David and Isaiah on What Happens to the Wicked

There are two kinds of disappearing. The first is gradual — rot and decay, the slow dissolution of things left too long. The second is total — smoke dispersing on a gust of wind, here and then simply not. King David, shepherd before he was king, knew both kinds. He had watched both happen in the fields. And when he sat down to describe the fate of the wicked before God, he did not reach for the language of fire and sword. He reached for smoke.

As smoke is driven away, so You drive them away. (Psalm 68:2)

The prophet Isaiah agreed. And the rabbis of Midrash Tehillim — the collection of homiletical interpretations of the Book of Psalms, composed between the third and eleventh centuries CE in the Land of Israel, preserved in the 4,331-text treasury of Midrash Aggadah — spent generations thinking about why these two, David and Isaiah, kept reaching for the same image. What did they know that we have forgotten?

The Shepherd Who Understood Insubstance

The detail the Midrash Tehillim finds most important about David's image of smoke is what kind of smoke he meant. Not smoke with substance, not the heavy particulate haze that clings to clothes and fills a room. But smoke that is scattered by the slightest breeze — insubstantial from the start, already dissolving before you have finished looking at it.

To illustrate the point, the Midrash offers a parable. Picture a king in his upper palace, removed from the daily life of the city. Below him, in the lower palace, servants kindle a fire. The smoke rises. It reaches the king. He notices it. It is a nuisance, perhaps — but ultimately, the king waves it away. It cannot threaten him. It cannot harm him. It rises toward him in the illusion of significance and then disperses into nothing. The wicked, in this parable, are that smoke. They rise. They create an impression of danger, of power, of consequence. And then — on the day when God turns attention toward them — they are gone as if they had never been.

What separates this parable from mere triumphalism is what David says next: when the smoke clears, "the righteous will rejoice and be glad before God; they shall also be merry and joyful" (Psalm 68:4). The joy is not at the disappearance of enemies. The joy is at the clarity. The smoke was blocking the light. When it disperses, the righteous can finally see.

What Isaiah Added to David's Vision

Isaiah, writing centuries after David, used the same image and pushed it harder. Those who provoke God, he said, will be like ashes. Their bodies will rot. They will not vanish gently like smoke driven by a breeze — they will be consumed entirely, leaving nothing but residue. The psalm had said they vanish like smoke. Isaiah (66:24) said they will be worse than smoke: their carcasses will be a sign.

But Isaiah also added a dimension that David's Psalm left implicit: the interior experience of the righteous who witness the judgment. And you shall see and your heart shall rejoice (Isaiah 66:14). The Midrash Tehillim's commentary on this passage links it directly back to David's praise in Psalm 145: I will exalt you, my God the King. Both figures — David and Isaiah — offer their deepest praise not in moments of personal triumph but in response to a vision of the future. A vision where justice is finally visible. Where the confusion of the present — where the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer — resolves into something legible.

This is a theology of vindication, not vengeance. The rabbis were careful with that distinction. The righteous do not rejoice at suffering. They rejoice at clarity. The smoke was the confusion. When it lifts, you can see where you are.

How Does Justice Work When the Wicked Win?

The sharpest question the Midrash Tehillim asks — and the question that gives these three source texts their deepest unity — is about the present moment, not the future one. What does it mean to praise God now, when smoke is still rising, when the wicked still seem to prosper, when the promised clarity has not yet arrived?

The Midrash's answer is found in its reading of Isaiah 43:16 alongside the sea imagery of Psalm 104. Rabbi Yitzchak bar Moriyan states bluntly: if it were not written that God "gives a way in the sea," one who is in the sea would immediately die. The sea — vast, unpredictable, capable of swallowing entire ships — is survivable only because God creates a path through it. Life itself, in its wildness and its threats, is survivable only for the same reason. Without the path, the depths close over you.

But the path is there. It is not always visible. It is not always comfortable. But Isaiah's promise — He creates the speech of lips, peace, peace (Isaiah 57:19) — is that even the words of consolation, the peace that arrives after the storm, are themselves divine creations. God makes the path through the sea. God creates the peace that comes after the smoke clears. Neither the danger nor the deliverance is accidental.

The Praise That Comes Before the Proof

Here is the most striking insight threaded through all three of these Midrash Tehillim texts: both David and Isaiah praise God before the full vindication arrives. David sings of the wicked dissolving like smoke in a Psalm he wrote while still being hunted by enemies. Isaiah announces God's majesty in the middle of prophesying exile and destruction. Their praise is not retrospective. It is anticipatory — offered in faith before the evidence is complete.

The Midrash's commentary makes this explicit: not like now, when people sing God's praises only when miracles happen to them, but in the future they will not be idle — they will always sing, always bless, constantly offering gratitude not triggered by events but rooted in a relationship that does not depend on circumstances going well. Blessed be the Lord day by day (Psalm 68:20). Not: blessed be the Lord when things go well. Day by day. Including the days when the smoke is still rising and you cannot yet see through it.

David the shepherd became David the king became David the psalmist. He watched wolves take lambs from the flock. He killed the lion and the bear with his own hands. He knew better than anyone how long the wicked can seem to prosper. And still he wrote: as smoke is driven away, so You drive them away. Not hoping. Stating. The smoke was already as good as gone. He just had to keep his eyes open long enough to see the wind arrive.