While this is primarily designed to show all the posts in my current series of meditations on Psalm 119 one verse at a time, which started in November, 2024, it also includes any other posts that are tagged Psalm 119.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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:…
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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…