Your Word Is Very Pure
121 I have done what is just and righteous. Don’t leave me to my oppressors. 122 Ensure your servant’s well-being. Don’t let the proud oppress me. 123 My eyes fail looking for your salvation, for your righteous word. 124 Deal with your servant according to your loving kindness. Teach me your statutes. 125 I am your servant. Give me understanding, that I may know your testimonies. 126 It is time to act, Yahweh, for they break your law. 127 Therefore I love your commandments more than gold, yes, more than pure gold. 128 Therefore I consider all of your precepts to be right. I hate every false way. PE 129 Your testimonies are wonderful, therefore my soul keeps them. 130 The entrance of your words gives light. It gives understanding to the simple. 131 I opened my mouth wide and panted, for I longed for your commandments. 132 Turn to me, and have mercy on me, as you always do to those who love your name. 133 Establish my footsteps in your word. Don’t let any iniquity have dominion over me. 134 Redeem me from the oppression of man, so I will observe your precepts. 135 Make your face shine on your servant. Teach me your statutes. 136 Streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don’t observe your law. TZADHE 137 You are righteous, Yahweh. Your judgments are upright. 138 You have commanded your statutes in righteousness. They are fully trustworthy. 139 My zeal wears me out, because my enemies ignore your words. 140 Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them. 141 I am small and despised. I don’t forget your precepts. 142 Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. Your law is truth. 143 Trouble and anguish have taken hold of me. Your commandments are my delight. 144 Your testimonies are righteous forever. Give me understanding, that I may live. QOPH
A man weeping over other people's disregard for the law, and the observation that the door itself gives light.
My eyes fail looking for your salvation, for your righteous word.
The waiting continues, and the psalm keeps reporting the physical cost of it.
It is time to act, Yahweh, for they break your law.
A man telling God that the moment has come. It is the boldest sentence in the psalm and its ground is not his own suffering; the reason given is that the law is being broken by others.
Therefore I love your commandments more than gold, yes, more than pure gold.
The money comparison for the last time, and it has escalated to refined gold. It is placed as a therefore — because the law is being broken everywhere, he values it more, which is the opposite of the usual reaction to watching a rule become unfashionable.
The entrance of your words gives light. It gives understanding to the simple.
One of the finest verses in the psalm. The word rendered entrance means an opening or unfolding — the doorway itself is what illuminates, before anything inside has been examined. And the beneficiary named is the simple: the same inexperienced, easily-deceived person the hundred and sixteenth psalm said God preserves.
What the verse claims is that the text does not require expertise to begin working. Opening it is the qualification.
I opened my mouth wide and panted, for I longed for your commandments.
The image is an animal gasping, and the psalm is not embarrassed by it.
Establish my footsteps in your word. Don’t let any iniquity have dominion over me.
The request is not to be kept from sinning but to be kept from being ruled — the difference between an act and a master, and the psalm asks about the second.
Streams of tears run down my eyes, because they don’t observe your law. TZADHE
The verse that answers a suspicion this psalm invites. A man this attached to a rule might be expected to be pleased when others break it and are caught. What he does instead is weep, and the grief is for them.
I am small and despised. I don’t forget your precepts.
The writer's own estimate of his standing, given in three words and set against the enormous claims of the previous stanza. Both are his.
Trouble and anguish have taken hold of me. Your commandments are my delight.
The two halves of the psalm's whole situation, in one verse, joined by nothing at all.
settled What this mark means