Psalm 119:58 – Favor

I seek your face with all my heart.
Show me favor according to your word.

A friend commenting on Facebook mentioned ancient translations, so I thought I’d mention a few of these over the next few days just to give a flavor. If you’re not that interested in this kind of detail, skip the section between the divider lines.

I looked at the Septuagint (LXX), the Vulgate, and the Peshitta (Syriac). In the LXX, the Psalms were likely translated in the 1st century BCE, while the Peshitta for the OT is 2nd century CE, and the Vulgate 5th century CE. All these dates should be regarded as tentative and approximate. How’s that for a line … tentative approximations.

In this passage, the differences seem to me to be in the emotional sense. The Hebrew text suggests wearying oneself to illness through seeking God’s face, with the request for God’s favor. The relationship between the two lines is not marked in the text. This is common in poetry. It is not necessary to assume, as some do, that the implication is that God should give favor because of the extreme nature of seeking.

As I read the LXX, while seeking is still “with the whole heart,” I don’t see quite the same emphasis as in Hebrew. “Give me mercy,” or “have mercy on me” has a semantic range close to that of “show me favor” as in Hebrew. The Syriac uses a word that emphasizes to me the force of the search, rather than a result, while asking for pity in the second half. (I would note that my Syriac reading is slow and rusty, and I don’t trust my own sense; this seems to be in accord with the lexical aids I’m using.) The Latin follows the Greek of the LXX here closely.

While there are different nuances, these are not serious difficulties. What should be noted, in my view, is the similarity. We’ll observe if that continues in the next few verses.

Alden Thompson, one of my undergraduate professors, from whom I took 2nd and 3rd year biblical Hebrew, titled a chapter in his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? “What kind of prayers would you publish if you were God?”

Answering that question can help us understand how to read the Psalms. In addition, we might ask what kind of hymns, laments, and so forth. The Psalms have people talking to God in various ways.

I spent a good deal of time today thinking about just how the two lines of this verse relate. How vigorously do I have to pray to God in order for God to keep a promise God has already given?

If I pray more, will God do more? It seems to me that many of us operate on this basis. The more people are praying and the more time they are spending in prayer, the more likely it is that God will act. In this model of prayer, God is reluctant to be faithful, but if we are adequately persuasive, action will result.

So am I advocating less time spent in prayer by less people?

As Paul might say, “Let it not be!”

What I am saying is that I think we need to detach our prayer performance from God’s promise keeping. It’s not our diligence in anything that makes God gracious. Unfortunately, we tend to go to the corollary, which we assume to be that if our performance isn’t going to make God do things, we needn’t bother with it at all.

This brings me to the purpose of prayer. It’s a conversation. It’s two way. There’s a need to hear from God and to open oneself to the favor God bestows. I frequently see the saying on signs: “Prayer changes things.” We should first improve it to “God changes things.” But even more importantly, “Prayer changes me/us.”

I don’t deny that the Bible indicates that God has chosen to respond to prayer. God has also chosen to use human agents to accomplish much of God’s work on earth. I don’t know what the relationship between the two things actually is. I’ve simply observed that prayer is a time when God works on me.

What do you need God to change in you?