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…
About your precepts you commanded,“Keep them diligently!” Sometimes things are tough. You wonder what’s coming next. I’m meditating on these passages one at a time. I read the passage in the morning, and then I write these in the evening. During the day, I keep coming back to that verse. In deciding to do 176…
Continuing with Psalm 119, which I began with Psalm 119:1 yesterday. There are some notes on this series there. Blessed are those who preserve [keep] his testimonies,who wholeheartedly seek him. In the translation I use “testimonies” as in the KJV, though there are a number of other possible translations. I’ll comment on these various words…
