Psalm 73:20 means that the security of people who seem to prosper apart from God is unreal, and that when God acts, their confidence disappears the way a dream vanishes at waking. The psalmist is speaking to God in prayer, reflecting on what he has seen after he finally came into God’s presence and understood where the wicked are headed. The verse is a turning point in a long honest poem about why the faithful seem to suffer while the arrogant appear to thrive.
As a dream when one wakes up, so, Lord, when you awake, you will despise their fantasies.
Psalm 73:20 (WEB)
What Psalm 73:20 Means
The image at the center is a dream. When someone wakes up, the dream does not argue back or linger as a rival reality. It simply has no substance once the day begins. The psalmist compares the lives and boasts of the proud to that experience, saying their “fantasies,” or the images they build around their own importance, will be dismissed when God awakens to act.
The verse does not describe God as sleeping and then reluctantly rising. The phrase “when you awake” is a figure of speech for God stepping in to judge. Its promise is that God will not leave the matter unresolved. What it does not promise is a timetable, a specific form of judgment, or a guarantee that every wrong will be visible to us in this life. The psalmist is confident about God’s final verdict, not about our ability to predict its details.
The Context of Psalm 73:20
Psalm 73 belongs to the collection of psalms traditionally associated with Asaph, a Levitical worship leader connected to temple music. The poem is written in the first person, and the speaker openly admits that he nearly lost his footing when he watched arrogant people live comfortably and without trouble. His frustration is real, and the psalm gives voice to that struggle rather than hiding it.
Verses 17 through 19 explain the turning point. Only when he entered God’s sanctuary did he see the end of those people, and the verse before our focus says God sets them on slippery ground and throws them down. Verse 20 therefore is not a random outburst of anger. It is the conclusion of a conviction formed in worship, and it changes how the image of waking reads: the security of the proud is not solid ground at all, and their collapse will be as sudden and complete as the end of a dream.
Key Phrases in Psalm 73:20
Psalm 37:1-2
1 Don’t fret because of evildoers, neither be envious against those who work unrighteousness. 2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither like the green herb.
(WEB)
This psalm also addresses the frustration of watching the wicked prosper, and it counsels patience and trust rather than envy. Reading it alongside Psalm 73:20 shows that the sense of God’s delayed justice runs through the wisdom literature as a common struggle with a consistent answer.
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
(WEB)
This is the verse that follows the psalmist’s struggle and names God himself as the strength of the heart and the portion that lasts. It shows where the psalm ends up: not with an explanation of every injustice, but with a settled trust in God’s presence, which is the only foundation that does not vanish.
A Short Prayer From Psalm 73:20
Lord, you see the proud and the confident, and you know how their security feels real to them while it lasts. Keep my eyes from envy when the wrong people seem to win, and remind me that their ground is slippery and their confidence is like a dream. Be the one who wakes and sets things right in your time. Hold my right hand as I wait, and let my trust rest in you, the one who does not fade. Amen.
