Turn my eyes away from looking at what is futile;Give me life in your pathway. This one seems pretty obvious. Recently we looked at Isaiah 55:2 – “Why spend your money on what is not food, and your labor for what doesn’t satisfy.” The question becomes exactly what is vain? What is futile? There are…
Turn my mind to your testimonies,And not to ill-gotten gain. How about some alternatives. Hearten my mind to your testimoniesand not to extortion. Bob MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, 382 Dispose my heart towards your instruction,not towards love of gain. Psalm 119:36 (REB) Christians frequently speak of the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) as a book…
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…
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:…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
