In my heart have I hidden your Word, That I might not sin against you.
I was introduced to Psalm 119 in elementary school. I had read a fair amount of Bible before that time, but hadn’t read it through. I went to a small Christian school where Bible memorization was a key component.
We memorized various verses, chapters, and larger sections, such as the Sermon on the Mount, or a lengthy chapter such as Luke 2. And we memorized Psalm 119, all 176 verses of it.
People have asked me what I thought about that part of my education. Was all that memorization worth it? Didn’t I resent it? I would add that we didn’t just learn the words, and we were not allowed to stumble through our recitation. Our recitation had to be perfect. We had to be able to write the passage perfectly including punctuation.
I was so steeped in the language of the King James Version that during my first year in college I acquired the nickname “Therefore.”
Now there are many ways of approaching Bible study. I’m reminded of the story of Dwight L. Moody, approached by a woman who disapproved of his method of evangelism. He asked her how she did it, to which she replied that she didn’t. His response? “I like my method of doing it better than your method of not doing it.”
I feel the same way about criticism of someone’s way of doing Bible study. If you’re doing it, encourage others, suggest helpful approaches, but don’t be a critic. Would I run a school in the same way? No. But I don’t regret a moment of my Bible memorization there. I’m delighted to be able to find so many passages quickly because I hid them in my heart when I was young. Even though it wasn’t by my choice!
What’s your way of hiding God’s Word in your heart?
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 as a perfect man, though his failings seem rather minor. I’m reasonably certain that I would have done massively worse in his situation!
I was reminded of this aspect of Bible stories when I listened to the story of Jephthah while walking on my treadmill, and then listening to my pastor’s sermon on Sunday, which was taken from Matthew 1. The sermon was focused on the righteous actions of Joseph, but I couldn’t help looking over the genealogy as he spoke.
We’re introduced to Jephthah as “a mighty warrior” but he was the son of a prostitute. Yet he’s presented as one of the people who saved Israel. In Judges 11:15-28 he gives quite a recitation of the history of Israel, and in verse 29, the spirit of the LORD comes up him. What struck me in reading the story, besides the always disturbing story of his daughter, is that he is otherwise presented as a solid leader in Israel.
My mind links things in sometimes odd ways, and what struck me in this story was the mention that Jephthah’s mother was a prostitute. It’s sparse and bold, neither covered up nor overemphasized. It was not, as one can gather from the story itself, something that endeared Jephthah to the good and normal citizens of Israel.
That, in turn, led me to the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. It’s odd, considering the times, that there are four women mentioned here. Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law while acting as a prostitute (Genesis 38), Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho who saved her family’s lives by helping the Israelite spies escape, Ruth the Moabitess (Deuteronomy 23:3), who was quite clearly a chaste woman, but barred from becoming an Israelite by the law, and finally “the wife of Uriah the Hittite,” the victim of David’s lusts.
It interested me to consider why the Bible emphasizes these people. And I do the authors of these stories as making these folks stand out. Further, they stand out in some of the most powerful stories in the Bible. Genesis 38 hardly seems a necessary part of the story of the patriarchs, yet it is woven in later.
I think there’s a point to be made here. The Bible is not a story of spiritual superheroes with superior ancestors. The heroes of the Bible do not stem from noble stock, the sort of people from whom we expect great things. Jephthah had become an outlaw with good-for-nothing men gathered around him. Then he got a call and the spirit of the LORD came upon him.
And here in Matthew we have a close tie to the stories of Hebrew scriptures in these little hints provided in the genealogy. Jesus is the son of David–such noble ancestry! But look! There are some moments in that story that other people might prefer to tell.
All that stands between you and me and doing great things is that call and that spirit. Good-for-nothing isn’t really in God’s vocabulary. “Nothing” is waiting for God’s “something.”
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 entire Torah.
When I read Leviticus alongside the three volume Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus by Jacob Milgrom I was struck by his comment that the commands of Torah, and in this case specifically commands regarding the temple ritual were clearly intended as a training ground for Israel.
And history shows us that in at least one way, this training worked. Israel built up an identity that was difficult to destroy. We can still identify Israelites today, unlike the vast majority of the cultures that existed at that time and for centuries before and after.
There were two aspects to this identity. One is simply those aspects of behavior and lifestyle that identified one as first Israelite, and in later times as a Jew. This identity kept Jews distinct from the surrounding culture. But there is another identity inherent in Torah, which we can infer from many specific statements, such as the opening for the ten commandments. “I am YHWH your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). God claimed the Israelites as his own before giving any law.
In this verse, we have the two sides of this equation, but not necessarily in historical or logical order. The psalmist has sought God with his whole heart, doing everything he can. But he recognizes the part of that identity that can be summarized as “God’s own person/people.”
If we belong to God, a claim also made by Christians, we need to be identifiable as people who belong to God.
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. For those who read some Hebrew, let me recommend Psalm 119 as a good way to become more comfortable with these poetic forms.
There are all kinds of things that we could take from this verse, but through the day today my mind was repeatedly brought back to this: We need to teach sanctification, holiness, integrity in living, truthfulness, and the breadth and comprehensive nature of God’s Word.
Sanctification is by grace (there’s a big subject), or better, in the words of the Psalm, it’s a path of blessing. I think it’s no accident that Psalm 119 starts with “blessed.” We need to realize that this is God’s work. It’s worked in us, but it is about God both in goal and in method.
If we don’t talk about living a pure life in the church, people are likely to drift into perfectionism, legalism, arrogance, spiritual pride, and condescension. Those who avoid those issues usually wind up in cynicism and discouragement.
The one way to go, and I think it is the way of this Psalm, is to recognize that it’s all about God, the creator of all. God sustains us (see Psalm 104, for example) on a constant basis. The way to holiness without arrogance is a profound thankfulness and recognition of blessings received. The best antidote to spiritual pride is to keep our eyes on God’s law.
That will lead to being blessed and being kept in the pure path.
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!
Being blessed is a fairly broad and comprehensive thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we have everything we want, or accomplish everything we want. It’s being under God’s watchful eye, and that’s positive (God has a purpose/God believes in us), and also negative (if we go off track, there is God). Perhaps we need to redefine “negative.”
God’s law is a great deal more than a list of rules. God’s law is God’s self-revelation. We see this in Judaism in the centrality of the Torah, one of two broad words used in Psalm 119. (The other is Word/words.) When the Psalmist celebrates the law, as many English translations render it, he is celebrating being chosen as one of God’s people and God’s immanence in the self-revelation of the law. This carries over into Christianity (John 1:1-18, Hebrews 1:1-4) with Jesus as the Word, God’s message in human flesh.
There is a joy that shines through the text. This is not poetry written by someone who felt he was obliged to praise God for the Torah. He loves it. He’s thankful for it. He finds joy in it.
We start with blessing, and that’s important. Our temptation is to do things to seek blessing. The reality is that the ability to do and the motivation to do is itself a blessing, from which acts follow. Lead with the blessing!
Sometimes it’s OK to shout “Help!”
I hope you’re enjoying this journey as I am. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be posting the first verse in the second section.
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 was preserved, as well as through the nature of its human authors, as much or even more than it does in propositions.
This verse is very human. It’s the cry of most religious or spiritual people, or rather those who aspire to be such. I’m going to do this. Here’s my plan. Here are the spiritual practices I’m going to carry out. These practices will help me be truly spiritual, holy, and generally a better person.
At the same time, there are those moments when we realize we need all the help we can get. Consider my idea of taking Psalm 119 a verse at a time, meditating on it for a day, and then writing a post that evening to be published the next morning. Yes, I’m blogging, but this blogging is based on me carrying out a spiritual practice, simple in structure, and personal.
Then there was the day when I realized in the middle of the afternoon that I couldn’t even remember the words of the verse I was supposed to be meditating on. Things had gone multiple directions and I don’t handle that well. I had to pull out the text and remind myself.
Or I could talk about right now. It’s later than I planned to write this. Suddenly I thought, Oh no! I have to write something about that verse. It was another of those scattered days.
So I’m coming to my computer sort of like the Psalmist to his writing. Lord, I have a plan. Don’t give up on me completely.
It may not be the best theology in the world, but it’s very human.
I will praise you with an upright heart When 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 on what “law” means in Psalm 119. To summarize, in Psalm 119 we heard one of God’s people praising God for God’s revelation in Torah. The various words for law direct us to the varied things that are present in this revelation of God.
This is important in terms of praise. Genuine praise results from looking at God’s self-revelation. We look at what God has done and the response is in praise. This is genuine praise.
There is also praise that is manipulative. “Lord, I praise you, and I want …” There is false praise. “Lord, I’m praising you because otherwise you might wipe me out. I hope you don’t notice that I don’t really mean it.”
This doesn’t mean that praise somehow results from knowing everything there is to know about God. We’re never going to do that this side of eternity. What it does mean is that genuine praise from us results from our observation of God’s revelation.
The more we observe, the more we praise. Not because God needs it, but because it flows from that knowledge.
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 on various pilgrimages to find themselves. Others go through their lives with a continuous question of whether they are important, or contribute, or make a difference of some kind. Who are we?
Often this comes as shame. We are ashamed of things we have done. Let me confess that there are things I have done in my life of which I am not proud. Even more, I have rarely (almost never) done my work to what I consider a high level of quality. There are always things in what I do that I want to apologize for, even to myself.
But when we get our eyes on God, in this case the God revealed in the commands he gave, we can begin to find our identity. The God who did these things actually cares about us.
7 “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 7:7-8 (NRSVue)
For a New Testament quote,
1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
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 various uses of “law” and related terms in scripture. I’m embedding it here again.
God’s Eternal Law
To summarize this, I believe that God has an eternal law. That eternal law is not something that we can comprehend. It rules an entire universe. It is an absolute expression of who God is. Those of us who are not in that “space,” so to speak, are not going to comprehend or attain to this.
This law expresses not only who God is, but God’s ultimate and glorious purpose for creation, including us. As a starting point for understanding my own view of law and grace, I would point out that we have nothing that is not, in this sense, a gift. We can’t take our next breath without the physical laws, which are God’s creation. We bring nothing into this world that was not given to us.
But scripture (Psalm 8, for example), also quoted and directly applied in Hebrews 2, carries this concept forward into Christian thought. While everything is a gift, we are, in fact, gifted. Every one of us.
Various Laws
Now there are many laws expressed in scripture and in various human documents and institutions. God’s laws as delivered to us are always finite simply because we cannot possibly understand something infinite. When Paul notes (Romans 3:23) that we all fall short of God’s glory, I would take this as also that we cannot really comprehend God’s glory.
Individual laws or bodies of laws are relative. People are afraid of the word relative, because they think it makes something weak. But things and statements are always relative. We are neither able to make things absolute in all ways, nor would it be desirable to do so.
To illustrate from daily life, the rules a parent makes for a toddler do not necessarily apply to that same child as a teenager. That’s because the specific commands were related to that particular time and place.
When we look to biblical laws, we find many of the same things taking place. As Christians, we acknowledge that some laws were for specific times and places.
Note: Dispensationalism is based on this very real separation, though I think it has substantial problems in that it tries to make something relative more absolute than it was intended to be. In doing so, it both makes thing more rigid, and at the same time makes laws less applicable. Few dispensationalists would agree with a man with whom I had a discussion when he informed me that one clause in a verse in 2 Corinthians referred to a different dispensation than the rest.
The Torah and Israel (Very Briefly)
Now Israel’s religion centered more and more over time on the Torah, God’s revelation at Sinai, though many, myself included, would maintain that portions of it developed over a longer period of time. So when an Israelite referred to “the law” as Torah is often translated, he was referring to the core revelation of God to the people of Israel.
So when the Psalmist starts to celebrate the Torah in this poem, he is, in fact, celebrating both the fact that God made a self-revelation to Israel, and that this revelation was available to him personally. It was not just that this was a life-giving and life-affirming way of carrying out one’s life. It was not just a moral code. It was a revelation that gave meaning to all that was, is, or could be.
The Revelation of God in Jesus
We find Jesus portrayed in a similar way in the New Testament. John 1:1-18 is the classic expression. I am a great fan of the book of Hebrews. (I say that Leviticus, Ezekiel, and Hebrews are the three books that have shaped my theology.) Hebrews 1:1-4 is also a classic, though less known passage that expresses this idea explicitly. In the past, we are informed, God’s revelation came at various times and in various ways, but now it has arrived through one who is a Son, a complete portrayal of all that God is.
So Christian theology is, quite properly, centered in the person of Jesus Christ. I’m not here trying to argue about a “better” religion. I would like to point out that this is the source of a great deal of difficulty when Christians and Jews debate the meaning of Hebrew scripture. We are looking at it with different colored glasses. Rather than seeing the Torah as God’s final and ultimate revelation of God, we see Jesus in the same light.
But note that the book of Hebrews does not say that the revelation in Jesus Christ, a Son by nature, somehow meant that the other revelation was invalid or useless. It adjusts the center. It changes our viewpoint, and thus changes what we see, but it doesn’t say that the other viewpoint fails to inform.
I, as a Christian, could actually read Psalm 119 as a celebration of Jesus, though I would not hold that the author saw it or thought of it that way. We read this passage (and most others) very weakly when we consider the point to be one of how hard we should try to accomplish a set of ethical commands and precepts. It is rather a celebration of the God who chose Israel and provided to them the revelation of divinity that is contained in Torah.
The “Law Words” of Psalm 119
Psalm 119 uses a variety of words for the the law, including Torah. They are variously translated in various versions, but let’s consider Torah (instruction/law), testimonies, ways, instructions/procedures, statutes, commands, judgments, and words.
Each of these terms overlaps in their meanings, but all are included in the overall concept of Torah. Each has a different etymology and some differences in usage, but Psalm 119 seems to be simply using them to bring together the broadest concept of God’s law that is possible.
This celebration becomes possible for any of us as we celebrate God’s revelation, no matter where or how it is given. Psalm 19 celebrates the revelation of God in the created world, for example.
Conclusion
So reading and enjoying Psalm 119 is not just a celebration of commands and a demand for a particular behavior. It is a celebration of the God of law, revealed in Torah. As we see God in other ways and sources, it can become a celebration of those elements as well.
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 calls for help from the lawgiver.
It would all be very good if …
I sure wish I could, says the Psalmist. He knows it’s good. He’s glad to know it. But can he?
I feel this. There are things in my daily life I wish I could do better. Some days are better than others.
There’s a balance here, and we can see that balance in the rhythms of the Psalm.
The praise is a prayer. I’m going for it! Please help me!
