My Translation
(1) Blessed is the blameless way, blessed is the one who walks in the Torah of Yahweh. (2) Blessed are the ones who keep his laws, they pursue him with the wholeness of their heart. (3) Indeed, they do not practice sin because they walk in his paths. (4) You command your principles to be diligently kept. (5) Oh! Let my path be established so that I may keep your statutes. (6) Then, I shall not be ashamed when I am fixed to all your commandments. (7) Let me praise you in the integrity of my heart, when I I have learned from the judgments of your righteousness. (8) I will keep your commandments, please do not completely forsake me. (9) Is there a way for a young man to keep his path pure by watching it according to your word? (10) With all my heart I have sought for you. Do not let me wander away from your commandments. (11) I have hidden your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you. (12) Yahweh, you are the blessed one! Teach me your statutes! (13) With my lips I have recounted all the judgments of yor mouth. (14) In the path of your testimonies I have rejoiced, even over all wealth! (15) Let me think hard on your precepts and fix my gaze on your path. (16) In your statutes, I will find delight. I will not forget your word. (17) Do good to your servant so that I may live and keep your word. (18) Open my eyes and let me see wonderful things from your Torah. (19) I am a sojourner on the earth, don’t hide your commands from me! (20) My inner being grinds away, longing for your judgments – constantly! (21) You rebuke the arrogant, those who are cursed and stray from your commands. (22) Remove scorn and contempt from me, for I keep your statutes. (23) Although rulers sit together and curse me, your servant will meditate on your decrees. (24) Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors.”
The Way of the Torah
(a) What is this way? It is clear that Psalm 119 is a celebration of the Torah. There are eight different word’s used to refer to it. These are notoriously difficult to translate – most translations follow the KJV and they are generally good. One should not get caught up in the difference between “statutes,” “judgments,” “precepts,” etc. These all refer to God’s law, the Torah. The different words are simply a poetical way to present the wholeness of God’s law. I think a good word that encapsulates the whole of the concept is “instruction” (thanks to Charles Halton for this, www.awilum.com). When it is actually Torah in the Hebrew, it has been transliterated. The antecedent/referent is probably the Pentateuch, although good arguments can be made for the referent being the whole of the Scriptures, general revelation, or other specific texts.
(b) Place in the Psalms / Structure – There are strong verbal parallels between Psalm 1 and Psalm 119. Some have argued that Psalm 119 may have been the original ending of the Psalter, thus bracketing the Psalter with Psalm 1 and Psalm 119. This would mean that the Psalms as a whole are put in the context of Torah celebration. This Psalm has a stanza for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet – hence the names aleph, beth, gimmel, etc. In these stanzas, each line begins with the corresponding Hebrew letter. There is also a high level of meter, repetition, and rhyme. This poem is a magnificent piece of literature and worthy of our constant attention.
(c) Other Echoes – Echoes of Psalm 119 can be heard in Proverbs 1-2. Here, a father is concerned with his son staying in the way. It’s really beautiful to read these side by side. The important thing to note here is that Proverbs is not just “wisdom” abstracted from the word of God. The foundation of wisdom is placed on the Torah. In many ways, Proverbs is simply an effort to live out the Torah in a discerning way.
Deuteronomy 17:18, “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.” The rule of Israel was also not to be abstracted from the Torah. This text makes it clear why a Psalm like Psalm 119 even exists. The Torah was to be the very center of Israel’s life. This was not a book they simply read when they walked into the Temple courts – this was their lifebook – as Deuteronomy 6 makes so clear. A life that wanders from God’s word is a life that chooses ruination – a life that finds itself scoffing and insolent toward God.
The Beatitudes themselves begin with “blessed is…” If Jesus spoke these in Aramaic, then it would have sounded very similar to the first word – Ash-rey. The verbal assonance is clear: Jesus is not coming to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Read the Beatitudes and look for Old Testament echoes, you’ll find yourself in a fruitful meditation.
Reading Psalm 119
In my opinion, there are many layers and levels at which you can read this Psalm. Once again, I hope to simply peak your imagination, not make exhaustive arguments:
(1) What is God’s word? Much of the specific-descriptors come later in the Psalm. However, we can learn a ton simply from the first 24 verses.
(a) God is the source and owner – the Torah is spoken by God and owned by God. It is His word. The source is what makes the Torah so glorious. When you celebrate the Torah, you celebrate Yahweh as he has revealed himself. We do not find God “out there” in some New Age spiritual quest – we find God in his Word and in his Son, Jesus Christ.
(b) This is an active word – already we see that this word is not static. It is dynamic, able to make the heart rejoice, able to actively direct paths.
(c) Dependence on God is dependence on the Word – “Let my path be established…;” “do not let me wander…;” “Teach me…;” “Open my eyes… .” The Torah is not easily mastered. This is a man who has learned to be dependent on God, and this is a man who understands that the foundation of his life is dependence on God. Rote memorization of the Torah is not enough – it takes God’s intervention and life-giving spirit to make the Torah effective. Here is a man who meditates, declares, memorizes and aches for God’s Word – yet he must ask for God to intervene. Is your life characterized by this kind of desperation and dependence?
(d) The Path Not Well-Traveled – Reading this Psalm in Hebrew has brought a perspective I’ve never noticed. I think it’s there in the English. I realized it once I slowed down and read it thoroughly (which Hebrew requires). The lights came on with verse 9: “Is there a way for a young man to keep his path pure by watching it according to your word?” I think the implied answer is a resounding “no.” This translation really goes against the translation tradition; but I think this is one of those cases where translation is treason. The KJV translated it: “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word” and everyone else couldn’t resist the temptation to plagiarize. Now, I think this is an accurate translation. However, there is another option. The KJV chose to end the question at the end of the first cola; however, it is legitimate grammatically to have the entire line governed by the mah-interrogative at the beginning. This would lead to the rhetorical question, woodenly: “How can a young man keep his way pure according to your word?”
Failing: The Cadence to Acquiring Wisdom
I myself missed this possibility, needing my professor to point out the options. However, once he did I ran with it. Notice the theme of struggle throughout the first 8 verses. Notice the requests: “Establish my paths;” “do not forsake me.” Also notice the “I shall not be ashamed” in verse 6. What we are seeing is an older man reflecting on the role of the Torah in his life, and it is possible that he is remembering occasions when he felt forsaken, when he wandered from God’s path, when he found himself ashamed and humiliated in the community because of his sin. Now, I admit that one could simply say that this man knows that these things would happen without God’s law – but I would say that life-experience is the best teacher of wisdom – just read Ecclesiastes. One of the keys to reading it this way is the verb lamed in verse 12. I translate this “teach me” but woodenly the Hiphil reads “cause me to learn.”
What we have presented here is a lifetime of reflection on the Torah. Our knowledge of God, and our knowledge of his law deepens as we grow older and as we grow in life experience. Fathers and mothers know Yahweh in a way that non-parents don’t. Here is a man who knows the path of God, and who knows that dependence on God and complete saturation in the Torah is the only way to stay on that path. This is a man who knows what its like to be off the path, and he knows what its like to be gently led back to it. And having learned from his miserable failure, this man realizes that there is no way a man can keep his way pure. It’s impossible – not because God is weak, or because the Torah is missing something – it’s impossible because of the wickedness of the human heart. This man knows the wickedness of his own heart and he knows he needs God to open the eyes of his heart so that he may see the way toward the godly path. His anguish and dependence on the Torah are vividly captured in verse 19 and 20. In verse 19 he says he is a sojourner in the land and begs God to not let him forget his Torah. In verse 20 the man confesses that his soul “grinds away” because he so intensely longs for the way of the Torah.
Some Application
What can we take from this? Firstly, we can let our hearts return to dependence on Yahweh. So often we are puffed up in our knowledge, and we read glorious Psalms like this one and say “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard all this before.” We need to repent of self-dependence. There is only one man who ever kept the Torah perfectly, his name is Jesus Christ. It is by belief and dependence on him, who is the very word of God, that we ever find ourselves on the path through the narrow gate. Secondly, we can find great encouragement within this passage. Here is a man who has struggled through the paths of life. This man knows he can cry out to God, “Teach me!” because he has had to before. He has failed miserably, and yet he finds himself rejoicing in the faithfulness of Yahweh. God is faithful to use his word in our lives to form us into his image, and the testimony is right before us in Psalm 119. May God be praised! Last, this passage is a clear testimony to the sovereignty of God in the Gospel. Our greatest efforts are fruitless and wicked unless empowered by the Spirit of God. Our salvation, sanctification, and godward life are all fully dependent on the Lord.
