Psalm 119 is by far the longest chapter in the Bible, containing no less than 176 verses. The fifteen Songs of Degrees that follow it contain 101 verses, that is, 75 verses less than this Psalm. It is divided into twenty-two sections, each headed by one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet in their order. Every verse, but three—verses 90, 122, 132—contains an allusion to the law.
Several words are used, each meaning the law, but viewed from different standpoints.
(1) Law (Torah)—direction, teaching.
(2) Testimony (Eduth)—witness, testimony.
(3) Precept (Piqqudim)—charges.
(4) Statute (Choq)—decreed limit.
(5) Commandment (Mitvah)—precept.
(6) Word (Dabar)—word, matter, thing.
(7) Judgment (Misphat)—judgment.
(8) Way (Derek)—trodden path.
It is a delightful psalm to read, standing in vivid contrast to the atmosphere that pervaded the children of Israel when the law was promulgated from Mount Sinai. There they beheld the mount smoking as a furnace, shaking as in an earthquake. They heard the trumpet waxing louder and louder. Blackness, darkness and tempest raged. Words were heard that terrified them. What was commanded was unendurable. No wonder they entreated Moses that “the word should not be spoken to them any more” (Heb. 12:19). And so terrible was the sight that even Moses—the law-giver, the one nearest to God in this matter—said, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Heb. 12:21).
How different is the spirit of Psalm 119. At Sinai the law came to men in the flesh, and they loathed it, rebelled against it; in Psalm 119 the writer delights in the law of God. Evidently he is the subject of the new birth, and antedates personally the blessing of Israel in a future day, when the Lord shall say, “I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them” (Heb. 10:16).
It is in this Psalm not the law of bondage, condemnation and death, but “the trodden path” of delight that the renewed man longs to take.
It is delightful to see the intense love the writer has for the law—“love … the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10)—love that lifts what to the natural man is a crushing burden, an intolerable bondage, into what the writer James characterizes as “the royal law” (James 2:8), “the perfect law of liberty” (James 1:26), “the law of liberty” (James 2:12). What a contrast! How does it come about?
It is all a question of the heart. The principle of it is seen in Psalm 27:8, “When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face, my heart said to Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” The fleshly heart finds the law an insufferable burden. “A new heart” (Ezek. 36:26) finds it a delight. No less than 184 times, under different names, does the writer pour out his deep joy and delight.
He is ever at it. “Seven times a day” does he praise Jehovah (v. 164). Before the morning breaks he cried: “I hoped in Thy Word” (v. 14). At night he robs the night watches of slumber, as he says, “that I might meditate in Thy Word” (v. 148).
“Thy Word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” (v. 105). It is a terrible experience to grope one’s way in the dark when a step may carry you over the precipice to destruction. How welcome is light amid the darkness, and this is what the Psalmist found in Jehovah’s precepts.
Nor was his meditation in the law merely a dry duty. He cries, “How sweet are Thy words to my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth” (v. 103). “O how I love Thy law! it is my meditation all the day” (v. 91).
With his “whole heart” he seeks the Lord (v. 10). He calls upon Jehovah to listen to his voice “according to Thy loving-kindness” (v. 149). His eagerness is intense. He cries, “I opened my mouth, and panted: for I longed for Thy commandments” (v. 131). “My lips”—he exclaims—“shall utter praise, when Thou hast taught me Thy statutes” (v. 171). He prays, “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law” (v. 18). “My hands also will I lift up to Thy commandments, which I have loved” (v. 48). “I have refrained my feet from every evil way” (v. 101).
Every part of him is aflame with intensest desire for God’s thoughts for him, every member of his body is requisitioned, as the strings of the harp of his soul to make melody to God as he rejoices in His law.
It is not that the Christian is “under the law.” God forbid! But whilst we “are become dead to the law by the body of Christ” (Rom. 7:4) and “we are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:15), yet the Gospel comes to us in all its liberating power “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4).
The Apostle Paul could exclaim, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. 7:22); and after deliverance came from his terrible struggles as depicted in that historic seventh chapter of Romans, he could yet say, “With the mind I myself serve the law of God” (v. 25). Is that to cease because we are “under grace”? it is just because we are not “under law” but “under grace,” that it does not cease.
True, Christianity goes much further, but many a Christian would be all the better in his life and conduct if he had more of the rapturous spirit characterizing the one hundred and seventy-six verses of Psalm.