Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 73:20

"As a dream when one awaketh, So, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou wilt despise their image." — Psalms 73:20 (ASV)

As a dream when one awaketh - Their prosperity is like the visions of a dream; the reality is seen when one awakes. A man in a dream may imagine that he is a king; that he dwells in a palace; that he is surrounded by flatterers and courtiers; that he walks in pleasant groves, listens to the sounds of sweet music, sits down at a table loaded with the luxuries of all regions, and lies upon a bed of down. He may awake only to find that he is surrounded by poverty, or that he is on a sickbed, or that he is the miserable inhabitant of a hovel or a dungeon. The reality is seen when he awakes. So it is regarding our present condition on earth. The reality is seen when the dream—the gorgeous dream—of life is over.

So, O Lord, when thou awakest - The Hebrew expression here—בעיר bā‛ı̂yr—occurs in more than fifty other places in the Scriptures, and is in all these places translated “in the city.” This interpretation, however, would be quite meaningless here, and it is likely that the expression is a form of the verb עור ‛ûr, “to awake, to arouse;” and the idea is not, as in our translation, that of God’s awaking as if He had been asleep, but it refers to the dreamer when he awakes. It is, literally, “in the awaking;” that is, when the dream is over.

Thou shalt despise their image - The image that floated before their imaginations in the dream of life. You will pay no attention to it; there is no reality in it; it will at once vanish. In the future world, God will pay no regard to the dreams of human life, to the outward show, to the appearance; but the affairs of eternity will be regulated by what is real—by that which constitutes the character of the person. By that, and not by the vain dreams of the world, will people’s destiny be determined. We are to look at that in determining the question about the government of God, and not at what appears in the brief dream of life.