Psalm 119:45 – Speaking Before Kings
I will speak of your testimonies before Kingsand will not be ashamed. Do you speak of your faith to other people? For many, this is a question specifically about making religious statements. Can you attempt to “bring someone to Christ?” Can you make a new disciple? What I wonder is whether we can talk about…
If You’re Nice, Diversity Will Take Care of Itself
Bad Ideas I Learned from Good Leaders #2 I’ve heard this one from so many people that I would hardly know who to blame for it if I wanted to blame someone. I’ve been told that if you will just be nice and positive, you can ignore the differences in your congregation and everything will…
Psalm 77:13 – Answering a Question about Translation
I am frequently asked questions about the translation of a specific word, often because there is a difference in English translations. Frequently, the specific wording of a text means a great deal to the person who asked, as it may be part of the exposition of some other doctrine or chain of thought. Sometimes it…
Psalm 119:45 – Walk in Liberty
So I will walk in libertyfor I seek your precepts. I must credit Mitchell Dahood in his 3 volume commentary on Psalms in the Anchor Bible (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3) for the word “liberty.” I was struggling for a translation that I felt lived up to the context. I think that one does….
Psalm 119:44 – Keep it Forever
And I will keep your instruction (Torah) continuallyforever and ever. For another sense of Hebrew parallelism, note the short 2nd line here, “forever and ever.” This is parallel with “continually” and suggests a combined “all the time for all time.” If we hadn’t just read a number of verses in which the Psalmist expresses dependence…
Psalm 119:43 – Power to Speak Truth
Never take the word of truth from my mouthfor I place my hope in your judgments. Tomorrow morning I’ll be leading a discussion of John Wesley in my Sunday School class. The notes in the book we’re using point especially to Wesley’s view of prevenient grace and to Christian perfection. It’s interesting to take these…
Psalm 119:42 – Whose Word Counts Most?
Now I can return my taunter a word,For I trust in your word. The lesson here is both simple and profound. Some of my background thoughts on it are in my post on Psalm 119:38. In Hebrew poetry, making a thought parallel by using synonyms is common, as for example in Psalm 119:30, “I have…
Psalm 119:41 – Grace, Rescue, and Response
Let your grace (chesed) come to me;Rescue me according to your word. I’m sure you can see where the “grace” and “rescue” come from in my title, but what is this matter of “response”? We’ve already talked about grace and rescue, and will do so again before I’m finished with these verse-by-verse meditations. But what…
Psalm 119:40 – Grant Me Life
I long for your precepts.By your righteousness give me life. I spent a good deal of time thinking about the phrase “by your righteousness.” It could be understood in a number of different ways. Two of these would be “in your righteousness” and “with your righteousness.” The second of these might lead Christians into a…
Psalm 119:39 – Taunts and Shame
Turn away from me my reproachwhich I fearfor your judgments are good. You’ll find lots of translations for the word I’ve translated as “reproach” if you compare a few versions. That’s because it’s a word with a good range of meanings and the verse doesn’t help a great deal with the context. For example, is…
Psalm 119:38 – Raise Up Your Word
Carry out your word to your servant,the one who fears you. The Hebrew word I translate “carry out” carries a variety of freight in a variety of uses. One option is simply to build and establish. I might loosely render it as “Make your word real.” As I study and meditate on scripture, I find…
Psalm 119:37 – Futility!
Turn my eyes away from looking at what is futile;Give me life in your pathway. This one seems pretty obvious. Recently we looked at Isaiah 55:2 – “Why spend your money on what is not food, and your labor for what doesn’t satisfy.” The question becomes exactly what is vain? What is futile? There are…
Psalm 119:36 – What’s Your Inclination
Turn my mind to your testimonies,And not to ill-gotten gain. How about some alternatives. Hearten my mind to your testimoniesand not to extortion. Bob MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, 382 Dispose my heart towards your instruction,not towards love of gain. Psalm 119:36 (REB) Christians frequently speak of the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) as a book…
Psalm 119:35 – Make Me Do What I Want To
Make me walk in the path of your commands,For in it I take delight. On first read, this verse can sound very strange. Some translations and some interpreters tend to take a less forceful reading of the first verb, the one I translate “make me walk.” We sometimes think that we do what we want…
Psalm 119:34 – I Will Guard It with My Whole Mind
Give me understanding, and I will keep your Instruction (Torah).I will guard it with my entire mind. The heart, in ancient Israel, represented the mind or intellect. I have translated this as “mind.” This goes with the beginning of the verse, “Give me understanding.” There’s a basic principle here that I find repeatedly in scripture:…
Psalm 119:33 – You Teach Me
Teach me, LORD, the path of your statutes,and I will keep them to the end. Once when I was scheduled to teach on prayer at a conference, I had prepared an hour long talk, but as the time approached, I kept hearing in my head, “Let the Holy Spirit do the teaching.” In my mental…
Psalm 119:32 – Enlargement
The way of your commands I will run,As you broaden my understanding. A young man once commented to me that he thought that perhaps we were trespassing on God’s sphere with scientific discoveries, that we were approaching knowledge that God had kept to himself alone. I asked him this: Do you believe that God is…
Psalm 119:31 – Holding God’s Testimonies
I have held tightly to your testimonies;Don’t let me be put to shame. It’s quite possible to translate the second half of this verse as “don’t put me to shame.” Have you ever felt that God was calling on you to take a certain stand, or act in a certain way, and you hope you’re…
Psalm 119:30 – I Have Chosen
I have chosen faithfulness as my path.I’m in place1 with your judgments. 1 There is considerable controversy about how this verb should be translated. A literal translation may make this clearer: Decided have I a way of faithwith your judgments I have agreed D. Robert MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, p. 382 Let me commend again,…
Psalm 119:29 – Grace Me with Your Instruction
Deceitful ways turn aside from meand graciously give me your instruction [Torah]. It’s hard to read this verse when we use “law” as the English gloss for Torah. Graciously give me your rules? Graciously let me live in your rules? But that none of those are actually bad translations. Law or instruction, and the Torah…
Lazy Labeling
I frequently hear various people complain about labeling. We shouldn’t label people, they tell me. But labeling is essential. Language wouldn’t function without labels. For example, sitting right next to me as I write this is a cat. I label him “cat” and I tell you he’s a cat, and we communicated. Behold, the cat,…
Psalm 119:28 – Raise Me Up
My soul weeps from grief,Strengthen me according to your word. There are, as always, a number of directions I could go, and that I’d like to go, starting from this verse. I just want to mention one I’m not going to pursue. Recently I had occasion to discuss grief and suffering as discussed in the…
Psalm 119:27 – From Precepts to Wonders
Explain to me the way of your preceptsand I will tell of your wonderful acts. We tend to think of particular rules or principles for living as fairly boring, somewhat annoying, and often unreasonably restrictive. We seem to live in a debate between what we ought to do and what we actually do. Even the…
Psalm 119:26 – Just Talking
I tell you my stuff and you answer me.Teach me your statutes. I frequently comment that “always and everywhere there is stuff.” There is stuff to do, stuff not to do, stuff that I did, and stuff that I didn’t do. Not to mention the physical stuff to keep, stuff to get rid of, and…