Psalms 119
Aleph
Verses 1-8
1Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD. 2Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. 3They do nothing wrong; they walk in his ways. 4You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed. 5Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! 6Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands. 7I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws. 8I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me.
“1Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD.”
The Hebrew word for “Blessed” is barakh, and sometimes means in certain contexts, “happy many times over,” so in verses where “blessed” is used, one could say, “Happy many times over…”; therefore, we could re-translate verse one as, “1Happy many times over are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD.” However, what is the relationship between being happy and walking in the ways of God?
There is a multifaceted answer to this question; first, God’s ways are perfect and thus are completely without fault, and wholly trustworthy. Secondly, since God is omniscience, i.e., He knows everything from beginning to end, He knows what “ways” that human individuals need to take. Here I draw a distinction between the “ways” of God which are connected directly with God’s will. It is God’s will that we walk in His ways, and when I say “will”, this word has many connotations within Christianity but in the context of this discussion, the word “will” is synonymous with “desire”. This is not foreign because we have heard some individuals say, “It is my will for you that…”, and again in this context “will” is synonymous with “desire.” Therefore, it is God’s desire that we walk in His ways and the reason behind God’s desire is not that He can be a dictator, ethical prude, or egomaniac; the whole reason behind God’s will for us to walk in His ways is that God knows what “ways” we need to take. Since knows everything He know exactly what we need to do in order to happy, but not a temporal happiness that come and goes like the wind, but an everlasting happiness that no matter what happens we are happy. However, God’s happiness for us is directly connected to God’s peace He gives to all those who love Him and walk in accordance with His ways. As an aside, the two are connected because if one does not truly love God then they will not walk in His ways, recalling what Jesus said in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do what I say?” If we do not love God then we will not walk in His, then we will not have peace and happiness.
Now, is there anyone in this world who has ‘blameless ways’? In other words, is there anyone who has never sinned? There is only one who has never sinned and that was/is Jesus Christ for Hebrews 4:15 states, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every, just as we are―yet was without sin.”
So, if no ordinary human being has ever been sin, how then can we be blessed since the Psalmist says, “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless…”? God knows that no ordinary human being is perfect and thus cannot fulfill His requirements, i.e., that we cannot walk in God’s ways 100% of the time, but God has given us the means to walk in His ways, and that aspect of God’s will is given in the second half of verse 1 where the Psalmist says, “…who walk according to the law of the LORD.” Furthermore, the fact that no one is blameless does not mean that we cannot be happy―our inability to walk in God’s way blamelessly is compensated by God’s grace, forgiveness, and love. Now, I am of the persuasion that ordinary human beings can go a day, maybe even two days, without sinning, and thus within that timeframe we have walked in God’s ways blamelessly, but the key is that no ordinary human can live a sinless life. But how can an individual go a day or two without sinning? Again, in the second part of verse 1, “…who walk according to the law of the LORD.” Only when we walk in accordance with God’s will do we avoid sinning, for however brief of time.
“2Blessed are they who keep his statutes and see him with all their heart. 3They do nothing wrong; they walk in his ways.”[1]
Again we could say, “Happy many times over are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart.” This verse is essential because back in ancient times individuals believed that the heart was the very center of an individual’s being; all of our emotions, thoughts, and intentions were formed in the heart. So, if someone loved some else, they loved them from their heart; if they acted towards someone in a loving manner, that intention to love them was formed in the heart. However, in the same way, if someone hated another individual, the hate came from their heart. So, essentially what the Psalmist is asserting is something along the lines of, “Happy are those who intentionally follow God’s statutes and seek Him with every part of their being.” Therefore, whenever strive to obey God’s statutes (i.e., laws/commandments) and seek after Him with every part of our being then we will be happy. So essentially our happiness is conditional upon our response to God; if we respond positively to God’s laws/commandments and seek Him with everything we are then we will be happy. However, keeping with the theme of Psalms 119, we cannot know God’s laws/commandments without knowing His word, and in the context of Christianity, we cannot know God’s laws/commandments without knowing what the Bible says.
Does this mean that an individual must always be thinking about God and His laws/commandments? No because that is typically not the case; however, God gives us guidance via the Holy Spirit and guides our actions, in many cases even without us really being aware that He is. That does not mean that we are God’s puppets being “played” by Him and not doing what He want to do; humans are agents endowed with freewill from God and thus we can choose to do whatever we want. However, God gives us guidance and via the Holy Spirit we find ourselves walking in accordance with God’s will even though we were not consciously thinking about it. But again, in order for this to happen we must know God’s word, and let God’s word “sink deep” into who we are as an individual and take root so that God’s word begins to affect our actions and the way we think and this is a theme that will be explored in the section of the chapter.
Verse 3 does reiterate a point made earlier in verse 2; again, knowing and obeying God’s word does not entail that an ordinary human being will never sin. There is only one who has only been one human has not sinned and that is Jesus Christ. However, as we will see in the next section, knowing and obeying God’s word can greatly reduce the influence that sin has on one’s life and reduce the amount of sin one commits.
“4You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed.”
This verse I find interesting because it debunks the idea that God does not interact with the world and humanity. There are those who believe that God is inert and does not in any way affect to interact with the world or human affairs; despite undisputable Biblical evidence to debunk this claim, this verse states, “You [God] have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed.” However, the question is, “How can God lay down precepts, i.e., laws, for humans to obey if He never interacted with humanity?” The answer is very simple, “If God does not interact with humanity then He could not lay down laws for us to follow.” If this were true then verse 4 would be false; however, if verse 4 is false then that means that the Psalmist falsely believes that God laid down laws for humanity to obey. How could one respond to this accusation?
One could appeal to an argument made by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2:12-16:
12All who sin apart from the law will perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13For it is those who bear law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (14Indeed, when Gentiles[2], who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) 16This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
The salient verses are 14 and 15; here Paul is arguing that all human beings have an innate sense of God’s law, i.e., what He requires of us, “built into” how we are. It is through this innate gift that we can distinguish between right and wrong even though we may know exactly why a particular action is right or wrong. In other words, God gave to every human being a moral conscience to guide our actions, in which case, this means that God has interacted with humanity being (at least in our very design) giving us this innate sense of His law and thus the Psalmist is justified to argue that God has laid down precepts (again, laws) that we are to obey. Unfortunately I think this justification is weak based upon this current argument because it could be objected that God gave us a moral conscience whenever He created humanity, but after that never interacted with humanity again; therefore, the Psalmist’s claim that God has laid down precepts for humanity to follow is not literally true but is only true to a certain extent, that is, to the extent that God gave humans a moral conscience but not to the extent that God has literally given humanity a written law to follow. I think this is the more difficult argument to counter one which I will return to later on.
“5Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! 6Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands.”
Verse 5 is a kind of cry of desperation because the Psalmist is crying out to God for they know that their ways are not always steadfast and he desires that they were steadfast. This verse is essential because in it the Psalmist admits their guilt of sin; they recognize that they have not always been steadfast in following God’s decrees. There are many in this world that do not recognize or just will not recognize that they do and have sinned in their lifetime. And even if they do recognize that they have sinned and have sin in their life they do not view that as a major problem. We live in a world that is numb to sin and individuals think that sin, while bad, is not a major problem.
There are those, particularly the existential philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, who deny the existence of sin and argue that humans never do anything wrong; humans always choose what is right and good. Sin is an illusion according to some. However, all evil is caused by some form of sin. Sin is the cause of evil and everyone must come to grips with their own sin just as the Psalmist does in verse 5.
However, in order for sin to known, there must be something which tells us what sin is, and how sin is committed and we get the answer in verse 6. We know what sin is by examining the laws/commandments God has called upon us to follow. Anything contrary to God’s commandments or how God would have us do is considered to be sin. Sin is part of the human condition; no ordinary human is without sin. Whenever we fully understand how we have completely failed to meet God’s standards we often times feel ashamed because we feel like we have been rebuked and/or scolded by God. Feeling ashamed for our sins, once brought to light via God’s Word, we feel remorseful, even sorrowful, for our sins, and this is what the Apostle Paul called Godly sorrow which leads to repentance (2nd Corinthians 7:14).
As Martin Luther argues in his book Commentary on Galatians, in congruence with the arguments made by Paul in the book of Galatians, the Law is designed to designate sin. Without the Law there would be no sin for there would be no ethical or moral codes to break. This will be a theme which returns later so I will discuss it as we move through the chapter.
“7I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws.”
It may seem difficult to see the connection between praising God “…with an upright heart” and learning God’s law; the connection is based upon the fact that in order for an individual to have an upright heart they must know God’s requirements in order to have an upright heart and that is only obtained via learning God’s Word. Having an upright heart is based upon the condition that we know God’s requirements in order to be upright, i.e., righteous, and in order for us to be righteous we need to know God’s “righteous laws”.
Now we should not come to the conclusion that simply knowing God Word makes one righteous; that is not the case, but nor is it the case that simply doing what God’s Word says make one righteous either. During Jesus’ times, the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law obeyed (or at least attempted to obey) every single law in the Judaism and yet Jesus declared them unrighteous. While God does require obedience, i.e., performing actions that are in accordance with His Word, we are not made righteous by our actions. A common thread throughout the Paul’s letters in the New Testament is that an individual is not saved by “works of the law”, and what this means is that while actions which are in accordance God’s Word are good, such works cannot earn someone a place in Heaven nor can they win God’s favor. Actions alone do not save an individual; while Godly actions are the consequence of knowing God’s Word, we cannot earn righteousness. God grants us righteousness via His love for us; it is a free gift to those who want to receive it and in context of Christianity, the free gift is accepting Jesus Christ as a personal Lord and Savior.
“8I will obey your decrees; do not utterly forsake me.”
I want to focus on the latter half of the verse; this is a common theme within the chapter where the Psalmist asks God not to forsake them. However, in what way would God forsake the Psalmist since God does not forsake those who love Him? In actuality, God does not forsake us but most of the time we are the ones who forsake Him. Even in the book of Job, when we see all of the horrific things Job had to endure, God had not forsaken Job. What Job shows us that even in times when we think God has forsaken us the fact is that He has not, it just appears that He has.
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