119:16 I find delight 1 in your statutes;
I do not forget your instructions. 2
119:35 Guide me 3 in the path of your commands,
for I delight to walk in it. 4
119:47 I will find delight in your commands,
which I love.
119:48 I will lift my hands to 5 your commands,
which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.
119:70 Their hearts are calloused, 6
but I find delight in your law.
119:71 It was good for me to suffer,
so that I might learn your statutes.
119:72 The law you have revealed is more important to me
than thousands of pieces of gold and silver. 7
מ (Mem)
119:97 O how I love your law!
All day long I meditate on it.
119:143 Distress and hardship confront 8 me,
yet I find delight in your commands.
1 tn The imperfects in this verse emphasize the attitude the psalmist maintains toward God’s law. Another option is to translate with the future tense, “I will find delight…I will not forget.”
2 tn Heb “your word.” Many medieval Hebrew
3 tn Or “make me walk.”
4 tn Heb “for in it I delight.”
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).
6 tn Heb “their heart is insensitive like fat.”
7 tn Heb “better to me [is] the law of your mouth than thousands of gold and silver.”
8 tn Heb “find.”