One of the things I find most interesting about the Bible is the way that its stories openly–one might even say brutally–cover the faults and failings of the main characters. Nobody manages to come off all that well in the story. Even Moses, author of the Torah, or perhaps receiver of it, is not presented…
With my whole heart I have sought you.Don’t let me wander from your commands. The word here translated commands is mitsvot, which is often thought of as good deeds, but Jewish commentators use this primarily of the 613 commands in Torah. In this way, the mitsvot can be considered another way to refer to the…
How shall a young man keep to a pure way of life?By keeping it in the bounds of your word! I have a feeling that some would question the way I translated that verse. It’s OK. Poetry is challenging. In this case I was aiming more for meaning that being faithful to the poetic form….
As I’ve meditated on these first eight verses of Psalm 119, I’ve opened up a number of topics. Let’s put them together, sort of! I hope you’re enjoying this journey as I am. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be posting the first verse in the second section. (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
I will observe your statues.Don’t completely forsake me! Sometime we’re so busy looking for the really holy things and the absolutely correct commands in scripture that we fail to see the human element. But to miss that human element really misses much of the message of scripture. Scripture speaks in the way it developed and…
I will praise you with an upright heartWhen I learn your righteous judgments. What does learning about God’s righteous (right) judgments have to do with praise? If we think of this Psalm as expressing joy over a list of rules, this might be a good question. If you haven’t yet, please read my earlier post…
Then I won’t be ashamed,When I keep my eyes on all your commands. I didn’t get the poetry in my translation. It’s hard to get everything into it at once. This verse strikes at one of our most serious problems. Our identity. Our ability to live with ourselves. You’ve surely heard stories of people going…
In my current series on Psalm 119, I’m doing a daily meditation on each verse. These are, by design, short. At the same time, it’s difficult to cover certain nuances effectively in individual posts. One of these is the question of why I would write this particular series. I’ve already included my video on the…
Oh that my ways were steady,Keeping your statutes. Any time we’re looking at a set of standards, it’s well to be realistic, especially with ourselves. As we go through this Psalm, we’ll be celebrating God’s law in many ways and places, but there are a number of instances where the author admits his limitations and…
Prologue I’ve been listening to Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible as an audiobook. I’ll doubtless write something about this translation later. But right now I’m listening to Judges, and it’s caused me to think a bit about the broader story of the history of Israel and then of the church. Charismatic Leadership One…