Welcome to Bible Project podcast. Today we're going to do something unique.

We're going to spend a whole hour comparing two biblical passages together.

Two weeks ago, we read Psalm 1. Last week we read Psalm 2. Today, we're going to read Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 as if these two poems become

something more when we read them in light of each other. And reading texts in light of each other

is a part of what we mean by meditating on the Bible. The art of learning how to meditate on

scripture means learning how to appreciate every individual little paragraph unto itself.

Then also backing up and saying, hmm, it was put alongside the thing before it and the thing after it on purpose.

We'll focus on repeated words and repeated ideas shared by both poems.

For example, Psalm 1 talks of a man placed by God as a tree by a string.

Psalm 2 talks about a king placed by God on a throne.

This tree doesn't plant itself.

This king doesn't install himself as the ruler of the world.

Both are done by God.

Both poems are reflections on the good life.

In Psalm 1, the good life is meditating on Yahweh's instruction and being known by Yahweh.

In Psalm 2, the good life is taking refuge in Yahweh's anointed king and giving him your full allegiance,

what the poem calls kissing the sun. Both poems are saying the same thing in two different ways.

The way to avoid a life that leads to nothingness or lostness is both to be known by Yahweh

and to kiss the sun. Half a dozen paragraphs in the

Gospel of John are leaping to my mind. If you've seen me, you've seen the father. If you know me,

you know the father. If you kiss the son, Yahweh knows you. And this is just the beginning.

Psalm 1 and 2 sit at a strategic place in the shape of the Hebrew Bible,

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