Biblion Bible Commentary
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It Is Good That I Was Afflicted
Psalms 119:49-72
49 Remember your word to your servant, because you gave me hope. · WEB
The psalm reaches its most useful verse, and it is a man saying that going wrong is what taught him.
Remember your word to your servant, because you gave me hope Psalms 119:49.
This is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has revived me Psalms 119:50.
Affliction is named for the first time as a present condition, and the psalm will now return to it repeatedly. What is claimed is not that the trouble ended but that something kept him alive inside it.
Your statutes have been my songs in the house where I live Psalms 119:54.
The phrase means the house of my sojourning — a lodging rather than a home, which fits the earlier I am a stranger on the earth. He has set the law to music to get through a temporary residence.
At midnight I will rise to give thanks to you Psalms 119:62.
One of several night verses. In this psalm the small hours are used for gratitude rather than for the dread they carry elsewhere in the collection.
Before I was afflicted, I went astray; but now I observe your word Psalms 119:67.
The first of the two verses that make this stanza the most quoted in the psalm. He locates the turning point precisely, and it is not a sermon or a decision. It was trouble, and the honesty of the sequence — I was fine, I wandered, I was afflicted, I stopped wandering — is what makes it usable.
You are good, and do good. Teach me your statutes Psalms 119:68.
Said immediately after the previous verse, and about the same God who did the afflicting.
It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes Psalms 119:71.
The verse most people know, and its force depends on where it stands. It is not a general theory that suffering is beneficial, offered by someone comfortable. It is a man in the middle of trouble, being lied about by the powerful Psalms 119:69, saying that the one thing he has to show for it is that he learned something he was not learning before.
The psalm never says the affliction was pleasant, and it never withdraws the requests to be delivered from it. Both stand.
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of pieces of gold and silver Psalms 119:72.
The money comparison again, and the sum has grown. In the first stanza it was riches in general; here it is a specific and enormous quantity, and the psalm keeps raising the bid.
settled What this mark means