It was slightly with my tongue in my cheek that I told David I wanted to preach on Psalm 119 – and I have to admit it was at least partly to see Ken’s reaction at the idea that the choir might have to fight their way through all 176 verses of it, and partly to see whether the congregation would see what was on offer and stay away this evening!
But mostly it is because the longest Psalm in the book really is my favourite, and I wanted to use this opportunity to tell you why.
I know that some people find the endless repetition of all those synonyms - word, law, testimony, statutes, commandments, ordinances etc – a bit tiresome; some people are put off by the sheer length of the psalm; others find the emphasis on the law quite alien and difficult to relate to; and still others find the tightness of the structure (regular eight verse sections, each of which corresponds to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet) less engaging than the more obviously passionate and emotive psalms. This is not a cry from the heart in the way that, say, Psalm 22 is, not is it a spontaneous exclamation of praise, like Psalm 150.
So what is it? And how can we listen to it or read it in order to get what it’s about and why it was included in the Bible’s hymnbook.
I remember being very struck by something that C S Lewis wrote in his wonderful commentary on the psalms (if you haven’t read it, do give it a go, it’s well worth reading). He remarks that Psalm 119 should not be read or heard like a pouring out of the heart (though many other psalms are precisely that), but as a pattern – maybe like an embroidery sampler, constructed stitch by stitch for love of the subject and for the delight in leisurely disciplined craftsmanship. People do make samplers with the 10 commandments, or other biblical passages, after all.
The psalmist probably felt about the law the same way that he felt about his poetry: both involve exact and loving conformity to an intricate pattern, and are in their own way, beautiful. Looked at this way, the constant repetition of the law becomes less a Pharisaic lesson in nit-picking, and more a simple and holy delight in order, and in the God behind the order. The order of the Divine Mind, embodied in the Divine Law, is infinitely beautiful. Hence words like delight, and the comparisons with silver and gold and the sweetness of honey. The more your eyes are opened, the more you see, and it excites wonder. This is the language of a poet ravished by a moral beauty.
It’s also worth asking ourselves what the psalm is really about. It’s a hymn, or extended reflection on the Law. We, as modern western Christians, tend to think of law as reductionist and proscriptive. But that’s a very modern outlook, which would have been completely anathema to the writer of this psalm. Of course, we can find examples of very specific laws in the Old Testament, but I don’t think it’s the specifics that the psalmist is really concerned about. It is the totality and enormity of the whole law, the Torah, that is the subject of the psalm.
And the law as it appears in this psalm is anything but reductionist and proscriptive. Every verse is a tribute to the fact that the law is about liberation not constraint – when God is in control though the law that was his gift to his beloved people, they are set free from wrong choices, set free from their own moral weakness and insecurity, set free from the pettiness of things that don’t really matter, to concentrate on the things that do, and on their relationship with God.
The writer is also aware that getting a complete handle on it remains impossible – O that my ways were made so straight that I might keep thy statutes! He says. At present they aren’t and he can’t. He is aware that he is writing about something that remains a mystery – and a mystery by its nature can’t be reductionist!
So the law in the Old Testament was much, much more than what we mean by law. It was everything to God’s chosen people; according to the book of Deuteronomy the Law is what they wrote on their doorposts and on their foreheads; it’s what they taught to their children and to their children’s children.
It’s almost as if the endless repetition and the extraordinary length of the psalm are an embodiment of “the medium is the message” – this is a psalm that demands to be woven into the fabric of our lives.
Indeed, it used to be the case that a chunk of Psalm 119 was used in the daily office lectionary every Monday morning, and in the old Monastic pattern of seven services a day (which incidentally was derived from this very psalm, at verse 164) Psalm 119 was read every day by the monks during their worship.
For God’s people in the Old Testament, the law was everything - but it’s a slippery concept for us to grasp. The nearest I can think of that we might be able to relate to is the New Testament concept of the Kingdom – also a slippery concept, that encompasses all of life with God. The Law was how they had relationship with God. It’s the rule of God in the hearts and lives of his people.
Once we really start to look at what this psalm says about the Law, I think we can begin to find it relates very much to our own way of experiencing God. It may be stretching the point slightly but here goes:
Verse 25: My soul cleaveth to the dust: O quicken thou me, according to thy word.
So the psalm is about life, about being freed from all that is dusty and deathly.
Verses 29-30: Take from me the way of lying: and cause thou me to make much of thy law. I have chosen the way of truth: and thy judgements have I laid before me.
The commandments of God are true: in the Law God’s people can find real, stable, well grounded directions for living.
A thing is not right merely because God commands it, which would make God an arbitrary tyrant, but rather, God commands things that are right – God is good, and so loves the good. Hence the comparison with the mountains and the great deep – God’s truth and righteousness are unassailable, woven into the fabric of the universe. So the psalm is about truth.
Truth and life.
Verse 32: I will run the way of thy commandments: when thou hast set my heart at liberty.
The way of thy commandments. The law is a means of divine guidance, in the face of human confusion and our dangerous tendency to want to do things our own way.
Way, truth and life. Interesting, isn’t it – possibly it’s stretching the point, but not by much I think, and certainly that wonderful phrase from the gospel of John – Jesus as the way the truth and the life - is a fairly good summary of what the law meant to God’s chosen people. A Jewish commentator has written that the psalmist loves God’s law because he loves God. And the God who gave that law, the Torah, as a precious gift to his beloved people also sent us the living Word – if you like the living Torah – in the form of Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and the life. To him be praise and glory for ever.