Psalm 119

This morning I read from Spurgeon's book upon the Psalms. Here are some thoughts I gleaned about "the longest Psalm," Psalm 119.

Many superficial readers have imagined that it harps upon one string and abounds in pious repetitions and redundancies; but this arises from the shallowness of the reader's own mind: those who have studied this Divine hymn and carefully noted each line of it are amazed at the variety and profundity of the thought. The more one studies it, the fresher it becomes. It contains no idle word.

Oh, the depths! Yet these depths are hidden beneath an apparent simplicity, as Augustine has well and wisely said, and this makes the exposition all the more difficult.

Sprugeon records a Matthew Henry quote from the biography about his father, Once, pressing the study of the Scriptures, he advised us to take a verse of this Psalm every morning to meditate upon, and so go over the Psalm twice in the year; and that, saith he, will bring you to be in love with all the rest of the Scriptures. He often said, "All grace grows as love to the Word of God grows."

One more quote which lends practical help I appreciated from my study this morning was one Sprugeon shared from J. D. Murphy. The name Jehovah occurs twenty-two times in the Psalm. Its theme is the Word of God, which it mentions under one of the ten terms: law, way, testimony, precept, statute, commandments, judgment, word, saying, truth, in every verse except verse one twenty-two.

May the Lord bless us with His grace as we study as part of His Word which exhorts us to study His Word!