Tehillim 40–41 | The Conclusion of the 'Iyov' Psalms and the First Book of Tehillim

Psalms 40–41 bring two important trajectories full circle. The first is the arc of the recent chapters: Psalms 37–41. In this unit, the poet’s struggle with evildoers, suffering, and hardship leads him inward, into personal soul-searching. In Psalm 37, the main message was a strengthening of trust in God, the confidence that in the end, God will save the righteous from the wicked. In Psalms 38–39, the poet takes his suffering into the realm of self-examination and recognition of the danger of sin lying at the door (38:19; 39:9).

In Psalm 40, we hear that the poet has been delivered from his distress: “I put all my hope in the Lord; He bent down to me; He heard my cry. He raised me out of the pit of despair from the oozing mud” (40:2–3), and God has lifted him out of the mud he had been trapped in. Even after the poet is saved, he does not rest on his laurels—he continues to seek and wonder how to fulfill God’s will. This search is described in Psalm 40: “For sacrifice or gift You have no desire – that you have made clear. You never asked for burnt offering or purification offering” (verse 7). The poet concludes that God does not desire sacrifices. He continues seeking how to fulfill God's will and declares: “To do Your will, God, is my desire; Your teachings course through my insides” (verse 9).

Psalm 41 completes the circle of the search for God’s will, using the same root—חפ"ץ (to desire). After we saw in Psalm 40 the poet’s desire to fulfill God’s will, Psalm 41 tells us that God desires the poet: “By this I shall know that You delight in me; my enemies will not crow over me” (41:12). In contrast to the poet’s fear of the brevity of his life in Psalm 39, the deliverance described at the end of Psalm 41 leads to permanence: “As for me, because I am blameless You support me; You let me stand firm before You forever” (41:13).

Sefer Tehillim is divided into five books, and each is closed with a verse of the same formula. Here, the closing verse of the first book is: “Blessed is the Lord, the God of Israel, for ever and ever, Amen and Amen” (compare 72:18–19 and the closings of the other books). Beyond this concluding verse, Dr. Beni Gesundheit (https://youtu.be/i1U4ymquOG4) notes that Psalm 41 also closes two key motifs from the beginning of the book: at the start of Psalm 1 and the end of Psalm 2, the word ashrei (“happy”) appears: “Happy is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked” and “Happy are all who seek refuge in Him,” and in Psalms 40 and 41, we again find ashrei: “Happy are those who make the Lord their trust” and “Happy are those who give thought to the weak” — with the latter serving as a punchline: not only is one fortunate if he trusts in God and joins the assembly of the righteous, but also if he helps the needy. This aligns with a recurring theme about salvation — after being saved, the poet is expected to help others learn the ways of God, rather than keeping the blessing to himself.

Additionally, at the beginning of Psalm 1 we read: “Instead, the Lord’s teaching is all his desire, and he contemplates that teaching day and night” (1:2), and in Psalms 40 and 41 we see the realization and peak of that: the Torah is not only his desire but literally within him: “Your teachings course through my insides” (40:9). And the desire is no longer just the poet’s desire for God, but now also God’s desire for the poet, as we saw: “By this I shall know that You delight in me” (41:12).