119:47 I will find delight in your commands,
which I love.
119:48 I will lift my hands to 1 your commands,
which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.
119:72 The law you have revealed is more important to me
than thousands of pieces of gold and silver. 2
מ (Mem)
119:97 O how I love your law!
All day long I meditate on it.
119:103 Your words are sweeter
in my mouth than honey! 3
119:128 For this reason I carefully follow all your precepts. 4
I hate all deceitful actions. 5
119:174 I long for your deliverance, O Lord;
I find delight in your law.
1 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).
2 tn Heb “better to me [is] the law of your mouth than thousands of gold and silver.”
3 tn Heb “How smooth they are to my palate, your word, more than honey to my mouth.” A few medieval Hebrew
4 tn Heb “for this reason all the precepts of everything I regard as right.” The phrase “precepts of everything” is odd. It is preferable to take the kaf (כ) on כֹּל (kol, “everything) with the preceding form as a pronominal suffix, “your precepts,” and the lamed (ל) with the following verb as an emphatic particle. See L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 138.
5 tn Heb “every false path.”