. Divine Principle and True Father are named where the connection is clearly in view.
Comment on 36:1: Psalm 36 begins with the root of wickedness: no fear of God before the eyes. Divine Principle strongly recognizes this as the fallen condition, where man turns from Heaven inward toward self-centered desire and loses reverence for God.
Comment on 36:5–6: The psalm shifts suddenly from the narrow corruption of man to the vastness of God’s mercy, faithfulness, righteousness, and judgment. This contrast is beautiful. Fallen evil is cramped and low, but Heaven’s heart is immeasurably wide.
Comment on 36:7 and 36:9: These are major life verses. God is loving shelter, fountain of life, and source of light. Divine Principle strongly resonates here because original life, love, and illumination all flow from God and not from the fallen self.
Comment on 37:1–2: Psalm 37 addresses one of the great historical temptations: envying the apparent success of evil. Divine Principle strongly recognizes that fallen history often allows the wicked to appear strong for a season, but their course is not enduring.
Comment on 37:3–5: This is one of the most ordered trust passages in the Psalms. Trust, delight, and committed way are joined. True Father often emphasized that man must align desire, path, and action with Heaven rather than merely asking for outcomes.
Comment on 37:7: Patient waiting is a major providential principle. Restoration history is long, and Heaven’s side must often resist irritation, haste, and comparison with evildoers.
Comment on 37:11: This is a beautiful reversal verse. The meek, not the arrogant, inherit. Divine Principle strongly resonates with Heaven’s law of reversal, where public-hearted goodness outlasts proud self-assertion.
Comment on 37:23 and 37:25: God’s ordering of the righteous course and God’s faithfulness across a lifetime are central here. The psalm teaches long-view trust, not instant measurement.
Psalm 37 is a great wisdom psalm for the long providential course. It strongly reflects Divine Principle themes of refusing envy toward evildoers, choosing trust and patience, and believing that the meek and upright, not the boastful, inherit enduring peace in the end.
Comment on 38:1: Psalm 38 is another penitential psalm. The speaker does not reject divine correction, but pleads for mercy within it. This is an important fallen-man posture before Heaven.
Comment on 38:3–4: Sin is described as overwhelming and bodily felt. The burden is not abstract. Divine Principle strongly recognizes that the fallen condition penetrates both spirit and life-course, not merely surface behavior.
Comment on 38:11: The psalm includes painful relational abandonment. Affliction often isolates. This gives voice to the sorrow of one who is not only burdened inwardly but left alone outwardly.
Comment on 38:15: This is the hinge of the psalm. Under guilt, weakness, and hostile pressure, hope still rests in God. The relation to Heaven is not broken by honest repentance.
Psalm 38 is a psalm of penitence, weakness, and clinging hope. It strongly reflects Divine Principle themes of the burden of sin in the fallen condition, the loneliness of affliction, and the enduring appeal to God as salvation even in deep distress.
Comment on 39:1: The psalm begins with restraint of the tongue. This is important. In many psalms, speech is either a gate to wisdom or a way into sin and despair.
Comment on 39:4–5: Psalm 39 turns to the brevity of life. Divine Principle strongly resonates with man’s fragile temporal condition and the need to read life from Heaven’s perspective rather than from pride or illusion.
Comment on 39:6: This is a sobering anti-illusion verse. Fallen man busies himself with accumulation under conditions of uncertainty and mortality. True Father often warned against misplaced confidence in material possession.
Comment on 39:7: This is the answer to human brevity: hope in God. The psalm does not end in nihilism but in God-centered waiting.
Psalm 39 is a psalm of restraint, mortality, and hope. It strongly reflects Divine Principle themes of the brevity of fallen life, the vanity of self-assured accumulation, and the right turning of the heart toward Heaven as its true hope.
Comment on 40:1–2: This is one of the great rescue passages in the Psalms. Patient waiting is followed by being lifted from the pit and set on the rock. Divine Principle strongly resonates with this movement from fallen depth to new standing through Heaven’s intervention.
Comment on 40:3: Deliverance becomes testimony. Heaven’s saving work is meant to create new praise and awaken fear and trust in others.
Comment on 40:6–8: This is one of the strongest heart-obedience passages in the Psalms. The point is not outward ritual alone, but inward delight in God’s will. Divine Principle strongly affirms that restoration is fulfilled through heartfelt obedience to Heaven’s word and purpose, not through form without heart.
Comment on 40:9–10: The restored person becomes a public witness. What Heaven works inwardly should not remain hidden, but be declared in the congregation.
Comment on 40:17: The psalm ends in humility and assurance. Poor and needy, yet remembered. This is a beautiful final balance: no self-glory, but confidence that Heaven thinks upon the one who waits.
Psalm 40 is a psalm of patient waiting, rescue, and
God of Original Ideal Commentary
Psalm 36 is a psalm of sharp contrast between fallen wickedness and Heaven’s immeasurable lovingkindness. It strongly reflects Divine Principle themes of the root of evil as loss of fear of God, and the recovery of life and sight only in God’s light and under His wings.