Psalms 73:26
“My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Where this sits
Asaph has spent most of this psalm admitting he nearly lost his footing over the prosperity of the wicked. This line comes after he has been into the sanctuary and seen their end.
Reflection
The first half of this verse is a concession most religious writing will not make.
My flesh and my heart fails. Not may fail. Not fails if I neglect my devotions. Asaph states it flatly, as a description of what bodies and inner lives do. They give out. Anyone who has watched a parent age, or sat with their own mind during a bad stretch, knows this is not pessimism. It is reporting.
What makes the verse work is that the second half does not deny the first. There is no but I will be strong. The failure stands. God is the strength of my heart — the strength of the very thing that just failed. Not a replacement heart. Strength located inside the one that gives out.
And then the word portion, which carries more than it looks. When Israel divided the land, every tribe received a portion except the Levites, who were told the Lord himself was their inheritance. Asaph was a Levite. He is not reaching for a poetic image; he is claiming his actual legal allotment. The other tribes got fields. His family got God, and he is saying that on the day his body and his mind are failing, that arrangement turns out to be the better one.
Forever is the last word, and it is doing the arithmetic. Fields end. Portions of this kind do not.
- Theme:
- Strength
- Book:
- Psalms