Psalms 73: The portion envy could not count

Psalm 73 begins with its conclusion and then admits how nearly the speaker lost it. God's goodness is stated first, but envy of prosperous wicked people almost takes his footing. Their ease seems to function like a moral verdict, while his own clean heart appears to have earned only repeated trouble. He restrains himself from teaching that despair as settled truth, yet the problem remains painful until the sanctuary changes the horizon. The crucial discovery is not that the wicked were never prosperous. It is that prosperity cannot reveal the ground beneath a life or determine its end. The slippery place changes owners, and the speaker also judges his own bitterness. Then comes the word "Nevertheless": even while his understanding failed, he had been held. God himself becomes the portion that envy could not count, and goodness is finally named as nearness rather than matching someone else's possessions.