🎵WEB · Psalms 73:18
What does Psalms 73:18 mean?
"Surely you set them in slippery places. You throw them down to destruction."
— Psalms 73:18 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
If I had said, “I will speak thus”; behold, I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
When I tried to understand this, it was too painful for me;
Until I entered God’s sanctuary, and considered their latter end.
Surely you set them in slippery places. You throw them down to destruction.
How they are suddenly destroyed! They are completely swept away with terrors.
As a dream when one wakes up, so, Lord, when you awake, you will despise their fantasies.
For my soul was grieved. I was embittered in my heart.
Explanation
Psalm 73:18 comes in the middle of a psalm where Asaph is wrestling honestly with a painful observation: the wicked often seem to prosper while the righteous struggle. He has just spent the first half of the psalm admitting that he nearly stumbled in his faith because he saw arrogant, godless people living in comfort, health, and wealth, seemingly untouched by trouble. Verse 18 marks a turning point. After going into God's sanctuary and gaining a clearer perspective, Asaph declares that despite outward appearances, God has actually set the wicked "in slippery places" and will ultimately "throw them down to destruction." In plain language, this means their apparent security is an illusion — they are standing on ground that will not hold, and their downfall, though delayed, is certain.
The psalm was written by Asaph, one of the worship leaders and musicians appointed during David's reign, and it belongs to a collection of psalms attributed to him in Book Three
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