Hear my voice according to thy loving-kindness O Jehovah, quicken me according to thy judgment.
Psalm 119:149 is a two-part cry, and both halves rest on something in God, not on the man praying. He asks God to hear him because God loves, and to give him life because God is just. He prays it early and late, with enemies closing in.
He has been praying hard. Yet his effort is not what he puts forward when he asks God to act.
His whole-hearted diligence is not the ground of his appeal to the Lord; instead, it is the loving-kindness in the heart of the Lord. To this he looks for the reviving strength of life to keep him going, though his enemies draw near with evil in their hearts.
The diligence is real, even if it earns nothing. One writer describes his nights, and what he found pulling the other way.
He is up before the dawn, crying out to God, yet with the hopeful expectancy which the Word had worked in him. Before the night watches he is awake, thinking over God's sayings and testing what he knows. All the while he feels the drag of nature on him. For that he has to turn to Jehovah's loving-kindness for reviving strength, so that he can tell what comes from Him, according to His unfailing judgment.
Older translations render the request "quicken me." The word behind it points to reviving, and the psalmist uses it again and again.
The Hebrew word chayah carries the force of "to revive, or give new life" in a moral sense in the Old Testament; so we read "quicken me again." In Psalm 119 the psalmist asked nine times to be quickened — according to God's word, or His righteousness, or His judgements.
If the psalmist has already said that God's word gave him life, the repeated request looks strange. One writer sets the answer against the fuller truth found in the New Testament.
The Psalmist says that God's Word has quickened him in verse 50, yet again and again he desires to be quickened. The word here carries more the sense of being revived, of being restored to stronger life. In Old Testament times man was still under test. Only when we come to the New Testament is that testing over, and man formally declared dead in trespasses and sins. So only in the New Testament does the full truth of quickening appear.
The second half of the verse names the standard for the renewal asked for. The ESV calls it God's justice; older translations read "your judgment" — God's own mind about what is right.
He looked to God, as we shall, with a true heart and in distress — and he looked according to the kindness of Jehovah. But he wanted God's power to work in him, to quicken him, to give him life according to the mind of God: that is, life whose nature and desires match God's judgment. He is not speaking as a dead man, but of moral quickening.
The verse is a request, but it carries no anxiety. Both halves rest on what God is, and that settles the outcome.
Can there be any doubt that the Lord would hear and answer the voice of his prayers? None at all; for He is a God of loving-kindness, and He would surely revive His troubled servant according to His justice, which is just as much involved as His loving-kindness.
- Cry. The prayer rises from a man surrounded by enemies. He has been awake before dawn and through the night watches, thinking over God's word.
- Ground. His diligence is not what he pleads; the appeal rests on the loving-kindness in God's own heart.
- Gift. "Quicken me" asks for reviving — being restored to stronger life. The psalmist repeats the plea through Psalm 119, even after saying God's word had already given him life.
- Standard. God's judgment sets the measure of the life he asks for. Its nature and desires must match God's own mind about what is right.
- Certainty. Because both halves of the request name what God is — steadfast love and justice — the answer is not in doubt.
They have drawn nigh that follow after mischief they are far from thy law.
Psalm 119 is one long song of a heart that loves God's word, written by someone who is not sheltered while he sings. Here he names the pressure he is under. People are closing in on him, and what marks them out is not their nearness but their distance from God's law. (Older translations say these enemies "follow after mischief"; the ESV has "persecute me with evil purpose.")
Verse 150 falls inside a block of eight verses that begins with a cry and ends with confidence. One summary of this section describes the whole movement in a sentence:
Verses 145-152. These verses give the feelings of the godly remnant of Israel. The Lord's servant cries to Him for an answer to their pleadings, and for His salvation. In the darkness of the night they hope in God's word, and count upon His loving-kindness. If the enemy has drawn near, there is confidence that the Lord is near, and that His word can be relied on at all times.
Another writer gives the same eight verses a single heading, and it puts the enemy and the trust side by side:
Whole-hearted dependence upon the Lord when surrounded by enemies bent on mischief.
One writer explains where this psalm sits, and why that matters:
Psalm 119 is in general the law written in the heart. This gives it an important place among the psalms. It is also clearly tied to Israel's sorrows in the last days, and to their earlier departure from God. Each division of the psalm shows, I think, a different stage of what the heart passes through as the law is written on it.
People are drawing near; God's law is nowhere in them. One writer says that gap shows what their approach really is:
Some drew near who follow after wickedness, but this is only hypocrisy, for in fact they are far from God's law and therefore from God (v. 150).
Their quarrel is not only with a man. It is with what he is busy with. They break in on the very thing the psalm keeps describing — a heart at work over God's word:
He is not allowed to do this undisturbed. The wicked are near, and threatening mischief; enemies in heart and will to that which occupies him. But the Lord too is near, the Rock on which all these waves break in vain.
Earlier in this section the psalmist is awake at night, hoping in God's word. Yet when danger closes in, he does not point to that record as his reason for being heard:
His whole-hearted diligence is not the ground of his appeal to the Lord; it is the loving-kindness in the heart of the Lord. He looks to this for the life-giving energy to sustain him, though his enemies draw near with mischief in their hearts.
The next verse answers this one: they are near, but so is God. One writer ties that to a day at Dothan, where the prophet Elisha and his servant were surrounded by enemy soldiers:
There were two hosts around Dothan that day. The servant saw the Syrians and was dismayed; the prophet saw the heavenly armies and was confident. It was the same with Jacob. When the angels of God met him, as recorded in Genesis 32:1, he called the place Mahanaim — "two hosts." As the psalmist puts it in Psalm 119:150-151, "They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose … (but) you are near." Danger may indeed be close, but God is nearer to us than all our foes. We may well ask ourselves, which host do we see today?
- Near. People are closing in with harm in mind. That is the plain trouble of the verse: they will not let him sit undisturbed over God's word.
- Far. What defines them is their distance from God's law. Drawing near while living far from His law is hypocrisy, and distance from the law means distance from God.
- Ground. His appeal does not rest on his own hard work or his nights spent over God's word. It rests on the loving-kindness in God's heart.
- Nearer. God answers their nearness with a greater nearness. He is the Rock on which all these waves break in vain.
- Sight. Two hosts surround the believer, as at Dothan; the question the verse leaves is which one you are looking at.