Bible Strands
Psalms 1:4
Not so the wicked! For they are like chaff driven off by the wind.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The psalmist, in a wisdom poem contrasting two fixed paths, pivots from the blessing of the righteous (v.3) to the fate of the wicked, setting up the judgment statement that follows (v.5).
The words — מֹץ (mots, "chaff") is the operative image: the husk separated from grain, light and directionless, with no root or weight. The phrase לֹא־כֵן (lo'-khen, "not so") is the structural hinge that severs the wicked from everything verse 3 just affirmed.
The thread — The same chaff-and-wind motif recurs in Job 21:18 (straw swept by a storm), Psalms 35:5 (chaff driven by the angel of the LORD), and Matthew 3:12 (chaff burned with unquenchable fire), where the wind-agent is made explicit as divine judgment.
Why it lands — The verse is not a prediction about a distant class of people but a diagnostic: chaff has no choice in the wind, and the reader is asked to determine which side of the threshold they have already crossed.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Cross-references
- Job 21:18 Are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a storm?
- Matthew 3:12 His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
- Psalms 35:5 May they be like chaff in the wind, as the angel of the LORD drives them away.
- Isaiah 17:13 The nations rage like the rush of many waters. He rebukes them, and they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills, like tumbleweeds before a gale.
- Isaiah 29:5 But your many foes will be like fine dust, the multitude of the ruthless like blowing chaff. Then suddenly, in an instant,
- Hosea 13:3 Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the early dew that vanishes, like chaff blown from a threshing floor, like smoke through an open window.