Psalm 119:129-136 Commentary

Psalm 119 is something of a poetic wonder in the Jewish-Christian Scriptures.  As everyone knows, it’s the longest “chapter” in the entire Bible and by a lot at that.  Luke 1 wins the prize for longest chapter in the New Testament, clocking in at 80 verses.  Psalm 119 looks at that and says, “Tell you what: I’ll more than double that!” and so goes on and on until you hit verse 176.

This psalm is also an acrostic.  But whereas other acrostics in the psalms have each verse start with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet, Psalm 119 does a bit of literary one-upmanship on that by having whole sections of 8 verses each start with the same Hebrew letter before then moving on to another set of 8 verses each line of which starts with the next letter in the alphabet.  Verses 129-136 have us at the Hebrew letter Pe.  Probably like all acrostics writing poems and songs this way was an aid to memorization—an important feature since across most of human history until Gutenberg got his idea for a printing press nobody had written materials ready to hand.  You memorized something or you didn’t but for sure you could not double check something in your personal copy of the Bible.

Another remarkable thing about Psalm 119 is that for all its length, the entire psalm is basically about just one thing: a head-over-heels enthusiastic (and the author no doubt hoped for also a contagious) adoring love for God’s Law.  Every synonym for “law” is used over and over across these 176 verses: law, commandment, statute, decree, precept, and word.  The poet here cannot get enough of God’s law in all its manifestations.  In the law he finds life.  In God’s decrees he finds delight.  In God’s precepts he finds flourishing.  In God’s statutes he finds beauty.  In God’s commandments he finds God’s enthusiasm that we prosper in this creation, whose boundaries God himself lovingly set up and the psalmist celebrates the God who via his Law lovingly informs us about those boundaries to keep us safe and well.

It’s not a common view people often take about laws.  A lot of the time rules make people chafe.  Who decided this stretch of road needed a Speed Limit of 35MPH?  Should be more.  “No Trespassing.”  Why does that almost make you want to trespass?  The flight attendant tells you to return to your seat because the bathroom you were just going to try to use is for First Class passengers only.  And we roll our eyes.  (Worse, during check-in at the airport gate First Class and Golden Medallion members walk onto the plane on the red strip of carpeting but everyone else needs to stay on the blue carpeting.  Really?)  The sign on the buffet tells you that for your first trip, you may only take 2 slices of pizza.  And now you want 3.  You didn’t before but now you do.

In short, getting excited about rules and laws is not the average person’s default setting.  We seem to think that having freedom involves having far fewer and not far more rules and commands.  “Don’t Tread on Me” the yellow flags with the nasty-looking serpent proclaim and you just know that the “treading” refers to are things like tax laws, environmental regulations, gun restrictions, and what all not.

Of course it’s true that some laws are more arbitrary than others.  A given stretch of road could as easily have a 35MPH Speed Limit as a 40MPH one.  A landowner could or could not designate his property a “No Hunting” zone.  Some laws are malleable and maybe those are the ones we despise more.  As other psalm sermon commentaries here on the CEP website have noted, Frederick Buechner said there is one kind of law you can violate perhaps with impunity—go ahead and drive 80MPH in the 60MPH zone and if you don’t run across a state trooper, you’ll get away with it.  But if you step off a cliff face to demonstrate your dislike for the law of gravity . . .  well, vastly different outcome.  No cop will need to issue you a ticket for gravity violation.  The physical laws of the universe will take care of that.

Mostly God’s laws are of the second kind of course.  True, we don’t always realize this.  Maybe God could allow exceptions for some kinds of adultery, couldn’t he?  The New Testament rails against things like gossip and greed but really, in moderation, how bad can either one be?  But probably if only we could see with clearer spiritual vision, we’d recognize that God’s ways and statutes and such really are rooted in the reality of this Creation (like gravity) in ways that God alone sees with a clarity we lack.

The writer of Psalm 119, however, seems to be approaching God’s way of seeing the world and the commandments that govern it.  The final verse in our lection (vs. 136) expresses heartbreak that God’s law is not obeyed.  Maybe the writer means not obeyed by other people but probably he means equally when the writer messes up on his own obedience.  We could all wish for such a moral sensibility.  True, many times when we make a mistake borne of willful disobedience we do feel bad, especially when that disobedience ends up hurting someone we love or even our own selves.  But we don’t always feel as badly as we should.

We certainly rarely assume the posture seen in Psalm 119:131 when the psalmist claims that his mouth is open like a baby bird waiting for a worm, eager for God to deposit not a worm but God’s laws.  Of all the things any one of us might like to receive from God at any given moment, more laws is not often one of them!

But perhaps it should be.  Because the New Testament proclaims that Christ is “the end of the law” and by that it does not mean the conclusion of the law’s importance but rather that Christ Jesus is the fulfillment, the telos, of the Law.  Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount made it plain he had not come to abolish the Law but to deepen our understanding of it and to complete its every jot and tittle.  Because Jesus embodies God’s shalom, but you don’t get to shalom without letting Jesus deposit into you a celebration of life before God and life in God’s Creation for how things are meant to be.  Neal Plantinga wrote a well-known book on sin years back titled Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be.  But God’s law as fulfilled in Christ is the way it’s supposed to be and that wonderful Gospel fact ought to be more than enough to help all of us generate as least as much moral wattage of enthusiasm for God’s ways as we see reflected throughout Psalm 119.

“Make your face shine on your servant and teach me your decrees” verse 135 says.  Not a bad wish for any of us.

Illustration Idea

We may not always revel in rules and regulations and laws the way the writer of the 119^th psalm did.  As noted above, we may even chafe at some rules that strike us as arbitrary or unfair.  On the other hand, however, we have an innate enough sense of the importance of laws and boundaries in life that when we encounter someone—someone we know personally or perhaps a famous person or a politician or leader—who essentially says, “The rules don’t apply to me,” we get irked.  We get more irked if and when we do see such a person break the rules and then get away with it.  Perhaps repeatedly.  We may even sometimes think, “If I did just once what this person routinely does, I’d lose my job in a heartbeat.”  People who defy all rules and boundaries make us a little crazy.

Take it as a sign that deep down where the image of God resides in us, we may be wired to respect and love God’s laws and decrees and the very notion that we need such commandments after all.