PSALM 119 REVISITED

One can state that there are three basic components of the human personality: intellect, emotion, and will. In general, believers turn to the Psalms for their emotional content. Thus, whatever one's mood, there will be a psalm that speaks to it, whether it is joy, despair, or anger. But Psalm 119 appears to me to be a more “intellectual” psalm, if one can speak about such a thing. Therefore, here is an attempt to show some of the intricacies behind its composition and why it is important in the whole organization of the Psalter.

Since a surface reading of this long and somewhat rambling chapter in Psalms seems to go nowhere, an explanation of the literary form of this massive psalm is the first aspect that warrants discussion. The reason why there appears to be no logic behind this psalm is that it is composed as an alphabetic acrostic comprising 22 separate psalms, each one containing eight verses. The order of these 22 psalms is based on the order of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with the first group of eight verses each beginning with the first letter of the alphabet, each of the next eight with the second letter of the alphabet, etc., right down to the last letter. This highly restricted structure does not easily lend itself to a logical progression of ideas, and that is why the whole composition may appear to be disjointed.

This is not the only place where similar acrostics appear in the Old Testament. Other examples are Psalms 9-10, 25, 34, 37, 111-112, 145; Lamentations 1-4; and Proverbs 31:10-31. The acrostic form may be utilized in these cases for various reasons, but in Psalm 119 it probably indicates that the Psalmist is covering the subject of God's law literally from A to Z. There may also be the implication that there was so much that could have been said that it was necessary to limit the treatment to only 22 psalms.

As an added restriction the Psalmist placed on himself, almost every verse in the whole psalm contains one of eight Hebrew words denoting God's word. They are generally translated by words such as law, decree, ordinance, statute, word, commandment, precept, and promise. Speaking of restrictions, we may have such a restricted and negative view of the word “law” (torah) that it is hard for us to get into the mindset of an author who would spend so much time and effort praising it. To get over that hurdle, we only have to look at the many synonyms for “law” just listed to see what the author was really talking about. We shouldn't try to pick apart these various nuances as they appear in the psalm or spend any time trying to figure out why a particular Hebrew word was used in each instance rather than another. It is fairly obvious that the author considered them all as synonyms for the same thing, and we can only comprehend the scope of what that entails by looking at all its aspects.

In my post “Psalms: Introduction to the Literary Structure,” I defended an overall symmetrical organization for the book based mainly on the superscriptions beginning many of the psalms:

Figure 1: Structure of the Book of Psalms

    Book I (Psalms 1-41)

        Book II (Psalms 42-72)

            Book III (Psalms 73-89)

        Book IV (Psalms 90-105)

Book V (Psalms 106-150)

From this diagram, you can see that Psalm 119 is located in the last of the five major books of the Psalter. And within that book, it actually constitutes the all-important center section:

Figure 2: Structure of Book V

A. Bridge (Ps. 107)

B. Psalms of David (Ps. 108-110)

            C. Hallelujah (Ps. 111-117)

A'. Bridge (Ps. 118)

B'. The Torah (Ps. 119)

C'. Song of Ascents (Ps. 120-134)

A''. Bridge (Ps. 135-137)

B''. Psalms of David (Ps. 138-145)

C''. Hallelujah (Ps. 146-150)

Just as the center of Book 5 is Psalm 119, so the “Torah psalms” 19 and 25 are at the center of Book 1. That is one piece of evidence showing the parallel nature of Books I and V (see Figure 1). The above scheme works whichever of the center psalms one chooses for Book I. Psalms 25 and 119 are both acrostic poems with the shared theme of God's instruction. Of the eleven usages of the phrase “teach me” in the Psalter, ten occur in these two psalms.

On the other hand, psalms 19 and 119 both praise God's word or law. In fact, Psalm 19:7-9 (which would be at home anywhere in Ps. 119) contains five of the eight synonyms listed above. Only three chapters – Psalms 1, 19 and 119 – have been categorized as Torah psalms, and all can be seen to occupy structurally significant positions. In addition, the first and last words of Psalm 1 foreshadow the first and last words of Ps. 119 (58), and Ps. 19:10 and 119:103 both describe the word of God as being sweeter than honey.

The central psalm of the arrangement of five central psalms in Fig. 1 is Ps. 86. At first consideration, one would have expected the central psalm to be located closer to Psalm 75 instead. But keep in mind that Psalm 119 is in reality 22 different psalms, giving a total of 171 psalms in the Psalter, not 150. By that count, you can see that Ps. 86 is thus located in the exact center of the book.

There is yet one more intellectual puzzle that the Psalmist has built into his massive composition. At the same time that he was finding appropriate words of the correct starting letter to use for each eight-verse unit, he also picked some words that formed puns with the name of that particular Hebrew letter. And in addition, (although here I may be reading much too much into the data) there are occasions where he (or she) included not a close pun for the name of the letter, but a synonym for that pun. Below are listed some of the examples I was able to discern although you can see that I was not successful in all case. If you wish, you can try your hand at discovering any word-plays with the sections I gave up on.

ALEPH             'al (“not”) in v. 8

                         alaph (“learn”) // lamad (“learn”) in v. 7

BETH               mib-bayith (“within me”) // “in my heart” in v. 11

GIMEL            gamal (“deal bountifully”) in v. 17

DALETH         dalaph (“melt”) in v. 28

HE                    he (“behold”) // hinneh (“behold”) in v. 40

VAU                 va (“and”) – 6x in vv. 41-48

ZAIN               zeh (“this”) in v. 50

CHETH           chabereth (“companion”) in v. 63

                        chetheph (“robbery”) // ud (“to rob”) in v. 61

TETH              tephal (“forged”) in v. 69

YOD                yad (“hand”) in v. 73

                        yada (“know”) in vv. 75, 79

KAPH

LAMED         The Hebrew root lmd means “to learn, teach,” so perhaps the Psalmist felt no further need to make a pun on that key word in this section.

MEM              mamtaq (“sweet”) // malats (“sweet”) in v. 103

NUN               nuwn (“perpetuity”) // tamiyd (“continually”) in v. 109

SAMECH       samach (“uphold”) in v. 116

AIN                ayin (“eyes”) in v. 123

PE                  pethiy (“simple”) in v. 130

TZADDI        tzedeq (“righteous”) in vv. 137-8, 142, 144

QOPH

RESH            rasha (“wicked”) in v. 155

SCHIN          chinnam (“cause”) in v. 161

TAU              taah (“astray”) in v. 176

All of the above goes toward demonstrating the kind of extreme care taken in the composition of the Bible, even those sections that appear at first reading to be haphazardly arranged.