Psalms 37:20

Stanza of Kaph. The end of the wicked.

the enemies of the Lord For His people's enemies are His enemies. Cp. Psalms 92:9.

as the fat of lambs A rendering derived from the Targum. But the consumption of the fat of the sacrifice upon the altar would be a strange simile for the evanescence of the wicked: and we must render as the excellency of the pastures, or, (R.V.) as the splendour of the meadows. The gay show of flowers, so quickly vanishing, is an apt emblem for the short-lived pomp of the wicked.

The force of the comparison is hardly realised in our moist northern climate, where verdure is perpetual. "But let a traveller ride over the downs of Bethlehem in February, one spangled carpet of brilliant flowers, and again in May, when all traces of verdure are gone; or let him push his horse through the deep solid growth of clovers and grasses in the valley of the Jordan in the early spring, and then return and gallop across a brown, hard-baked, gaping plain in June, … and the Scriptural imagery will come home to him with tenfold power." Tristram's Natural History of the Bible, p. 455. Cp. Psalms 37:2; Matthew 6:29-30; James 1:10-11.

they shall consume&c. Lit. they are consumed; in smoke (or, like smoke) are they consumed away. Smokeis in itself a natural figure of speedy and complete disappearance (Hosea 13:3): possibly, however, the idea of the preceding line is continued, and we are to think of "the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven" (Matthew 6:30). The perfect tense, as in Psalms 36:12, forcibly expresses the realising certainty of faith.