Psalm 119:118

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. It is an acrostic of 22 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and all eight verses of a stanza begin with that stanza’s letter. Verses 113 to 120 are the stanza of Samech. The whole psalm is a long meditation on God’s word under many names, and this stanza uses six of them: law, word, commandments, statutes, testimonies and judgments.

Just before it, the psalmist has said that “the wicked have laid a snare for me” (Psalm 119:110), and the wicked are in view all through these verses. Against them the psalmist sets his own heart, his refuge in God, his prayer to be held up, and his awe at what God does to those who reject his word.

“I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love.” The word behind “vain thoughts”, çêʻêph (in the plural, se’iphim), comes from a root meaning to divide or to branch off. It describes divided opinions, wavering thoughts and hesitations, a mind pulled two ways at once, and so thoughts that are empty and worthless. The psalmist sets God’s law against them because his loyalty runs one way. James describes the man he refuses to be: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).

The verb for hate, sânêʼ, is a strong word for loathing and hostility. Here it is a settled turning away from whatever would divide the psalmist from God. The word for law, tôwrâh, means God’s instruction, his whole teaching for life, given in the covenant as the path of blessing and righteousness. The psalmist’s love for it is the love of Psalm 1:2–3, where the blessed man’s “delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night”, and Paul says the same: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Romans 7:22). His hatred and his love belong together. The more his mind is filled with God’s truth, the less room is left for wavering.

In Israel the heart (lev), and the soul or self (nephesh), were the seat of a person’s will, feelings and thinking, so faithfulness to God began inside. Proverbs says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). Jesus taught that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts” (Matthew 15:19), and Paul speaks of “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). The verse shows that God wants our thoughts and affections as well as our outward obedience, and that a heart wholly given to him is the heart that loves his word.

“Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word.” The word for hiding place, çêther, means a cover, a secret place, protection: somewhere to go when danger comes. Judah’s rugged hills are full of caves that served as hiding places in war and persecution, and David hid from Saul in the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel 22:1). The shield, mâgên, was the soldier’s defence against arrows, spears and swords, and the same word is used as a title for God or a king as the protector of his people. The two pictures fill each other out. God is a place the psalmist can go into, and he is protection held up in front of him against every blow.

Both are “my”, and the psalmist speaks to God directly. The Psalms often speak of God this way: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1), “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer” (Psalm 18:2), and “I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust” (Psalm 91:2).

“I hope in thy word” tells us how the psalmist knows God is his refuge. The verb, yâchal, means to wait or to hope, the patient expectation that holds on until God acts. Earlier in the psalm he prays, “Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope” (Psalm 119:49), and Paul writes that the Scriptures were written “that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). The psalmist’s hope rests on what God has promised and on his faithfulness to it.

For us, God as hiding place means a refuge we can go to in prayer and in his promises when fear presses in, the rest Jesus offers to all that labour and are heavy laden (Matthew 11:28). God as shield means his defence of us against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6:11), and his word guards us as it guides us, “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). This shelter holds through hardship as well as rescuing from it. Paul names death, life, angels and every power in creation and is persuaded that none of them “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

“Depart from me, ye evildoers: for I will keep the commandments of my God.” The verb çûwr means to turn off, turn aside, or remove oneself, and here it is a command. The psalmist tells evildoers to go. The word for them comes from râʻaʻ, to be bad or to do evil, a verb that Strong’s ties figuratively to breaking something to pieces and so making it good for nothing. These are people whose way of life is doing harm and opposing God’s ways.

His reason comes in the second half of the verse, joined by “for” (kî). “I will keep” (‘eṣ·ṣə·rāh) is a firm resolve to guard and observe. The commandments, mitsvâh, from the verb tsâvâh, to command, are God’s authoritative directions for how his people are to live, and the plural takes in all of them. “My God” is the language of the covenant. The psalmist sends the evildoers away because their company would pull him from obedience, and he has already chosen whom he will obey.

Scripture says the same in many places. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20). God told Israel, “ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). Paul calls believers to “come out from among them, and be ye separate” (2 Corinthians 6:14–17), and James says that “the friendship of the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4). The resolve is Joshua’s: “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15). And the psalm opens with the blessing it is after: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD” (Psalm 119:1).

Verses 116 and 117 are two prayers to be held up. “Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.” The verb çâmak means to lean on, prop up, support or sustain, the help that keeps someone from falling. The psalmist asks for it “according unto thy word”, and the word here, ʼimrâh, means something said, a word or speech. Here it is what God has said, his promise. He asks God to do what God has spoken, and he rests his request on God’s faithfulness.

“That I may live” takes in all of life, his body kept safe and his soul alive to God. Moses set life before Israel and said of the LORD, “he is thy life, and the length of thy days” (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).

“Let me not be ashamed of my hope.” The word for hope, sêber, from sâbar, means expectation, a settled looking forward to what God will do. In Israel shame (bûwsh) meant public disgrace, the humiliation of someone whose trust had proved empty. The psalmist prays that God will act and show that hoping in him was right, before everyone who watches. Paul answers the prayer: “hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost” (Romans 5:5), and “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:11). The psalms tell us to “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart” (Psalm 27:14), and Hebrews calls our hope “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast” (Hebrews 6:19).

God holds us up by his word in several ways. He holds us by his promises, such as “he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deuteronomy 31:6). He holds us by his commandments, which give a life rooted like the tree of Psalm 1. He holds us by his Spirit, the Comforter who teaches us all things (John 14:26), and by his care in all our circumstances, for “my God shall supply all your need” (Philippians 4:19).

“Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto thy statutes continually.” The verb çâʻad means to support, sustain, or hold up, like a firm hand steadying someone about to fall. “I shall be safe” is yâshaʻ, a root whose first sense is to be open, wide or free, and so to be safe. Used causatively it means to free and to help, and it is the word behind salvation and deliverance throughout the Old Testament. God promises the very help the psalmist asks for: “I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10), and Jude gives glory “unto him that is able to keep you from falling” (Jude 1:24).

“Have respect unto” is shâʻâh, to gaze at, look about, consider, regard with attention. The psalmist’s eyes will stay on God’s statutes, “continually”. God’s holding comes first in the verse, and the psalmist’s attention to the statutes follows as his answer to it.

“Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit is falsehood.” The verb çâlâh means, by Strong’s, to hang up or weigh, and figuratively to treat with contempt, to count as worthless. The KJV renders it “trodden down”, the picture of a conqueror trampling defeated enemies, which Scripture also uses of God treading the winepress in his anger (Isaiah 63:3). Those trodden down are those who “err”, shâgâh, to stray or wander, to go wrong, and morally to transgress. They have wandered from God’s statutes (chuqqim), the decrees he gave his covenant people.

The reason follows: “their deceit is falsehood.” Deceit, tormâh, is fraud and trickery. Falsehood, sheqer, is an untruth, a lie or a sham, and the word also carries the sense of something vain that ends in disappointment. All their cunning is itself a lie, and it comes to nothing. “Lying lips are abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 12:22), and wealth gained by a lying tongue “is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death” (Proverbs 21:6). A way that looks right to a man can end in death (Proverbs 14:12), and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). The first psalm says it in one line: “the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish” (Psalm 1:6). God laughs at the nations that set themselves against him and speaks to them in his wrath (Psalm 2:4–5), and Psalm 37 sets the end of the wicked beside the safety of the righteous.

For the psalmist this is comfort. The people who trouble him are building on a lie, and God will expose them and bring them down.

“My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments.” Flesh, bâsâr, means the body, the person, a mortal creature, and it can stand for man as frail before God. The psalmist’s whole frail self responds. The verb çâmar means to bristle like hair, to stand up, to tremble: his hair stands on end and he shudders. The fear that makes him tremble is pachad, dread or fear, and also the thing feared. In the second line, “I am afraid” is another verb, and what he fears there is God’s judgments, mishpâṭ, a word for a verdict pronounced by a judge, a sentence or a formal decree. God’s judgments are his righteous rulings and his acts of justice, and the psalmist has just watched them fall on those who stray.

He is in good company. Moses at the burning bush “hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exodus 3:6), and Isaiah in the temple cried, “Woe is me! for I am undone” (Isaiah 6:5). Hebrews warns that “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

Every line of this stanza finds its fullness in Jesus. He had the undivided heart the psalmist prays for: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). When the devil tempted him in the wilderness, he answered every suggestion with “It is written” (Matthew 4:1–11). We are given his mind (Philippians 2:5) and are “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

The word the psalmist hoped in became flesh. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... All things were made by him” (John 1:1–3), and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:17). He is our hiding place and our shield, who “spoiled principalities and powers” and triumphed over them in the cross (Colossians 2:15). In him all the promises of God are yea and Amen (2 Corinthians 1:20), and God has begotten us “again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). He came “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10), and he “is our life” (Colossians 3:4).

Jesus alone kept the commandments of his God perfectly. He was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15), he came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Through him the righteousness of the law is “fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:3–4). We are justified by faith and have peace with God (Romans 5:1), Christ makes intercession for us (Romans 8:34), and God puts his Spirit within us and causes us to walk in his statutes (Ezekiel 36:27). Jesus promised that the Father and the Son will make their abode with the one who loves him and keeps his words (John 14:23), and God calls us to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16).

In Christ there was no guile (1 Peter 2:22), and he exposed the devil as “a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). John the Baptist said of him, “he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). His blood purges our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14), and when he returns, Faithful and True, he will judge and make war in righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16).

The judgments that made the psalmist tremble fell on Christ for us. God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God is “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), and Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). So we come to the holy God with confidence and with reverent awe together.

These eight verses give us a heart that belongs to God whole, and a God who is worthy of it. He is a hiding place to run into and a shield held up before us, and his word is the ground of our hope. He holds up those who lean on him and keeps them safe, and he will see that their hope ends in honour. He is also the Judge who sees through every lie, treads down those who stray, and puts away the wicked like dross from the refiner’s fire.

The psalmist holds both truths at once, and so his love and his fear grow together. The more clearly he sees God’s justice, the more he loves God’s testimonies, and the closer he hides in God, the more he trembles before him. In Christ we receive both: a refuge from judgment, and a reverence that keeps our eyes on God’s statutes continually.