How sweet are thy words unto my taste! more than honey to my mouth!
Psalm 119:103 comes straight after the psalmist tells God, "You have taught me." The verse is not about hard study, but about what the Word tastes like once God Himself has taught you.
One commentator points out that this love is not aimed at what the Word produces.
The godly man expresses his affection for the Word. He loves it not simply for the blessing it brings, or the effects it produces, but for its own sake. That which the psalmist loves is the subject of his meditation all the day.
One writer ties this delight to a discovery: God Himself is speaking in the book.
The Word has power both to attract and to separate. It moves the affections as well as guiding the walk. Here the simple "book" has become the divine "oracle": God has indeed spoken in it. What an inexpressible joy to have heard the voice of God! God speaking — and to me! How it moves the heart! "How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" This attraction brings with it a necessary turning away from the opposite side: "Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way."
Hearing the Word taught and tasting it are two different things. That difference is not something a preacher can supply.
All that those who hand out the Word can do is work knowledge; Christ works grace. They can only give the light of the truth; Christ gives the love of the truth. They can only teach what to believe; Christ teaches how to believe. Christ gives us a taste of the Word. Ministers may set the food of the Word before you and carve it for you. But only Christ can cause you to taste it… It is one thing to hear a truth preached, another thing to taste it. David had got a taste of the Word: "You have taught me… how sweet are Your words to my taste!"
One writer links this taste to what already fills the heart.
To experience the sweetness of honey you have to taste it! "The full soul loathes the honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet" (Prov. 27:7). When our hearts are full with other things, with worldly things, then we have no appetite for the Word. Absorbing the Word makes us pliable in His hands and willing to do His will, which is always good and acceptable and perfect.
Writing on the honey of Proverbs, one commentator sets a limit on how far we can live on what others gather.
Honey pictures the sweet ministry of the Word of God. It is the sharing of what each believer gathers by searching the Scriptures carefully. But we must realise that all human ministry has its limits. We cannot live entirely from what others gather… We must rather get to the Word of God ourselves. Scripture itself will never sicken us, though man's thoughts about it may. The Word stands far above all ministry. It is bread, milk, solid food and water — what we need and what satisfies every day, and nothing can take its place.
The next verse adds, "I hate every false way." One commentator joins the two as one movement.
When you love the Word like this and see its blessed effects, it becomes more precious to the soul than natural things, however sweet. The one who knows the sweetness of the Word gains understanding to tell good from evil. He also learns to refuse the evil, and so says, "I hate every false way."
Another writer points to what these words do when days are at their darkest.
Let us taste how precious these rays of God's eternal purpose are. Let their sweetness refresh our spiritual palate! "How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103). These words are full of heavenly peace and love and purity. They delight, encourage and strengthen the heart in the darkest days.
- Taught → tasted. The sweetness follows "You have taught me." When the book becomes God's own voice to you, it moves the heart.
- Tasted → given. Others can set the food before you and carve it; only Christ causes you to taste it.
- Tasted → hungry. A full soul loathes the honeycomb. Hearts stuffed with the world have no appetite for the Word.
- Tasted → firsthand. Another's ministry is honey that someone else gathered. Scripture itself never sickens you, so go to it yourself.
- Tasted → hating. The one who knows this sweetness discerns good from evil and refuses it: "I hate every false way."
From thy precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false path.
This verse closes a run of lines in Psalm 119 about loving God's law and finding it sweeter than honey. Now the psalmist draws his conclusion: what he learns from God's precepts turns him against everything false.
The psalm ties understanding to obedience, not to study alone. One writer shows how the word shapes the person who submits to it. What grows is deeper than rule-keeping:
Nothing teaches like the word of God, sought out and searched in holy subjection, and received as a new-born babe. We have understanding — divine wisdom — for our mind and our path. So it gives more wisdom than human experience, when we keep God's precepts. It becomes a positive motive; we prefer it to every evil way. We leave them all for the one way that is God's, because the heart has learned to delight in it... Through God's precepts the heart itself is formed — learns to discern good and evil. It is not merely obedience to a law, but moral discernment grown up in the heart and will.
Verse 102 says, "for you have taught me." That is the ground of the understanding in verse 104. It also explains why this wisdom goes beyond what teachers can give:
Above all, the Word held in affection brings the believer into direct contact with God, "you have taught me"... This is the secret of a wisdom beyond anything you can gain from man, teachers, or human experience. It is a wisdom gained in the presence of God, and held in faith with God.
Verse 103 and verse 104 belong together. The sweetness of the word and the hatred of the false way are two poles of one movement:
Here the simple "book" becomes the divine "oracle": God has indeed spoken in it; what an inexpressible joy to have heard the voice of God! God speaking! and to me! How the heart is moved by it! "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" And this attraction is necessarily a repulsion from the opposite pole: "Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way."
Hamilton Smith puts the same movement in terms of what the taste of the word leads to:
The one who knows the sweetness of the Word has understanding to discern between good and evil. He also learns to refuse the evil, and so says, "I hate every false way."
Calling a way false assumes a standard. The verse leaves only two categories, and one writer warns that we want a third:
It is good at the start of your Christian life to be fully awake to this: the word of God must be the touchstone for everything in your path... It is either a right way because it agrees with the word, or it is a false way to be hated. Man naturally loves to tone things down to keep his conscience quiet. God in creation "separated the light from the darkness," and morally He does so still. Man would blend them together into a kind of dim twilight; but beware of these subtle compromises.
Hatred targets the way, not the person walking it. And age excuses nothing:
We are to hate what the Lord hates — not the persons, but the deeds. The psalmist could say he hated "every false way," "vain thoughts," and "lying" (Ps. 119:104, 113, 163). Everything not according to Holy Scripture is a false way, vain, a lie, and to be hated, even though it may boast of being ancient.
How does a person come to hate what he once loved? One writer answers from the Spirit's work in the believer:
"I hate every false way." This is the result of the daily renewing of our minds by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit uses the Word of God to form our thoughts and to give us a completely new set of values. This leads us to hate the very things we loved when unconverted.
- Precepts — Understanding here is not gathered by study alone. It grows in the person who obeys what he has already learned, until discernment shapes the heart instead of standing over it as a rule.
- Taught — The source is direct contact with God through His word. That is why his wisdom outruns anything teachers or experience can give.
- Sweetness — Verses 103 and 104 are one motion. The same pull that draws the heart to God's word drives it away from the false way.
- Touchstone — Scripture is the measure, so there are only two options: the right way and the false way. The dim twilight in between is our invention, not God's.
- Hatred — The target is the false way, never the person on it. We come to hate what we once loved by the Spirit's daily renewing of our minds, not by a resolution we make.