Psalm 119:70 – Unfeeling or Insensitive

Their hearts are clogged with fat;
I delight in your instruction (Torah).

A very literal alternative for the first half of the verse would be “fattened with fat are their hearts.” The REB translates:

[T]hey are arrogant and unfeeling,
but I find my delight in your instruction.

With the heart being more the seat of thought than of emotions in Hebrew imagery, we could say that their thinking and perceiving equipment is all clogged up. Some cognate words in related languages suggest foolishness.

This is a good example of translating an idiom. There are those who prefer word-by-word translation, what is called formal equivalence, which means the translator tries to represent each grammatical form (word or sometimes phrase) in the source language with an equivalent in the target language. In this case, translating “their heart is fat with fat” would be formally accurate, but not necessarily communicative.

While I like the way in which the REB translates, I would tend to replace “unfeeling” with “insensitive.” (Assuming I was aiming for functional equivalence.) The reason is that this verse suggest to me a contrast. Unlike the Psalmist, those who smear him are not able to delight in God’s law. This accords with the psalmist’s many prayers that the Lord will teach him and keep after him even if he goes astray.

The word sensitivity was on my mind in my meditations today. It seems to me that there are two closely related types of sensitivity that are necessary for the one that delights in God’s law in the theme of this verse. The first is a sensitivity to God’s commands. The second is a sensitivity to those around, to the community of which one is a part.

Sensitivity to God’s commands in a way that makes them a delight requires that one care about good, ethical, and productive behavior. Indifference is not delight. The psalmist wants to do right. The slanderers want to do injury. They are not sensitive to what their actions do to others. Their hearts are blocked up and unable to receive new, clean blood.

Create in me a new heart, Oh God, and renew an upright spirit within me (Psalm 51:12)

The second part of this sensitivity is a sensitivity to other people. It is very easy to come to the point of not caring what happens to other people. But this attitude is decried in scripture. Besides commanding the Israelites to love the LORD their God with all their hearts, they are commanded to love their neighbor as they love themselves (Leviticus 19:18).

To love someone as you love yourself, you need to be able to appreciate them as a person of value, independent of what they can do for you. You need to be able to understand who they are and what their needs are. You need to be able to recognize and acknowledge their differences. You will begin to disregard someone you don’t respect as their own person.

God’s instruction is filled with concern for others. When we get to the New Testament, we have Philippians 2:4, which tells us that we should not each seek our own well-being, but rather then well-being of others. This is followed by the famous passage of Philippians 2;5-11, which tells us that Jesus gave up more for us than we can even comprehend, going from infinite something to nothing for us.

With this in mind, how can we, as Christians, fail to care about the needs of others? How can we fail to take them seriously?

Who is there that you just can’t stand, but that God is asking you to love?

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)