Commentary - Psalm 119:33-40

Bird's-eye view

In this fifth stanza of the great psalm, corresponding to the Hebrew letter He, the psalmist offers a series of eight petitions that form a comprehensive prayer for sanctification. This is not a man pulling himself up by his bootstraps. This is a man who knows that every step of the Christian life, from initial understanding to final perseverance, is a work of sheer grace. He asks God to teach, to cause him to understand, to make him walk, to incline his heart, to turn his eyes, to establish His word, to remove his reproach, and to revive him. This is a prayer of radical dependence, a model for every believer who has discovered that the desire to obey and the power to obey are two different things, and that God must graciously provide both.

Outline

Context In Psalm 119

This section, verses 33 through 40, is the fifth of twenty two stanzas that make up this majestic acrostic poem. Each of the eight verses in this stanza begins with the Hebrew letter He. The psalmist continues his relentless theme: a deep, abiding, and desperate love for the law of God. But here, the emphasis shifts powerfully to the believer's utter reliance upon God to make that love effective. He understands that the law is not a ladder to climb up to God, but rather a path that God Himself must cause us to walk down. This stanza is a profound acknowledgment that the Christian life is not one of mere human effort, but of divine enablement at every point.

Key Issues

A Prayer for Divine Enablement

Psalm 119:33

Instruct me, O Yahweh, in the way of Your statutes, That I may observe it to the end.

The prayer begins with a request for education, but not just any education. The psalmist wants God for his tutor. He is not asking for a manual, but for the author of the manual to come and teach him personally. The subject is "the way of Your statutes." This is crucial. God's law is not a disconnected list of rules; it is a path, a road, a way of life. It has a direction and a destination. And the goal of this instruction is not simply to pass a test, but to "observe it to the end." This is a prayer for the grace of final perseverance. He knows that starting well is common, but only God's constant instruction can keep a man on the path for the entire course of his life. Without God teaching us every day, we will wander off before the sun is high.

Psalm 119:34

Cause me to understand, that I may observe Your law And keep it with all my heart.

Instruction must be followed by understanding. It is one thing to hear the words; it is another for them to sink in. This is a prayer for the work of the Holy Spirit, who illuminates the Scriptures for us. The psalmist is asking God to connect the dots in his mind so that he sees the wisdom, goodness, and beauty of the law. And notice the purpose again: "that I may observe Your law." But he goes deeper. He wants to "keep it with all my heart." This is the great battleground. God is not interested in the grudging, external obedience of a Pharisee. He wants the heart. He wants our affections, our will, our deepest desires to be wrapped up in His law. This is a prayer against hypocrisy, a plea for integrity of soul.

Psalm 119:35

Cause me to walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it.

Here the prayer moves from the mind and heart to the feet. "Cause me to walk." This is not "help me to walk" or "encourage me to walk." This is a petition for divine propulsion. The psalmist knows his own spiritual paralysis. He is like the lame man at the gate Beautiful; he needs a divine power to make him get up and walk. And the basis for this bold request is remarkable: "For I delight in it." This is the cry of a regenerate man. His new nature, given by God, loves the path of God's commandments. But his remaining sin, his flesh, makes his legs wobbly and treacherous. So he prays, "Lord, my heart is already there because you placed this delight in me. Now, make my feet follow my heart."

Psalm 119:36

Cause my heart to incline to Your testimonies And not to dishonest gain.

The heart has a natural tilt, a bias. Left to itself, the fallen human heart inclines downward, toward selfishness and sin. The psalmist asks God to perform spiritual chiropractic, to adjust the inclination of his soul. He wants God to bend his heart toward Scripture, toward the "testimonies" of God. And he immediately names the chief competitor: "dishonest gain." Covetousness. The love of money and the things money can buy is a powerful spiritual gravity, always pulling the heart away from God. The psalmist knows you cannot serve God and Mammon. He is asking God to rig the contest, to fix the fight, to so incline his heart toward the Word that the allure of worldly gain loses its power.

Psalm 119:37

Cause my eyes to turn away from looking at worthlessness, And revive me in Your ways.

From the heart, the prayer moves to the gateway of the heart, the eyes. What we look at shapes what we love. The psalmist prays for "custody of the eyes." He asks God to be his divine censor, to forcibly turn his gaze away from "worthlessness." The Hebrew word here is vanity, emptiness. It is anything that promises satisfaction but delivers nothing: lust, envy, trivialities, the fleeting fashions of the world. It is the spiritual equivalent of junk food. And the alternative to this vanity is not a gray, boring existence, but revival. "Revive me in Your ways." Looking at vanity leads to spiritual deadness. Walking in God's ways leads to life, vibrancy, and spiritual energy. He is asking God to trade the narcotic of vanity for the adrenaline of true life.

Psalm 119:38

Cause Your word to be established for Your slave, As that which produces fear for You.

He asks that God's Word, His promise, would be "established" or confirmed for him. He wants to experience the reality and reliability of God's promises in his own life. He identifies himself as God's "slave," His bondservant, one who is wholly owned by his master. And the result of this established word is not arrogance or a casual attitude. The result is "fear for You." A true grasp of God's grace and promises does not lead to presumption. It leads to a holy, reverential, and creaturely awe. The man who knows himself to be the recipient of such covenantal promises is a man who walks softly before his God.

Psalm 119:39

Cause my reproach which I dread to pass away, For Your judgments are good.

What is the "reproach" that he dreads? It is the shame that comes from his own sin. When a believer stumbles, he not only displeases God, he brings dishonor upon the name of God and shame upon himself. This is what the psalmist dreads. He is asking God to keep him from sinning so that he might be spared this reproach. And the reason he feels this way is that "Your judgments are good." He loves God's standards. He believes they are right and beautiful. Therefore, to violate them is a shameful tragedy. He hates his sin because he loves God's law.

Psalm 119:40

Behold, I long for Your precepts; Revive me in Your righteousness.

He concludes the stanza with a summary declaration and a final plea. "Behold, I long for Your precepts." He wants the reader, and God, to know that this entire prayer flows from a deep, settled desire for God's Word. This is the mark of a true child of God. And his final cry is for life. "Revive me in Your righteousness." He knows that spiritual life, true vitality, is found in God's righteousness. This is not a righteousness he can generate himself. It is God's own character, God's own righteous way of dealing with the world, and the righteousness that God provides for His people in the gospel. He is asking to be made alive by a righteousness that is outside of himself, which is the very heart of our salvation.

Application

This prayer is a divine diagnostic of the healthy Christian soul. It teaches us how we ought to pray for our own sanctification. We are to pray with a profound sense of our own inability and a profound confidence in God's ability. We must ask God to take control of every part of us: our minds, our hearts, our wills, our feet, and our eyes. We must recognize that the Christian life is a supernatural affair from beginning to end.

We should also learn to see the law of God as our delight. If we see it as a burden, we will never pray like this. But when the Spirit opens our eyes to see that God's commands are the very path of life and peace, we will begin to long for them. And we will cry out to God, just as the psalmist did, to do for us what we cannot possibly do for ourselves: to make us holy, to His everlasting glory.