(This is an entry from a devotional commentary I am workingon from Psalm 119 entitled ‘God and His Word’. Theintroduction can be found here, successive entries have covered the 22sections of the Psalm, and following entries verse by verse.)

 

"May Your compassion come to me that I may live,

For Your law is my delight."

 

Myvery life depends on this.  I am remindedof Psalm 119:58 and my great need for Your favor, for Your grace.  ‘For Your law is mydelight.’  The Psalmist understoodthe connection between delight and life. Life to the full comes in the delight of Your law, and with that delightcomes an understanding of dependence upon You. ‘Compassion’ is the Hebrew רַחַם,raḥam, a noun with the sense of womb, compassion, mercy, affection.   Withthis compassion certainly there is safety and security.  In Psalm 119:92, the Psalmist indicates that thisdelight is what sustained His life. Surely we live not on bread alone, but on Your word (Deuteronomy 8:3,Job 23:12, Matthew 4:4).  Like a child inthe womb, certainly we are at our most safest and secure in You.  May I always live with this sense ofdependent delight!

 

‘Hewas so hard pressed that he was at death's door if God did not succour [satisfy]him…Yet no true child of God can live without the tender mercy of the Lord; itis death to him to be under God's displeasure…Then we do not merely exist, butlive; we are lively, full of life, vivacious, and vigorous. We know not whatlife is till we know God….To delight in the word when it rebukes us, is proofthat we are profiting under it.’

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, Treasury of David, on Psalm 119:77, e-Swordedition

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