2. Psalm 119:9-16

2. This guy really loves the word of God
For the guy who wrote Psalm 119, there is no question about what really cooks his breakfast: it is the word of God. It isn’t just that he likes it: he is fascinated by it.

For one thing, he keeps telling us quite explicitly how he delights in the law of God throughout his Psalm – in verse 16, 24, 35, 47, 70, 77, 92, 143, 174.

But that’s not all – a closer look at this Psalm shows that is a lovingly-constructed love song to the word of God. It’s a long song, too – the longest single chapter in the Bible. But being so long doesn’t mean that the details have been rushed. It is like a carefully-made tapestry, with stitching so fine that you don’t notice it at first. But look more closely and you can see the care and the fine handiwork that has woven the pieces together with expert needlework.

For one thing, the Psalm is an acrostic poem – which is to say that each little section of about eight lines begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in alphabetical order. You can see that from the way it is printed in the pew Bibles. This week we are going to focus on the second of those sections, the ‘B’ section. What’s more – and this is something that would take a very skilled translator to get into English – each verse of each section begins with the corresponding letter. So it sounds a guess a little like those Dr Seuss alphabet books, but not as child-like as that.

But another thing about this poem is that the Psalmist has got eight special words that he plays with all through the Psalm. And they are ‘word’ Words – words that have to do with the word.
So: law, statutes, precepts, decrees, commands, laws, word, and promise.

In each verse at least one of these words appears ¬– so you can see that in today’s section, which is titled ‘Beth’ after Hebrew letter for B, each verse has one of the 'word' words. And what is even more clever – in almost every section, he manages to use all eight of the ‘word’ words. He shuffles through the whole deck of them each time. It’s like a pattern of colours repeating over and over.

It’s a virtuoso performance, in a kind of obsessive compulsive way. But it isn’t just a case of him being a complete smarty pants. There is a tender care for his workmanship here. This guy really, really loves the word of God – he is fascinated by it. And he doesn’t just tell us that – he shows it to us in the way he has constructed his love song to the word. He wants us to slow down and take it in.

I have to admit though, that I have always been a little put off by his enthusiasm. I never really ‘got’ it. What is he seeing that I am not seeing?

I think it is the word English word ‘law’ that has put me off, and probably seems strange to us all. What do you think of when you think of ‘laws’? I think of parking police and school principals and rugby referees. For us, laws are the frames around our lives. They define our limits.

But the word ‘law’ in the Bible has a far richer and more positive meaning. It doesn’t just mean ‘the rules’. It means the whole record of God’s dealings with his people – seeking them out to make them a people. For this writer, he would have especially thought of the time of the Exodus, when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and led them into the Promised Land, even though they were at that time a nation of slaves. Then he took them to Mount Sinai and gave them his law – how they were to respond to him and to live as his people. He called them to obey him because he had saved them. These words are words of grace.