I will sing praise of your word,
for all your commands are righteous.
Though I did not translate literally in either case, I will note that there is a succession of terms used here. Verse 171 has the lips doing the praising, and in this verse, it’s the tongue.
Why do we praise laws?
In general, I’d say, we’re inclined to praise laws that prevent other people from doing things we don’t like, but to chafe at laws that restrict our freedom to do what we want. A law is “righteous” if it applies to others, and oppressive if it applies to us.
The Psalmist describes all God’s judgments as righteous. As I’ve noted before, the Psalm does not specific authorship, but if we look at the traditional Psalmist, David, we can see that while he might not recognize his own guilt easily, when confronted with it by God’s messengers, he was able to acknowledge it. He was a king, but he was also subject to the will of God. (For an example, see 2 Samuel 11, the familiar story of David and Bath Sheba.)
The problem that many of us have in relating to laws is very simply a lack of empathy. We cannot imagine ourselves in someone else’s circumstances, and thus we often miss what various actions and rules might mean to that other person.
One of the critical elements of God’s laws is the need to be concerned for others. In Leviticus 19:18, the Israelites are commanded to love their neighbor as they love themselves. Jesus picks this up in his statement of the two laws.
One cannot carry this law out without empathy. One has to have some understanding of how to apply love to one’s neighbor if one is to actually love that neighbor. When Jesus gives the golden rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12), he makes empathy even more important. You again have to be able to think about what your neighbor might want in order to carry out this law.
Some leave out this empathy in expressing how to fulfill this law. They figure that if they would like something particular done to them, that must be good for their neighbor too. But if you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that what you’d like is for your neighbor to do to you something that you would like done. That means that to reciprocate, you need to look for something your neighbor would like done and do that.
Let me illustrate with a simple case. My wife and I are very different. When we were setting out to get married 25 years ago, many thought it would never work. It has. There are several reasons for this, but the key reason is that we recognize and celebrate our differences.
Jody likes to make a big deal of birthdays. She likes lots of people around. She wants them to have fun. She wants to be part of the crowd. It’s a big show. I like to try to arrange as much of that as I can. Why? Because she likes it. That’s it. I don’t need any other reason. She enjoys that celebration.
You may imagine that I also enjoy such a celebration, but you’d be wrong. If I could, I’d keep my birthday secret. I don’t mind a few greetings, and appreciate that friends notice, but I don’t want a party or any large gathering of people. I find the idea of getting a bunch of friends together for a meal with cake and all that stuff to be rather annoying. Please, leave me alone and let me enjoy my birthday!
Jody recognizes what I like, and she will keep things toned down and low key. I really appreciate this.
This is an example of doing to something else what we would want done to us. Step one is finding out what the other person would like, just as you would prefer that they find out what you would like.
Let me bring this back to our text. All God’s judgments are proclaimed to be right, and that is praiseworthy. Those who don’t care about someone else wants only laws that work in their own favor. Those who do care, those who have empathy, want laws that work for the good of all.
Leviticus expresses this “good of all” approach in 19:15, “Do not twist justice in legal matters by favoring the poor or being partial to the rich and powerful. Always judge people fairly.” Fair judgment requires seeing the whole context, something not possible to the self-centered and unempathetic.
How about trying to really understand what one other person wants today?
(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
I want to call attention to two posts on empathy from Energion authors. Idea Summary: Empathy is drawn from the book The God of the Growing Edge by Dr. Bruce Epperly. Empathy is Essential is by Dr. Dolly Berthelot. Both look at empathy and its impact on our actions in society. Dolly is also the author of PERFECTLY SQUARE, a fantasy fable about dealing with change and diversity, something that also requires empathy.
