Psalm 119:104

The stanza opens with a cry of love: “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” The Hebrew mah-‘ahavti, “how I love”, is an exclamation, the voice of a man moved by what he is saying. The verb ʼâhab is the ordinary Hebrew word for love, the affection a person has for someone, for a thing or for a way of life, and here its object is God’s law. The psalmist is fond of what God has told him, and he says so with his whole heart.

The law he loves is tôwrâh. The word comes from the verb yârâh, which in one of its senses means to point out or teach, so tôwrâh is God’s instruction: all that he has taught his people about himself, his ways and the life he means for them. It includes commands, and it also includes everything by which God makes his will known. That verb comes back in verse 102, where the psalmist says of God, “thou hast taught me”. The law he loves comes from the God who teaches him.

His love has an outcome: “it is my meditation all the day.” The word for meditation, sîychâh, comes from the verb sîyach and means reflection, musing or devotion. Meditation in Scripture is active. The one who meditates turns the words over, often speaking them half aloud to himself, and keeps them in his thoughts until they become his own. “All the day” means from morning to night, so God’s word goes with him into his work, his choices and his dealings with others, as well as into the hours he sets apart for it. Love comes first in the verse and meditation follows, because we think most about what we love.

This is the life Scripture blesses. The blessed man of Psalm 1:1–3 keeps away from the counsel of the ungodly, and “his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” God told Joshua to meditate on the book of the law day and night (Joshua 1:8), and Moses told Israel to keep God’s words in their hearts and to teach them diligently to their children (Deuteronomy 6:6–9).

People ask whether meditation in the Bible is the same as the meditation of Eastern religions. Biblical meditation always has a content, which is God’s word and God himself, and it fills the mind with what he has said, so that it shapes our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. The practices that aim to empty the mind, or to reach an impersonal universal consciousness, move in the other direction. The psalmist is drawing near to the living God who spoke these words.

Verses 98 to 100 make three bold comparisons. The psalmist is wiser than his enemies, he has more understanding than all his teachers, and he understands more than the ancients. Each time he gives a reason, and each reason is God’s word.

“I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep thy word.” The verb, kālî’ṯî, from kâlâʼ, means to restrict, to hold back or to withhold. Its form describes a decided act whose effect goes on, so the psalmist has held his feet back and still does. His feet, raḡlay, from regel, are named with the ordinary word for the foot, and where the feet go pictures the way a person lives. The evil way is ‘ōraḥ ra‘. The noun ʼôrach is a well-trodden road, a path or a course of life, and raʻ is badness, evil and wickedness. “Every” evil way takes in all of them, the small along with the great.

The verse then gives his purpose: “that I might keep thy word.” He turns from evil so that he may keep God’s word, to treasure it and live by it. Sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2) and clouds our sight of his truth, so turning from it keeps the way to his word clear. Proverbs says, “Turn not to the right hand nor to the left” (Proverbs 4:27), and Moses told Israel to walk in all the ways the LORD had commanded them (Deuteronomy 5:33). John says that we know we know God when we keep his commandments (1 John 2:3–6).

“I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me.” The verb çûwr means to turn off or turn aside, so the psalmist is saying that he has stayed on the path God laid out. The judgments, mishpâṭ, are properly verdicts given by a judge. Here they are God’s decrees, the just decisions by which he governs his people, and they show who he is: holy, righteous and good to those who follow them.

Then comes the reason: “for thou hast taught me.” The verb is yârâh, whose senses include to throw or shoot, to water, and to point out or teach, and it is the verb from which tôwrâh comes. God himself has taught the psalmist, and his faithfulness is the fruit of that teaching. In verse 101 the psalmist holds himself back, and in verse 102 he gives God the credit for keeping him on the path. God promised through Moses to circumcise the hearts of his people so that they would love him (Deuteronomy 30:6), and through Jeremiah to write his law in their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33).

“How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” The verb mâlats means to be smooth, and so to be pleasant or sweet, and in the form used here it means to be sweet. The word for words, ʼimrâh, means something said, a word, a saying or a command. Scripture uses it for God’s word and for human speech alike, and in this psalm it is one of the names for what God has spoken. “Taste” is chêk, the palate, the inside of the mouth. The psalmist speaks of God’s words as we speak of food we savour.

Honey, dᵉbash, named from a root that Strong’s gives as “to be gummy”, was the sweetest thing Israel knew. It came from bees or from fruits such as dates, grapes and figs, and it was prized as food and as strength. God described the promised land as “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). The KJV supplies the words “yea, sweeter” to bring out the comparison the Hebrew makes, so the psalmist is saying that God’s words are sweeter than the sweetest thing he can name.

Another psalm says the same of God’s judgments: “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10). Jeremiah found God’s words and ate them, and they were the joy and rejoicing of his heart (Jeremiah 15:16), and Proverbs tells a son to eat honey because it is good, and says that wisdom is just as sweet to the soul (Proverbs 24:13–14).

This verse shows the love of verse 97 from the inside. God’s word is a delight, food that nourishes and satisfies the soul, and the obedience of verses 101 and 102 grows out of that delight. A man who finds God’s words sweet keeps them gladly.

“Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.” The precepts are piqqûwd again, here in the plural, piqqûdim, God’s particular charges to his people. The verb for understanding is bîyn, the same verb as in verse 100, the power to discern and tell truth from error. God’s precepts give it, and so the psalmist can see what is true and what is false.

“Therefore” draws the conclusion. The understanding God gives leads to hatred, sânêʼ, of every false way. The word for false, sheqer, means falsehood, a lie, deception or a sham, and it also covers what is vain and comes to nothing. The word for way is ʼôrach, the same word that stands in verse 101, so “every false way” answers “every evil way”. A false way is any course of life, teaching or practice that runs against God’s truth, whether sin, deception or idolatry. Later in the psalm the psalmist joins the two halves again: “Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:128).

The stanza began with love and ends with hate, and the two belong together, because whoever loves God’s truth turns against what twists it. This is the renewing of the mind that Paul describes (Romans 12:2), which changes what we desire as well as what we know. In an age full of information and misinformation, the verse gives us a fixed point, since the understanding that can tell truth from falsehood comes from God’s precepts.

Jesus is the one who loved and kept God’s law perfectly. He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me” (John 4:34). The words he spoke were the Father’s commandment (John 12:49–50), and he kept his Father’s commandments and abode in his love (John 15:10). He was tempted in all points as we are, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), so his feet kept from every evil way and he departed from none of God’s judgments. He is himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), the way in which there is no falsehood at all.

He is also the Word in whom all God’s words are summed up. The Word was with God and was God, and all things were made by him (John 1:1–3), and the Word was made flesh (John 1:14). In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and he “of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30), so the wisdom the psalmist praised is ours in him. On the cross he triumphed over the principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15), the last enemies of his people, and his righteousness is counted to those who believe (2 Corinthians 5:21).

His words carry the sweetness of verse 103. Jesus said that his words “are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63), and Peter answered him, “thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). He calls himself “the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger” (John 6:35), and he offers living water (John 4:10).

The teaching of verse 102 now comes to us through the Spirit he sent. God puts his laws into our minds and writes them in our hearts, as the new covenant promised (Hebrews 8:10), on “fleshly tables of the heart” (2 Corinthians 3:3). God sent his Son so that “the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3–4). The Spirit guides us into all truth (John 16:13), searches the deep things of God and shows them to us (1 Corinthians 2:10–16), and gives us the discernment John calls knowing “the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6). So Paul can say, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16).

These eight verses show us God’s word as the psalmist knew it: something to love, to think on all day, to obey and to enjoy. God is the giver in every verse. He makes his servant wise through his commandments, gives him understanding through his testimonies and precepts, teaches him himself, and gives him words sweeter than honey. The wisdom he gives is open to anyone who loves his word, whatever their age or schooling.

The stanza also shows how one thing leads to another in a life that belongs to God. Love leads to meditation, meditation to understanding, understanding to obedience, and obedience to a deeper love of the truth and a hatred of every false way. The God who taught the psalmist is the same God who teaches us today, through his word, his Spirit and his Son, and the sweetness the psalmist tasted is still there in every word he has spoken.