Finally realizing that his thinking was wrong, Asaph stated: “If I had said: ‘I will tell a story like that,’ look! against the generation of your sons I should have acted treacherously. And I kept considering so as to know this; it was a trouble in my eyes, until I proceeded to come into the grand sanctuary of God. I wanted to discern their future. Surely on slippery ground is where you place them. You have made them fall to ruins. O how they have become an object of astonishment as in a moment! How they have reached their end, have been brought to their finish through sudden terrors! Like a dream after awaking, O Jehovah, so when arousing yourself you will despise their very image.”​—Psalm 73:15-20.

Asaph came to realize that God had placed the wicked “on slippery ground.” Because their lives revolve around material things, they are in danger of experiencing a sudden crash. At the latest, death will overtake them in old age, and their ill-gotten wealth will not secure a longer life for them. (Psalm 49:6-12) Their prosperity will be like a quickly passing dream. Justice may even catch up with them before they reach old age as they reap what they are sowing. (Galatians 6:7) Since they have turned their back on the only One able to help them, they are left helpless, without hope. When Jehovah acts against them, he will view their “image”​—their pomp and position—​with contempt.