Psalm 119:56 – Mine!
This has become mine,
for I have kept your precepts.
There’s an interesting translation of this verse in The Message, which may very well go back to a suggestion by Mitchell Dahood, though I don’t know that Eugene Peterson got it from that source.
Still, I walk through a rain of derision
because I live by your Word and counsel.
There’s a single word that makes the difference between my translation (and most others) and Peterson’s, the Hebrew word zo’th which I have translated in the traditional way, “this.” There is a suggestion, expounded by Dahood, that this same word can mean “derision.” I don’t see that here, but again, I like us to think about the effort that goes into translation, and the reasons there are differences.
When translated “this,” we have to ask to what “this” refers. I’m simple minded on this one. “This” here is feminine, and there’s a rather important feminine noun which is the very last word of the previous verse: “Torah.”
This, God’s instruction, God’s self-revelation as I have been saying, belongs to the Psalmist. It also belongs to me and to you.
I was listening to Isaiah 15 on the treadmill a few minutes ago. Isaiah 15 begins with “An oracle against Moab.” What could possibly be less edifying? What do I need with an oracle against the Moabites, a group of people no longer existing. And the chapter is pretty much a downer. But what’s most interesting to me is that God actually has an interest in this, and that this interest is expressed by including this chapter in the collection of oracles in Isaiah, and then that collection in scripture. God’s interest in lands beyond Israel will become even clearer in what is called 2nd Isaiah, starting in chapter 40.
[H]e says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
Isaiah 42:6 (NRSV)
So even though God’s Torah was not addressed directly to me, it was intended as a light to me and to everyone.
I’m pretty sure “this” that the Psalmist is claiming is the Torah. It is his, because he observes it. Now we have this continual reference to obedience providing the claim. But remember that the Psalmist regularly calls on God to help him, to make this possible.
As a Christian, I cite Philippians 2:12-13:
With fear and trembling work out your own salvation, for it is God who works in you both to desire and to accomplish his good will.
If God’s self-revelation is yours, it is yours as God’s gift, but it will also be a cause of action, because God isn’t passive about God’s children.
Is it yours?
