Psalms 62
Psalms 62 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Psalm 62 opens in an unusual posture: not with a cry or a complaint, but with quiet. "My soul rests in God alone," the psalmist says, and the whole poem circles back to that stillness like a refrain. God is named "my rock," "my salvation," "my fortress" — images of something solid enough to stand on when everything else shifts.
And everything else does shift. The psalmist describes enemies who batter him like a leaning wall or a tottering fence, people who bless with their mouths while cursing inwardly. Against that pressure, the psalm doesn't recommend fighting back harder. It recommends waiting in silence for the God from whom hope comes.
The second half of the psalm turns to weigh humanity itself. Verse 9 pictures people — lowborn and highborn alike — set on a scale, and together they are "lighter than a breath." The Hebrew word behind "breath" is the same word Ecclesiastes famously uses, and as Ellen Davis points out, its primary sense is not emptiness but ephemerality: vapor, mist, something real yet fleeting. The psalm is not sneering at people; it is measuring them honestly. Human beings simply don't have the weight to bear the trust we're tempted to put in them.
So the psalm names the counterfeits directly: don't trust in oppression, don't grow vain through robbery, and if riches increase, "don't set your heart on them." Force, fraud, and wealth all promise leverage over life, and none of them holds. The psalm ends by declaring what does hold: power belongs to God, and so does loving kindness. Strength and steadfast love meet in the same place — which is exactly why the psalmist can afford to be silent. Rest is possible because the rock is real.
What scholars say
In the first excerpt, John Goldingay recalls hearing Psalm 62's line about extortion misread as "exhortation" — a slip he finds profound, since it raises what he calls perhaps the pastor's most far-reaching question: how do people actually change? In the second, Ellen Davis notes that the Hebrew word for "breath" in Psalm 62:9 chiefly connotes ephemerality rather than emptiness — fragility, not meaninglessness.
“Last Sunday we said Psalm 62, which includes the line “put no trust in extortion,” but the person who led the psalm read it as “put no trust in exhortation.” It struck me that the misreading was rather profound (it reminded me of an occasion when someone read the line in Romans 8 about being “freed from the shackles of mortality” as “freed from the shackles of morality”). How do you get people to change? Maybe it’s the pastor’s most far-reaching question. It’s always tempting to assume that change comes about because we exhort people to change, and to operate on that basis, but a moment’s reflection reminds us of the uncomfortable truth that it’s not so.”
“But it is wrong to conclude that Koheleth therefore sees life as entirely void of meaning. “Emptiness” is not the only connotation of the word hevel . Metaphorical meanings are not divorced from literal meanings, as a master craftsman of language like Koheleth (12:10) would surely know. In Hebrew as in English, “breath, vapor” ( hevel ) chiefly connotes ephemerality (e.g., Psalm 62:9; Job 7:16), not emptiness, and this is the sense it has most often for Koheleth. In rendering judgment on the human condition, Koheleth is struck not only by moral disorder but also, and even more poignantly, by the fragility of our selves and everything we value: “All is hevel ” (1:2), passing like an early morning mist.”
What it means for you
Psalm 62 asks a quietly searching question: where is your weight actually resting? Most of us lean on some mix of money, reputation, and the ability to pressure outcomes — including pressuring other people. The psalm calls all of that vapor: real, but too light to hold you.
John Goldingay draws out a second question from a famous misreading of this psalm — trusting "exhortation," as if people change because we push them hard enough. If lasting change doesn't come from applied pressure, then the psalm's alternative matters practically: stop leaning, get quiet, and let God be the fixed point. Silence before God isn't passivity; it's putting your weight where it can hold.
Psalms 62 in context
Psalm 62 sits in Book II of the Psalter, attributed to David and addressed "to Jeduthun," one of the temple musicians. It belongs to a small run of trust-and-longing psalms: Psalm 61 cries out for the rock that is higher, and Psalm 63 thirsts for God in a dry land. Psalm 62 is the stillest of the three — less a plea than a settled verdict. Its structure reinforces the point: the refrain about resting in God alone repeats, framing the middle section's warnings about wealth, power, and the lightness of human beings on the scale.
Passages we cover in this chapter