119:15 I will meditate on 1 your precepts
and focus 2 on your behavior. 3
119:23 Though rulers plot and slander me, 4
your servant meditates on your statutes.
119:48 I will lift my hands to 5 your commands,
which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.
1 tn The cohortative verbal forms in this verse express the psalmist’s resolve.
2 tn Heb “gaze [at].”
3 tn Heb “ways” (referring figuratively to God’s behavior here).
4 tn Heb “though rulers sit, about me they talk together.” (For another example of the Niphal of דָּבַר (davar) used with a suffixed form of the preposition ב, see Ezek 33:30.)
5 tn Lifting the hands is often associated with prayer (Pss 28:2; 63:4; Lam 2:19). (1) Because praying to God’s law borders on the extreme, some prefer to emend the text to “I lift up my hands to you,” eliminating “your commands, which I love” as dittographic. In this view these words were accidentally repeated from the previous verse. (2) However, it is possible that the psalmist closely associates the law with God himself because he views the law as the expression of the divine will. (3) Another option is that “lifting the hands” does not refer to prayer here, but to the psalmist’s desire to receive and appropriate the law. (4) Still others understand this to be an action praising God’s commands (so NCV; cf. TEV, CEV, NLT).