Psalms 37:29
Psalms 37:2929The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever.
is one of the Watchtower's most frequently cited proof texts for the earthly hope doctrine. JWs read "the righteous will possess the earth, and they will live forever on it" as a promise that the "great crowd" or "other sheep" will inhabit a paradise earth for eternity — a destiny distinct from the heavenly hope reserved for the 144,000 anointed. When confronted with 's "one hope," JWs respond by pointing to as evidence that an earthly hope must exist alongside the heavenly one. The verse is also deployed in the Beatitudes discussion: since ("the mild-tempered will inherit the earth") echoes Psalm 37, JWs treat both texts as establishing a permanent earthly class of believers with a separate destiny from those who enter heaven.
Protestant interpreters point out that the Hebrew word erets in Psalm 37 means "land" — covenantal land-promise language addressed to Israelites about possessing the promised land. David is contrasting the wicked, who will be cut off from the land (v. 9), with the righteous, who will remain. This is not a New Testament salvation text creating a two-tier afterlife system. expands the Abrahamic land promise — the promise to Abraham was to be "heir of the world" through faith, not through a secondary earthly class. The key insight from the Beatitudes argument is that Jesus addresses one audience in the Sermon on the Mount, promising both "the Kingdom of the heavens" (Matt 5:3, 10) and "the earth" (5:5) to the same group. Two hopes require two audiences in a passage that plainly has one. Furthermore, the sevenfold unity of is an all-or-nothing package: if "one hope" actually means two hopes, then "one baptism" means two baptisms and "one Lord" means two Lords, destroying the entire passage.