The Sum of Your Word Is Truth
145 I have called with my whole heart. Answer me, Yahweh! I will keep your statutes. 146 I have called to you. Save me! I will obey your statutes. 147 I rise before dawn and cry for help. I put my hope in your words. 148 My eyes stay open through the night watches, that I might meditate on your word. 149 Hear my voice according to your loving kindness. Revive me, Yahweh, according to your ordinances. 150 They draw near who follow after wickedness. They are far from your law. 151 You are near, Yahweh. All your commandments are truth. 152 Of old I have known from your testimonies, that you have founded them forever. RESH 153 Consider my affliction, and deliver me, for I don’t forget your law. 154 Plead my cause, and redeem me! Revive me according to your promise. 155 Salvation is far from the wicked, for they don’t seek your statutes. 156 Great are your tender mercies, Yahweh. Revive me according to your ordinances. 157 Many are my persecutors and my adversaries. I haven’t swerved from your testimonies. 158 I look at the faithless with loathing, because they don’t observe your word. 159 Consider how I love your precepts. Revive me, Yahweh, according to your loving kindness. 160 All of your words are truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever. SIN AND SHIN
A man awake before dawn and through the night watches, and the discovery that his pursuers and God are approaching at the same time.
I have called with my whole heart. Answer me, Yahweh! I will keep your statutes.
147 I rise before dawn and cry for help. I put my hope in your words. 148 My eyes stay open through the night watches, that I might meditate on your word.
Two verses covering both ends of the night. He is awake before the light and awake through the watches, and both hours are spent on the same thing. The psalm has mentioned the night repeatedly and always in this way — as time available rather than time endured.
150 They draw near who follow after wickedness. They are far from your law. 151 You are near, Yahweh. All your commandments are truth.
The two verses are set deliberately against each other and they are the psalm's finest structural moment. His pursuers are getting closer. So is God, and the same word is used. What is approaching from one direction is matched by what is already present in the other, and the psalm reports both without deciding which will arrive first.
Of old I have known from your testimonies, that you have founded them forever. RESH
The stability claim again. A man being hunted has one thing in his possession that was established before the pursuit began and will outlast it.
Plead my cause, and redeem me! Revive me according to your promise.
Three requests, and the middle one is the family word — the relative whose duty is to buy back a member of the household who has fallen into slavery or debt.
Great are your tender mercies, Yahweh. Revive me according to your ordinances.
The verb revive returns three times in this stanza, each time paired with a different standard: your promise, your ordinances, your loving kindness Psalms 119:159. The psalm keeps asking for the same thing and keeps changing the ground it asks on.
Many are my persecutors and my adversaries. I haven’t swerved from your testimonies.
All of your words are truth. Every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever. SIN AND SHIN
The first clause is literally the sum of your word is truth — the total, added up. It is a claim about the whole rather than about the parts: individual commands may puzzle a reader, and the psalm's assertion is about what they come to when they are all counted.
settled What this mark means