Almost Stumbled
Like one waking from a dream, so You, O Lord, awaken and despise their form. Psalm 73:20 · Berean Standard Bible
Just as someone suddenly awakens from a dream and sees it wasn't real, God will awaken to judge the wicked and dismiss them as unreal—all their false confidence, their seeming solidity, will dissolve.
The psalm closes with a beautiful image: from God's perspective, the wicked's entire reality—their wealth, their power, their arrogance—is as insubstantial as a dream. When God awakens to judgment, He'll look at them and see not something solid to fear, but something ephemeral to despise and discard.
Asaph, concluding with the ultimate perspective shift.
This brings the psalm full circle. Asaph began with the truth that God is good to the pure in heart. What he learned in the sanctuary is that this truth holds even when it appears contradicted by circumstance. The wicked's apparent success is the dream; God's justice is the reality.
Like one startled awake from a dream, the Lord will suddenly rouse Himself from apparent inaction, despising and casting away the wicked's form as one rejects a phantom.
The comparison to waking from sleep echoes prophetic language (Isaiah 51:9) suggesting God's seeming inactivity is not passivity but temporary obscurity—a posture God voluntarily assumes before executing judgment. The word בִּנְאֹת (binnə'ōt)—'despise their form/image'—suggests God will regard the wicked's appearance (their temporal prosperity, their authority) as contemptible, dismissing them as a dream-phantom.
Asaph articulating the climactic moment when God's dormancy becomes active retribution, using the image of waking to depict the transition from hiddenness to manifestation.
The psalm concludes with eschatological confidence: divine justice is not absent but deferred, and when God acts, the wicked's entire apparent reality will be exposed as illusion. This resolves the theodicy crisis by relocating justice to the eschatological horizon.
18Surely You set them on slick ground; You cast them down into ruin.
19How suddenly they are laid waste, completely swept away by terrors!
20Like one waking from a dream, so You, O Lord, awaken and despise their form.
21When my heart was grieved and I was pierced within,
22I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before You.
Read all of Psalm 73 — Asaph nearly lost his faith watching the wicked prosper — until he entered the sanctuary and saw the end of the story.
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