Psalms 119:135

Make thy face to shine upon thy servant; and teach me thy statutes. MAKE THY FACE TO SHINE UPON THY SERVANT. Prayer for the return of God's full favour to His people Israel (; ; )....

135._Make thy face to shine upon thy servant. _There is here the repetition of a prayer which we have several times met with before in this Psalm. The Prophet intimates, that he regarded nothing as of more importance than rightly to understand the divine law. When he beseeches God _to make his face to shine upon his servant, _he, in the first place, seeks to win the fatherly favor of God — for nothing is to be hoped for from Him unless we have an interest in his favor — but he at the same time, shows the greatness of the blessing. There is no testimony of the love of God, as if he had said, which I am more desirous to obtain than to be enabled to make progress in his law. Whence we gather, as I have lately observed, that he preferred divine truth to all the possessions of the world. Would to God that this affection were vigorous in our hearts! But that which the Prophet extols so highly,...

89-96 The settling of God's word in heaven, is opposed to the changes and revolutions of the earth. And the engagements of God's covenant are established more firmly than the earth itself. All the creatures answer the ends of their creation: shall man, who alone is endued with reason, be the only unprofitable burden of the earth? We may make the Bible a pleasant companion at any time. But the word, without the grace of God, would not quicken us. See the best help for bad memories, namely, good affections; and though the exact words be lost, if the meaning remain, that is well. I am thine, not my own, not the world's; save me from sin, save me from ruin. The Lord will keep the man in peace, whose mind is stayed on him. It is poor perfection which one sees and end of. Such are all things in this world, which pass for perfections. The glory of man is but as the flower of the grass. The psa...

Verse Psalms 119:135. _MAKE THY FACE TO SHINE_] Give me a sense of thy approbation. Let me know, by the testimony of thy Spirit in my conscience, that thou art reconciled to me. The godly in all ages derived their happiness from a consciousness of the Divine favour. The witness of God's spirit in the souls of believers was an essential principle in religion from the foundation of the world....

MAKE THY FACE TO SHINE UPON THY SERVANT - Hebrew, “Let thy face give light to thy servant.” See the notes at Psalms 4:6. AND TEACH ME THY STATUTES - See the notes at Psalms 119:12....

EXPOSITION This is an "alphabetic psalm" of a more stringent character than any other. It consists of twenty-two stanzas, each of eight verses, every verse in each stanza beginning with its own proper letter—those of stanza 1 with _aleph_,_ _the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; those of stanza 2 with _both_,_ _the second letter; and so on. The writer, having thus fettered himself, moves with some difficulty, but still has produced what has been justly called "a sweetly monotonous meditation" (Cheyne). He takes the Law for his one and only subject, and, further, seems to have bound himself, almost absolutely, to introduce the word "Law," or something which he regards as a synonym of "Law," into every verse. The synonyms are nine in number— 1. TORAH, "the Law"_ _itself; but not merely the Law given on Mount Sinai; rather, God's law in the widest sense, all whereby he

MAKE THY FACE TO SHINE UPON THY SERVANT,.... That is, lift up the light of thy countenance on me; favour me with thy gracious presence, and communion with thyself; manifest thyself unto me, and shed abroad thy love in my heart; cause the sun of righteousness to arise upon me, and commune with me, from above thy mercy seat; restore to me the joys of thy salvation, and let me have the comforts of thy good Spirit: this prayer is a part of the blessing of the high priest, Numbers 6:25; AND TEACH ME THY STATUTES; the more communion a man has with God, the more desirous he is of learning and doing his will. This is a frequent petition; see Psalms 119:124....

Psalms 119:129. _Thy testimonies are wonderful: therefore doth my soul keep them._ Every true believer admires God's Word; and, more than that, it amazes him: «Thy testimonies are wonderful.» View them from any point you may select, they are wonderful, wonderful in themselves, wonderful in their operation, wonderful in the way in which they endure all kinds of testing, and yet remain the same: «Thy testimonies are wonderful.» This wonder, however, in the true believer leads to godly practice, to holy living: «Therefore doth my soul keep them.» Our soul must be like a golden gasket in which we store the priceless jewels of the Word of the Lord. You cannot rightly keep God's Word anywhere but in your soul; to keep it merely in the memory, or in the intellect, is of no avail. Ps

Psalms 119 The Law Written on Their Hearts and the Praise of the Word This is the longest and most perfect Psalm in the whole collection. It is an alphabetical acrostic. It is composed of 22 sections, each having eight verses, 176 verses in all. Each section begins with a different letter of the alphabet and each verse of the different sections begins also with the corresponding letter of the section. Eight times each letter of the alphabet is mentioned in the 22 sections. The number eight in the Word has the meaning of resurrection, death is gone and life has come. Israel has passed from death to life and now extols the Word and the Law of God. The time has come when it is fulfilled what the Lord spoke through Jeremiah concerning the new covenant, “I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts.” We behold then in this Psalm the joy of Israel in knowing the Word

CXIX. PRAISE OF THE LAW. This is the longest and most artificial Ps. in the whole collection. It is divided into twenty-two strophes, each beginning with one of the twenty-two letters of the Heb. alphabet in regular order. Again each strophe contains eight verses, and each verse begins with the same letter which introduces the strophe. The number of strophes then is determined by the number of the Heb. letters. But what of the eight verses in each strophe? The Psalmist had derived from a kindred Ps., viz. Psalms 19, the eight synonyms for the conception Word of God and impresses these terms on his readers by introducing them all into each stanza of his work. So Cheyne, in his _Book of Psalms_ (1904), following D. H. Mü ller. It is right, however, to bear in mind that this theory involves considerable, though by no means extravagant or arbitrary, changes in the received text both of Psalm...