Psalm 119

I have been working my way through Psalm 119, attempting to memorize it day by day, a verse at a time. It's fun for me having taken Hebrew, to go through an acrostic psalm. Each paragraph begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet as is usually listed even in our English Bibles. Tonight I came to verse 20, which in my NASB reads,

"My soul is crushed with longing
After Your ordinances at all times."

This verse really struck me and caused me to truly pause and think about the weightiness of what was being said. My soul is crushed with longing... is my soul crushed with longing? And if so, what for? Is it crushed for longing after God's ordinances? And even though it may be at times, is it at all times? Powerful stuff... which made me want to dig a bit deeper.

So I pulled out my Hebrew lexicon, pulled up the verse in Hebrew text online, and started going through it. Here's what I found.

Because of the way that Hebrew is written, the first word in the sentence is the word translated to "crushed" in NASB. The word is literally means "to crush, break, wear oneself down, waste away." The only other time this root word is used in the OT is in reference to someone's teeth being crushed. Wow.

The other thing I found interesting was the word translated "ordinances." This word is also used (and translated in other translations such as KJV) as "judgments." That intrigued me as well. Judgment has such a negative connotation that goes with it. But here, the psalmist longs for God's judgments or ordinances. Our God is just. Even though we have a "justice system" in our culture, it is far from perfect. Our God is perfectly just. Yet, in some way that can only be described as a "holy tension," God is so merciful and grace-full as well. I'm so grateful for Him and His word that speaks truth to our hearts.