"The wicked are not so but they are like the chaff which the wind blows away..." Psalm 1:4
Some trees drop their their old leaves in a soft carpet on the ground around them. Any quiet breeze will stir the leaves which shift and settle, as if rearranging themselves before sleep. It's a restful image, giving a sense of reassurance, just as the strong tree imagery in Psalm 1 verse 3 allows us to focus on the strength of the Lord. There is no hint as to what kind of tree the Psalmist is referring to, what is important is the strength and vitality of the image being given to us as readers.
The following verse explodes the serenity with a starkly contrasting image. The wicked of verse 1 are spoken of as chaff that, like a pile of dead leaves, is taken by the wind and blown away. The strong tree that is fed and watered by the Living Word of God, who is Jesus, produces fruit in season. The wicked, want nothing to do with the living, sustaining God. They are spoken of as the chaff, which is the unusable husk surrounding the seed. It must be threshed and winnowed before the seed can be gathered.
What we should remark upon here is the solidity of the tree, that is, the righteous man, held up against the lightness of the chaff, totally lacking substance, able to be carried away by the wind. There is no life in the chaff. The tree produces fruit, the chaff is without life. The life is in the seed from which it is separated.
Is this the righteous man's view of the wicked that we are being given here? Or are we being shown a glimpse of how God sees it? The irony is that the wicked in all their swagger and self importance have no substance at all. Richard Baxter points out something interesting here. Whilst the chaff, the husk, encloses the wheat, it "enjoys some privileges for the wheat's sake, and is laid up carefully in the barn; but as soon as it is divided, and parted from the wheat, it is cast out and scattered by the wind..."
It is only the closeness of the Godly that gives the wicked any chance at all! In his book "Gates into the Psalm country" M.R. Gates points to three aspects of ungodly character: instability, worthlessness and insecurity. The chaff is everything the tree is not. Just as chaff and wheat are separated, so the wicked will not stand in the assembly with the righteous.
I have some difficulty with this, my thoughts do not want to equate anyone, sinners or otherwise, with the chaff that is blown away by the wind. And yet, in Matthew 13:49, Jesus Himself tells us that at the end of the age the wicked will be taken from among the righteous, let alone the reference in Matthew 3:12 where the chaff is burned up with unquenchable fire! It is a terrifying image, a terrifying thought and something that our modern sensibilities find hard to come to terms with.
As we consider this, how thankful we all should be that our Living Gracious God plants us by the stream so that we can be fed and watered, by His Word and His Spirit. O, Lord, I pray that our roots sink deep into You, that we live in your strength, able to stand against the winds that scatter the chaff.
Amen.