GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 119:109-112
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109 I constantly take my life in my hands,
but I will not forget your law.
110 The wicked have set a snare for me,
but I do not stray from your precepts.
These two verses look similar, but the trouble in verse 109 comes from the speaker, and the trouble in verse 110 comes from his enemies. In what ways do we take our lives in our hands? While this could be a reference to the life of a soldier or to what we’ve begun calling a first responder (policeman, fireman, and so on), it is also the person who chooses to help people who are seriously ill, or to work with people who have mental or emotional issues that means they could sometimes be in danger because of their daily work.
A challenge with verse 109 is to determine what is meant by nephesh, which I have translated “life.” Someone might take this to be the soul, but usually ruach is the word for a person’s soul in Hebrew, as in Ecclesiastes 12:7, but this can sometimes be nephesh as in Deuteronomy 6:5, “with all your heart and soul,” etc. A person who takes their soul in their own hands is no longer a believer, tossing away their eternal place for something else. And since the second line of verse 109 reminds us of the spiritual state of the speaker, “life” seems to be the better translation.
In verse 110, the wicked have set a snare. This is the only reference to a snare in the Great Psalm. This is most likely the sort of trap that was set for Jesus by the Pharisees and the scribes; a situation where a certain admission or a confession of faith became impossible to avoid. We see this in Mark’s account, when they are looking for a way to accuse Jesus of sin and watch carefully to see whether he will heal a man with a crippled hand on a Sabbath day. The Lord’s response to them: “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do harm? To save life, or to kill?” But they were silent about it (Mark 3:4). They themselves had it in mind to kill him, and he drew their wicked desire to the surface like a spoon scraping the burned char from the bottom of a pan.
Before we look further at these verses, let’s read the next pair:
111 Your testimonies are my heritage forever.
They are the joy of my heart.
112 I incline my heart to perform your statutes
forever, to the end.
Here again, the first lines sound similar: My heritage; the inclination of my heart. God’s desire is that his people would incline our hearts to fear him and to keep his word (Deuteronomy 5:29). But sadly the word “incline” is most often a reference to man’s sinfulness, as when Jonathan told David that “my father is inclined to harm you” (1 Samuel 20:12), and when the Lord describes the inclinations of man’s heart to do sin (Jeremiah 7:24; Genesis 6:5; 8:21). To take the testimonies of God’s word, which here stands for the whole content of the Word of God, is to build upon the one true foundation. For we must even be like the noble Bereans of Greece, who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). Therefore our great theologian Johann Gerhard also says: “The doctrine of all shepherds must be measured against the norm of Scripture, and according to it as a rule and a ‘plumb line’ (Psalm 19:9) one must pass judgment about shepherds (that is, pastors). The ordinary shepherds must be heard, but only if they themselves also hear Christ speaking in the word, if they teach those things that Christ commanded, (and) if they bring forth none other than the true doctrine of Christ (Matthew 28:20; John 10:1; 2 John 1:10)…. They are to be heard only when they bring forth things in harmony with the Scriptures. After all, they do not have a specific privilege of not erring, as the prophets and apostles had. Instead, they, no less than the rest of the faithful, ‘are built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles’ (Ephesians 2:20). If they depart from the purity of prophetic and apostolic doctrine, to that extent they are not to be heard” (Gerhard XXVI/1, On the Ministry §88).
When we take these four verses, the second half of the Nun stanza, and examine their second lines, we find the life of the believer neatly summarized: (1) He does not forget God’s law, (2) he strives not to stray from that law, (3) God’s eternal testimonies are his eternal heritage and joy, and (4) he desires to live (perform) according to God’s word “forever, to the end.” This way of life begins with instruction from parents and Christian teachers, but it continues in the family when we pass along this teaching to our children, by being sure that we send our children to Sunday school or to its equivalent, to confirmation classes, and set an example by attending Bible classes and bringing our older children along with us. If they learn to love the pursuit of the Word of God at a young age, they will not depart from that path so easily later on. They will continue to pursue the word of God on their own, and they will be more likely to ask questions of their parents or pastors if they see their parents doing those very things by way of example.
This stanza of the Great Psalm shows us the way of the Christian life of faith, even when snares and traps are set, intentionally or unintentionally (for that happens, too, when people don’t consider the consequences of their words and actions). We learn, we remember, we live according to the word of God and we submit our lives to the will of God. We look forward to eternal life in heaven, and we live out our lives with our final destination always in mind. As Paul says: “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). And Peter says the same thing when he calls the goal of your faith the salvation of your soul (1 Peter 1:9).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Psalm 119:109-112