Psalm 119:17 – Order of Operations
Deal fully with your servant,
So I may live and keep your word.
There are numerous translation questions, including differences of opinion about precisely what the word I translate “deal fully with” actually means in this context.
Another good option is what Bob MacDonald does in Seeing the Psalter:
Grow your servant
Bob MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, p. 381
I will live and keep your word.
Again, let me remind you that I’m writing meditations, not expositions on these passages. There are many things one could get from a verse like this, especially considering the larger work that contains it.
There’s an order of events in scripture that’s important to keep in mind, and it’s reflected in this verse. God grows, completes, matures, blesses, and the result is both life in the physical sense, and a good life, both produced by this initial action of God.
It is often thought that Hebrew scriptures focus on human action, in which people keep rules, and God’s blessing follows. And there is a natural order that says that living in certain ways results in blessing. The world in which we live works that way. But Hebrew scriptures emphasize the power and action of God, prior to human action.
“In the beginning God …” and then when there is a world and a garden, people are invited to live within certain parameters. I would suggest that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents the ever available option of take the suboptimal path. The fruit metaphorically represents that option. But God’s gift of the whole creation, of the garden, and of life precedes the limitation.
At Sinai, God comes on the scene as the deliverer from bondage before becoming also the lawgiver.
Gift comes before requirement; grace before law.
Are you remembering that gift?
(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
