Here a link to BibleGateway for psalm 119. I'll point out that this is the NRSV, this is what I have used for all of my readings. As you'll see below I did a bit of a word study, so knowing the specific version of the psalm is ever more important to understand my stuff today.
I know I have been noting my study bible footnotes a lot these past few weeks and I kinda feel like I should apologize; but then again, not really because those notes have helped with a number of insights as well. Anyhow, those notes have driven my reading of psalm 119 today as well.
In Hebrew (which is what all of our "Old Testament" scriptures were originally written in) psalm 119 is an "alphabetic acrostic psalm." There are 22, eight line stanzas. Following the Hebrew alphabet, each line of a stanza begins with the same Hebrew letter. In other words, all 8 lines in stanza 1 begin with the first Hebrew letter; all 8 lines in stanza 2 begin with the second Hebrew letter; and so on. Obviously this artistic construction is completely lost when translated into another language, like our English. (Another reason to scratch your head when someone claims that God "wrote" the Bible as they swing around a King James...)
Another important note is that there are 8 different words used for "Law" in this psalm. They are:
Commandment, Statutes, Ordinances, Degrees, Words, Precepts, Promise, and Law. "Most of them are used in each stanza, all of them are used in 4 stanza." Like I said above, I did a sort of brief word study to look into how these different words were used in each stanza to see for myself how often they were used and that sort of thing. This is what that looked like:
Each word had it's own color, I highlighted each instance and was able to look back over them. Except for promise and ordinances the other 6 words were used between 20-26 times each. This also let me look at each verse. There were 4 verses that had 2 different words in them. And only 12 of the 176 verses did not have one of these words in them. This also made me wonder if some of those 12 did have the Hebrew word in them, but the translators chose something different. For example I think a couple of those may have been "ordinances" but I don't know any Hebrew to double check... Part of this is because I only see 2 stanza in the NRSV that have all 8 words, but a few that would have all eight if "ordinances" was substituted for "judgements" or something similar.
Any way, back to the psalm itself:
For clarity and consistency sake, I broke the psalm into 4 parts:
1) vs 1-48 or stanza 1-6
Give me understanding, that I may keep your law - not asking for some miracle, but help me to understand your ways in some small part.
2) vs 49-88 or stanza 7-11
You have made and fashioned me with your hands - I am wonderfully make by God!
3) vs 89-128 or stanza 12-16
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path - having light to see your way in darkness is incredible! not being able to see into the shadows is absolutely horrifying!
4) vs 129-176 or stanza 17-22
Again, so many instances asking for understanding! About 11 throughout the entire psalm.
The word study was fun and something different to try. What did you think reading this psalm?
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