Psalm 119:77

(This is an entry from a devotional commentary I am working on from Psalm 119 entitled ‘God and His Word’.  The introduction can be found here, successive entries have covered the 22 sections of the Psalm, and following entries verse by verse.)

 

"May Your compassion come to me that I may live,

For Your law is my delight."

 

My very life depends on this.  I am reminded of Psalm 119:58 and my great need for Your favor, for Your grace.  ‘For Your law is my delight.’  The Psalmist understood the connection between delight and life.  Life to the full comes in the delight of Your law, and with that delight comes an understanding of dependence upon You.  ‘Compassion’ is the Hebrew רַחַם, raḥam, a noun with the sense of womb, compassion, mercy, affection.   With this compassion certainly there is safety and security.  In Psalm 119:92, the Psalmist indicates that this delight is what sustained His life.  Surely we live not on bread alone, but on Your word (Deuteronomy 8:3, Job 23:12, Matthew 4:4).  Like a child in the womb, certainly we are at our most safest and secure in You.  May I always live with this sense of dependent delight!

 

‘He was so hard pressed that he was at death's door if God did not succour [satisfy] him…Yet no true child of God can live without the tender mercy of the Lord; it is death to him to be under God's displeasure…Then we do not merely exist, but live; we are lively, full of life, vivacious, and vigorous. We know not what life is till we know God….To delight in the word when it rebukes us, is proof that we are profiting under it.’[1]


[1] Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, Treasury of David, on Psalm 119:77, e-Sword edition


 

 

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