Envy, sanctuary insight, and the nearness of God: The embittered speaker returns to divine nearness

Bitterness is confessed without being made the last word about the self

Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins. So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee. The speaker names the inner wreck of 73:1-14. The comparison is self-description before God, not a warrant to call other anxious people animals.

Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Nearness was already true while the envy was true. Glory here is honor and welcome with God; the line must not be overloaded into a full map of the afterlife, and it must not be reduced to a career recovery.

The good named at the beginning is rewritten as nearness, not as a corrected scoreboard

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. The clean-heart confession of 73:1 survives as portion, not as proof that the speaker's body will now be unplagued.

For, lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that go a whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works. Covenant infidelity, not sexual spectacle, is the charge. The psalm's good is drawing near and then speaking. It is not a quieter form of envy, and it is not entertainment at anyone's ruin.