Themes from the Psalm of Psalms

(Loving the God of Psalm 119)

Stanza Twenty-two

TAU: Relying on God to hear my prayer, give understanding, be my helper, and seek me when I stray.

169 Let my cry come before You, O Lord; / Give me understanding according to Your word.

170 Let my supplication come before You; / Deliver me according to Your word.

171 My lips shall utter praise, / For You teach me Your statutes.

172 My tongue shall speak of Your word, / For all Your commandments are righteousness.

173 Let Your hand become my help, / For I have chosen Your precepts.

174 I long for Your salvation, O Lord, / And Your law is my delight.

175 Let my soul live, and it shall praise You; / And let Your judgments help me.

176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; / Seek Your servant, / For I do not forget Your commandments.

In many ways, King David is a perfect picture of a faithful Old Testament saint, a man who looked forward in a secure hope for the ultimate salvation of the Lord his God. And this closing prayer of his greatest of Psalms displays that hope and David’s humble dependence on Yahweh. He depends on God to “hear” him, “give [him] understanding,” be his “help,’’ and “seek” him when he strays.

It is interesting that the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph and Tau (“tav”) combine to form the word ET. It’s a word that is not directly translatable into English, but is used in Hebrew to show which word is the direct object of a sentence. In a sense, it makes the other words in the sentence understandable. It makes the words around it make sense!

Often in the Bible, God Himself is referred to as the “First and the Last,” or the “Alpha and Omega.” Paul speaks of God being glorious because “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” John speaks of Christ as the Word, or in Greek, the “Logos,” who was with God, and equal to God, “in the beginning.” And that nothing was made apart from Him. Like that Hebrew word “ET,” nothing in our universe makes sense without the eternal Son of God—the Beginning and the End.

This twenty-second stanza of Psalm 119, all the verses beginning with TAU, summarizes the various themes of the entire 176-verse psalm of praise for the Word of Yahweh. The stanza is a highly personal prayer, mentioning God and his word eighteen times! There are eight requests or supplications here, as well as several expressions of praise, delight, confession and resolution. There is a spirit of humility here, calling on the Lord to teach him, deliver him, revive him, and retrieve him!

The first two verses echo one another: “Let my cry come before You, O Lord; / Give me understanding according to Your word. Let my supplication come before You; / Deliver me according to Your word.” The psalmist humbly asks that his petitions might enter the presence, and the ears, of his great God.

This humble tone emphasizes the majesty and holiness of God’s character and His person. He is perfectly holy, but you and I are sinful and polluted, having no business entering God’s presence by our own qualifications. On what possible basis could we think our cries and our supplications might be heard by this great King of the universe? Only on the basis of the spoken and written word of God Himself! Only “according to Your word,” David writes, can he cry out for understanding, or ask for deliverance. His prayer is a PLEA. Not a DEMAND. We can only hope for the Lord to hear and answer us if it PLEASES Him to do so.

How often do we brazenly and unthinkingly charge into the Lord’s presence in prayer, not even mindful of how awesome and holy He is, or how lowly, weak and sinful we are? Yes, the Bible tells us that God loves His children dearly and is eager to hear their prayers like a Father does. But even the Lord Jesus spoke to the Heavenly Father with respect and reverence, saying, “If it please You, Father, take this cup from Me,” and “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.” 

“According to Your word.” Those words also remind us that God’s willingness to grant our requests is always limited to what He has decreed and what He has promised. The Apostle James warns his readers that it is possible to “ask amiss,” that is, to pray with wrong motives. God does delight to grant His children’s valid requests, given in Jesus’ name. But praying with selfish or foolish motives, to spend what God gives on our own desires, is to ask in an unworthy manner, not in accordance to God’s will.

David asks Yahweh for “understanding” and for deliverance. These are two things the Lord delights to give. Solomon was given what amounted to a “blank check” when God told him in a dream, “Ask what I shall give you” (1 Kings 3). The young king asked for wisdom and understanding so that he would be a good leader for God’s people Israel. This request pleased the Lord so much that He not only gave Solomon what he asked for, but gave him wealth and victory and peace besides in great measure! He also allowed King Solomon to erect a great temple for the name of Yahweh in Jerusalem.

Verses 171 and 172 also parallel each other: “My lips shall utter praise, / For You teach me Your statutes. My tongue shall speak of Your word, / For all Your commandments are righteousness.” When the Lord graciously hears our prayers, or answers our requests, it is surely appropriate that our mouths will utter words of praise and thanksgiving. That such a wonderful, powerful King would listen to us and respond to creatures as small and unimportant as we are, is a fantastic privilege and a matter for great joy and celebration!

David is uttering praise to Yahweh…why? Because he’s been instructed in the King’s rules and His righteous commandments. King David wants above all to be a righteous king over God’s people. God’s own commands and decrees are to be on the king’s tongue continually, not just his own fallible human ideals and notions. God’s words are not merely righteous; they are righteousness ITSELF! The words from God’s mouth are the words we are called to live by ourselves, and to proclaim to all around us. Especially to those who are looking to us for truth and guidance.

The episode in David’s life that is certainly the most famous is his face-off against the giant, Goliath of Gath, the Philistine champion who challenged the armies of Israel to “choose a man that we may fight together!” When the young David volunteered before King Saul to answer that challenge, the king tried to dissuade him (1 Samuel 17): “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a youth, and he has been a warrior from his youth.” 

David’s bravehearted answer: “Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.” And we all know the end of that story. Perhaps that “rescue” the hand of the Lord provided was still on David’s mind when he penned the next two verses of Psalm 119:

“Let Your hand become my help, / For I have chosen Your precepts. I long for Your salvation, O Lord, / And Your law is my delight.” Little David’s answer to the threats and boasts of big Goliath revealed the source of his confidence at that time, and throughout his entire military career: “All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” Truly, anybody who has “chosen [God’s] precepts” and made His law their delight can depend on the Lord’s “hand” to “become [their] help” in their time of need!

The word translated “salvation” is from the Hebrew word “yeshua”…the very name the angel Gabriel spoke to Joseph when he announced that his wife would be the mother of the Christ child. “She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” Being saved from enemies like the Philistines was not the ultimate “yeshua” David was longing for. He was well aware of the promises Yahweh had given his people: promises of a “Seed of the woman” who would someday “crush [the serpent’s] head” and bring an everlasting peace between God and man.

“Let my soul live, and it shall praise You; / And let Your judgments help me.” Clearly, King David was looking beyond this life when he reached the close of his Psalm of Psalms. He, along with other prophetic writers in the Old Testament, trusted that death of our physical bodies is not the end of life. He had a solid faith that our souls survive the grave and will face an ultimate, final judgment in the presence of our Creator. Even though he saw the coming Messiah of Israel with a lesser clarity than we do today, David trusted in the “tender mercies” of Yahweh that would not count his sins against him and “let [his] soul live” so that he would go on praising the Lord forever!

“And let Your judgments help me,” he writes. The perfect, truthful judgments of God cannot overlook our sin; they are righteous, fair and just pronouncements that can’t be overturned. And when Yeshua/ Jesus hung on a Roman cross 2,000 years ago, bearing the sins of all His people, God the Father judged His Son with perfect justice, unleashing the hellish punishment each of us deserved. Like the prairie farmers of old who would burn out an area of land when the brushfire was approaching, you and I can safely stand inside that burned out area beneath the cross of Jesus, where God’s fiery justice fell with holy fury. For a God of perfect justice will never punish our sins twice. Jesus paid it all!

Never forgetting the lowliness of his own past, King David brings Psalm 119 to an end with a verse of three lines, hearkening back to his life as a keeper of sheep for his father Jesse:

“I have gone astray like a lost sheep; / Seek Your servant, / For I do not forget Your commandments.”

You and I should not live in the past, but neither ought we ever forget where and what we were saved from. Even as redeemed people who trust in Jesus Christ, David would remind us that we are still likely to stray into paths of sin unless we are careful to follow our Good Shepherd. 

Let us always keep in mind that “there is no one who seeks after God” (Romans 3:10). It is God Himself who does the seeking. He not only gives us His commandments…He is always IN command. Isaiah admits that “we all, like sheep, have gone astray,” and are likely to stray again. And it is the Lord’s pleasure to watch over, pray for, and rescue His own children when they fail to trust Him. We can be assured that He will always seek His own and bring them safely home, because “the Lord has laid on Him (Jesus the Lamb of God) the iniquities of us all.”

As believers in Jesus our faithful Good Shepherd, we are called to follow David’s example and be resolved never to “forget [God’s] commandments.” As we remain in His fold, growing in His grace, going where He leads us, hearing and believing His word, we trust Him never to leave or forsake us.

Amen