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Psalm 73:17

until I entered God’s sanctuary, and considered their latter end.

15If I had said, “I will speak thus”, behold, I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
16When I tried to understand this, it was too painful for me—
17until I entered God’s sanctuary, and considered their latter end.
18Surely you set them in slippery places. You throw them down to destruction.
19How they are suddenly destroyed! They are completely swept away with terrors.
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← Psalm 73:16Psalm 73:18 →
Notice

Entering God’s sanctuary changes the horizon of a painful question: the writer begins to consider where the lives he envies will end.

Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.

How does considering a life’s end change what you count as success?

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What painful question about injustice would you bring with you into worship?

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What does the word “until” suggest about the writer’s struggle to understand?

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Connect

Where else Scripture says this

11 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.

This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Psalm 77:13Your way, God, is in the sanctuary. What god is great like God?God’s sanctuary is central to both passages: one connects it with understanding human destiny, the other with God’s way and greatness.
Luke 12:20“But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’Both turn attention to life’s end, where present possessions and plans cannot secure a person’s future.
Psalm 27:4One thing I have asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the LORD’s house all the days of my life, to see the LORD’s beauty, and to …Both connect seeking understanding with God’s dwelling place, through considering in the sanctuary or inquiring in the temple.
Ecclesiastes 8:12–13Though a sinner commits crimes a hundred times, and lives long, yet surely I know that it will be better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him.Both look beyond a sinner’s present circumstances to consider how life will turn out under God’s rule.
Psalm 63:2So I have seen you in the sanctuary, watching your power and your glory.The sanctuary is the setting for both writers’ attention, directed toward human destiny in one and God’s power and glory in the other.
Psalm 119:24Indeed your statutes are my delight, and my counselors. DALETHThe shared thread is guidance: understanding comes in God’s sanctuary in one passage, while God’s statutes serve as counselors in the other.
Jeremiah 5:31The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own authority; and my people love to have it so. What will you do in the end of it?Both direct attention toward the end, questioning the security of a present situation marked by wrongdoing.
Job 27:8For what is the hope of the godless, when he is cut off, when God takes away his life?Both consider the end of the godless, bringing death and accountability to God into view.
2 Chronicles 30:8Now don’t be stiff-necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the LORD, and enter into his sanctuary, which he has sanctified forever, and serve the …Both speak of entering God’s sanctuary, though one recounts a change in understanding and the other urges yielding to God.
Romans 6:21What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.Both examine an outcome: the psalm considers the wicked’s latter end, while Romans names death as the end of shameful things.
Luke 16:22–23The beggar died, and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.Both turn attention toward the end of a life, beyond the circumstances that came before it.
Where this verse fits

Envy and comparison. injustice and anger. doubt.

What the Bible says about anger →What the Bible says about doubt →
One step

Something small to carry out of this verse

Read Psalm 73:15–19 before worship this week

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Encouragement

The writer’s painful struggle reaches a turning point in God’s sanctuary. The prosperity that troubled him remains subject to God’s judgment.

Now put it in your words.

Start an entry on Psalm 73:17. Write what it stirs. Psalmlog sets your words beside Scripture and gives you one next step. Your first entry is free, no account needed.

Keep goingPsalm 73 · the whole chapter with its connection mapPsalms · every chapterBuild a reading plan through Psalms

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).