Psalm 119:81

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, an acrostic poem built on the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It has 22 stanzas of eight verses, and each verse in a stanza begins with that stanza’s letter. Verses 81 to 88 belong to the letter Kaph, which the KJV prints as CAPH at the head of verse 81. The whole psalm praises God’s word under many names, and this stanza uses several of them: word, statutes, law, commandments, precepts and testimony.

Kaph is a stanza of suffering, and the psalmist’s distress and his loyalty to God’s word run side by side through it. One Hebrew verb ties it together. Kâlâh means to end, to cease, to be finished, to perish or to consume, and the same verb stands behind “fainteth” in verse 81, “fail” in verse 82 and “consumed” in verse 87. His soul is being used up, his eyes are being used up, and his enemies have almost used him up altogether. Each time, the verse turns at once to God’s word.

Psalm 119 leaves its historical setting unstated. The psalmist speaks as a devout Israelite under the old covenant, for whom God’s law was instruction for life, a source of wisdom and the ground of his covenant with God, as it had been for Israel from the wilderness onward (Deuteronomy 6). The salvation he longs for may be rescue from personal enemies, from the oppression of his nation, or from the troubles and injustices of life, and the psalm leaves room for all of them. The stanza moves from longing (verses 81–83) to the enemies and their plots (verses 84–87), and ends in a prayer for life (verse 88).

The soul, nephesh, is the breathing creature, the life and the self, so it is the whole man who is giving out. He is wearing himself out with longing for God’s tᵉshûwʻâh. That word means rescue, deliverance, help, safety or victory, whether of a person, of the nation or in the spiritual sense, and here it is God’s saving help reaching into his trouble. Salvation belongs to the LORD (Psalm 3:8), and so the psalmist looks to God alone for it, as another psalmist’s soul thirsts for the living God (Psalm 42:1–2).

The verse turns on its “but”: “but I hope in thy word.” The verb yâchal means to wait, and so to be patient and to hope. His hope is a patient, confident waiting, and he fixes it on God’s dâbâr, his word, a term that can also mean a matter or a thing spoken of. The fainting is real and the hope is real, and they stand together in one line. Faith here looks honestly at its own weakness and holds on to the God who has spoken. The psalmist has said the same earlier in the psalm, where his hope rests on God’s word (Psalm 119:49).

That is why this hope differs from wishful thinking. It rests on what God has promised and on who he is, so it holds even while the soul is fainting. The letter to the Hebrews says that he who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23) and calls our hope an anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19). Paul says the Scriptures were written for our endurance and encouragement (Romans 15:4), and a psalm of David calls us to wait on the LORD (Psalm 27:14).

In verse 82 the verb kâlâh is used of his eyes, ʻayin. Failing eyes are a common Hebrew picture of longing and exhaustion, the eyes of someone who has watched so long for what he waits for that they are spent. He watches for God’s ʼimrâh, which means something said, a word or speech. This verse shares the English “word” with verse 81, but the Hebrew word is a different one. What he watches for is God’s word coming true in his life.

“Saying” is ʼâmar, the ordinary verb for speech, and here it is his eyes that speak. His longing gaze has become a prayer: “When wilt thou comfort me?” The verb nâcham properly means to sigh or breathe strongly, and from that to be sorry, to pity and to console. The comfort he asks for is God’s own help in his trouble, relief as well as solace. Paul calls God “the God of all comfort”, who comforts us in all our tribulation (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

Waiting is hard, and Scripture says so. Those who wait on the LORD renew their strength (Isaiah 40:31), we hope for what we do not yet see and wait for it with patience (Romans 8:25), and we need endurance to receive what God has promised (Hebrews 10:36). Later in this same psalm God’s word is a lamp to the feet and a light to the path (Psalm 119:105), and it gives light for the next step when the way further ahead is dark.

The bottle, nôʼd, is a leather container made from the hide of an animal, a wineskin. Such skins held wine, water or oil, and they were often hung inside the house, sometimes near the cooking fire. In the smoke and heat the leather slowly dried out, shrivelled, cracked and grew dark and brittle, until the skin was useless for what it was made for. The word for smoke, qîyṭôwr, means a fume or cloud, smoke or vapour. The psalmist feels like that skin, slowly dried out by long trouble, worn and fragile and close to breaking.

Then comes his “yet”: “yet do I not forget thy statutes.” Shâkach means to forget, to lose hold of something for want of memory or attention. To keep God’s statutes in mind while everything else in him is drying up is to go on holding them, loving them and living by them. A statute, chôq, is something prescribed: a law, a decree, an appointed portion or a set limit. Later in the psalm he says that if God’s law had not been his delight he would have perished in his affliction (Psalm 119:92), and he prays to be revived according to God’s word (Psalm 119:25).

Paul knew the same thing, the outward man wasting away while the inward man holds fast in God (2 Corinthians 4:16). He says that tribulation works patience, and patience proves character and hope (Romans 5:3–5), and Hebrews recalls believers who endured great suffering and urges them to hold on until they receive the promise (Hebrews 10:32–36).

The days, yôwm, are the span of his life and the length of his suffering. His question asks how much longer he must bear this, and how long he has left to live under it. He addresses it to God, the one who sets the number of his days.

He calls himself God’s ʻebed, his servant. A servant belongs to his master and depends on him, and by naming himself so the psalmist appeals to God’s faithfulness to those who serve him. He suffers because he is loyal to God’s law, so the wrong done to him is also an affront to God, who has upheld servants like Moses, David and the prophets.

His second question is “when wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me?” “Execute” is ʻâsâh, to do or make, and judgment is mishpâṭ, a verdict pronounced by a judge, favourable or unfavourable. He asks God to give the verdict that sets things right and vindicates his servant. His persecutors are those who râdaph him, a verb that means to run after, chase or pursue, usually with hostile intent. In Israel justice belonged to God, with human rulers and judges acting under him, and when human justice failed, the faithful appealed to God himself. So the psalmist calls on the God to whom vengeance belongs (Psalm 94:1) and who judges the peoples (Psalm 7:8). The same cry of “how long” is heard in Revelation 6:10.

Zêd means arrogant, presumptuous or proud, and it is said to come from a root meaning to boil up, insolence that spills over into action. The proud in this psalm are those who defy God and his law, often people with power who think themselves above account, and earlier they have forged a lie against him (Psalm 119:69).

They have dug, kârâh, a verb that means to dig and also, figuratively, to plot. A shîychâh is a pit or pitfall. Pits were dug as hidden traps for animals, and for enemies in war or in private feuds, and they were often covered over with branches and leaves. So the picture is of secret, deliberate plotting aimed at his downfall. Scripture often says that the one who digs the pit falls into it himself (Psalm 7:15, Proverbs 26:27).

“Which are not after thy law” sets these men and their pits against God’s tôwrâh, his law, a word used especially of the Ten Commandments and the books of Moses. Their plotting breaks the law of God, and that gives the psalmist his ground to appeal to the God who gave it, as he does again later in the psalm when he asks God to deal justly with him and deliver him from oppression (Psalm 119:121, Psalm 119:134). Jesus calls those blessed who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake (Matthew 5:10).

Verse 86 sets God’s faithfulness beside human falsehood. Mitsvâh, commandment, can be used of the whole law, and ʼĕmûwnâh, faithful, means firmness and security, and in a moral sense fidelity. Every command God has given is firm and can be trusted, because it reflects his own perfect and just character, which Moses praises in Deuteronomy 32:4. Against that stand his persecutors. The verb is râdaph again, as in verse 84, and they pursue him sheqer, with falsehood, a lie or a sham. Strong’s lists “without a cause” among its renderings, and so “wrongfully” means that they hunt him on a lie and for no just reason.

Mᵉʻaṭ means a little or a few, and here it gives “almost”: they came within a little of it. “Consumed” is kâlâh again, to finish or bring to an end. “Upon earth,” ʼerets, the earth or land, places the danger in this life, a real threat to his life and standing.

Then the stanza’s last “but”: “but I forsook not thy precepts.” ʻÂzab means to loosen, let go, leave or forsake. A precept, piqqûwd, is something appointed, a mandate of God, used in the plural for the whole law, from a root meaning to visit or attend to. For an Israelite, letting go of God’s precepts meant walking away from the covenant, and the psalmist’s loyalty under pressure is like that of the prophets who faced trial for speaking God’s truth (Jeremiah 26). Paul could write, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9).

His survival is God’s gift as well as his own steadfastness. The LORD upholds the righteous man when he falls (Psalm 37:23–24). Moses set life before Israel in loving and obeying God (Deuteronomy 30:19–20), Joshua was told to meditate on the law and keep it (Joshua 1:7–8), and Peter, asked whether he too would leave Jesus, answered that Jesus has the words of eternal life (John 6:68).

After all the fainting, failing and consuming, the stanza ends with a prayer for life. Châyâh means to live, and in its causative form to revive or make alive, which is what the old English “quicken” means. He asks for this “after thy lovingkindness”, by the measure of God’s cheçed, his kindness, the loyal and steadfast love of the covenant. He brings no claim of his own. His plea rests wholly on who God is.

The purpose follows: “so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth.” Shâmar properly means to hedge about as with thorns, and so to guard, protect and attend to. ʻÊdûwth is testimony or witness, what God has declared to be his will, and peh is the mouth, especially as the means of speech. The psalmist wants to guard and live by what came from God’s own mouth, and he knows he needs God’s life in him to do it. In the same way Jesus says that apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). David prays for a clean heart and a renewed spirit (Psalm 51:10–12), Paul calls believers to count themselves alive to God and yield themselves to him (Romans 6:11–14), and the grace of God teaches us to live godly lives (Titus 2:11–12).

The salvation the psalmist faints for and the word he hopes in meet in Jesus Christ. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1) and became flesh (John 1:14). Whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9), and his coming shows God’s love for the world (John 3:16). To the weary he promises rest (Matthew 11:28).

Jesus also walked the road of this stanza. He answered temptation with Scripture (Matthew 4:4). The proud laid snares for him, plotting to entangle him in his words (Matthew 22:15) and taking counsel to put him to death (John 11:53). He was hated without a cause (John 15:25), and when he suffered he committed himself to the one who judges righteously (1 Peter 2:23). In Gethsemane he prayed, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39), and “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). On the cross he prayed for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34) and gave his spirit into his Father’s hands (Luke 23:46). He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and he held to his Father’s will all the way to death. He was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5) and made sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

God raised him and vindicated his righteous servant, and the same Christ will return as the righteous Judge (Revelation 19:11–16), when God will repay the troublers of his people and give rest to those who are troubled (2 Thessalonians 1:6–7). The prayer “Quicken me” is answered in him. God “hath quickened us together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4–5), the last Adam “was made a quickening spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45), it is the Spirit who gives life (John 6:63), and the Spirit of him who raised Jesus “shall also quicken your mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11). Jesus sent the Comforter to his people (John 14:26), told them that he has overcome the world (John 16:33), and promises a day when God will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:4). The testimony we keep has become for us a law of liberty (James 1:25).

This stanza gives words to anyone who is tired of waiting on God. The psalmist calls his soul fainting, his eyes spent and himself a dried-out wineskin, and he says so to God. Nowhere does he pretend to be stronger than he is, and his weakness never becomes a reason to let go of God’s word. Every verse that names his trouble also names what God has said.

It shows us a God who can be asked “When?” and “How long?”, who takes up the cause of his servants against those who wrong them, and whose commandments stay faithful when everything around them is false. Above all it shows a God whose lovingkindness gives life. The stanza that begins with a fainting soul ends with a man asking to be made alive, and in Christ that prayer has an answer.