I have more understanding than all my teachers; for thy testimonies are my meditation.
Psalm 119 gives God's word many names — law, testimonies, precepts, statutes. Here the writer says he has outgrown his own teachers, and the reason is not talent or schooling but steady thought on what God has said.
Each name for Scripture in this psalm carries its own force. This verse uses the word "testimonies".
The term translated 'law' is the Hebrew word Torah, which also means 'teaching' — it is what God has taught and we therefore need to learn. 'Judgments' are decisions God has made. The term translated 'statutes' comes from the word for engraving, which implies that these words cannot be changed. 'Precepts' are laid on us with authority, and 'commandments' call for obedience. To me the term 'testimonies' shows that God's word is a testimony or witness to God.
The claim sounds arrogant until you see who these teachers are and which wisdom is meant.
The Psalmist speaks of ordinary teachers, not spiritual gifts. If he says he is wiser than his own teachers, he means spiritual wisdom, for there is another kind of wisdom. James describes the difference: "This wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic… But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere" (James 3:15, 17). This wisdom from above does not come from our own intellect. It is a gift from heaven.
"Meditation" here is not emptying the mind. The word has a plain meaning, and it comes with a condition.
The word means "to talk to yourself" about the subject filling your mind. As these passages show, David did this in the presence of the Lord… The lesson is that meditation, if it is to be of value and blessing, must be done in the presence of God — depending on Him and on the ministry of His Spirit. Otherwise we would get lost in a maze of human thoughts and speculations.
Study alone will not do it, and neither will a verse caught in passing.
One reason why things have such little hold over our hearts is that we meditate on them so little. If we are ever to make truth our own, we must sit down quietly in private and meditate on it. I am sure God meets His people wonderfully in a passing verse or line of Scripture, but that is not the same as meditation. Study will not make up for meditation. Meditation is what forms the affections of the heart.
The verse is not an attack on teachers. It sets them in order under something higher.
The Word in the heart is above all teaching, however good and right that teaching may be. So by the Word a godly man can gain understanding above all his teachers.
Gift and training do not settle the matter. Someone with no education can outstrip the most gifted teachers, if Scripture does not govern what they say.
Take all the men of special gift — the quickest to take things in, the best fitted to pass on knowledge. If Scripture does not control what they say, then in the end the poor man with no other education, holding only to the Word, may truly and honestly say with the psalmist, "I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation."
Three comparisons stand side by side — foes, friends, elders — and each matches a different way of handling the word.
If the Psalmist had been taught to keep the precepts of the Lord in heart and life, then he knew more than the most respected old sinner had ever learned, more than the ancient philosophers had even hoped to know. He had the Word with him, and so he outstripped his foes. He meditated on it, and so he outran his friends. He practised it, and so he outshone his elders (Spurgeon, The Psalms).
What was true for the psalmist reaches further now that the New Testament is in our hands.
The Psalmist could say, "I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation" (Ps. 119:99). If that was true of him in his day, it will be even more true today for those who make the New Testament Scriptures of Truth their meditation.
Yet few take up that offer in full.
Even among those truly converted by it, how few receive the word of God as whole-heartedly as the psalmist did! It is not too much to say that even for most Christians, the blank pages of their Bibles outnumber the full ones.
- Testimonies. God's word is His own witness to Himself — meditating on it is how understanding grows.
- Carried. He had the word with him, and so outstripped his enemies — step one is keeping it near.
- Meditated. He talked it over with himself in God's presence, and so outran his friends. Step two is quiet, private thought — study will not do it.
- Practised. He obeyed it, and so outshone the aged — step three turns understanding into life.
- Available. You need no education, and no teacher can take the Word's place. The danger is not lack of access but the blank pages in the Bible we already own.
I understand more than the aged, because I have observed thy precepts.
The psalmist makes a bold claim. He understands more than men who have lived far longer than he has. And he gives the reason: not talent, not years, but keeping what God has said.
The verse is not about church officials or spiritual leaders. It points to men whose standing came from having lived a long time. Older translations call them "the ancients," and the writers quoted here use that word.
The ancients in this verse are men of long experience. We must not think these ancients are the same as the elders of the New Testament. An ancient in Israel was simply a wise old man with long experience. An elder in the New Testament is a brother in Christ who has the Holy Spirit living in him. Of course, an older brother today may be less wise spiritually than a younger one. But the older brother does have more experience. Wisdom in the sense of spiritual understanding, joined with a spiritual walk, is not always tied to age or long experience.
Age teaches a great deal. But it can teach only what one mind gathers in one lifetime. Set that beside God's word and the comparison collapses. Note the small word "for": it names the terms on which God gives His knowledge.
So with the "elders," the men of long experience. Their knowledge is far too limited to stand for a moment beside the knowledge that comes from the word of God. It is limited in how long it lasts, in how far it reaches, and in what one mind can hold. But notice all through how the psalm insists on a practical requirement as the condition on which God gives all such knowledge: "I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts."
Verses 98–100 set three comparisons side by side: enemies, teachers, the aged. Each one turns on the place God's word holds in the heart. Good human teaching still has its place. The word simply out-ranks it.
The Word in the heart is above all teaching, however good and right that teaching may be in its place. So by the Word the godly man can gain understanding beyond all his teachers. And the Word, when loved and obeyed, will give more understanding than all the human experience of the aged.
Scripture opens to the person who submits to it. What comes back is more than insight. It is a pull toward one path and away from every other, and a heart trained to tell good from evil.
Nothing teaches like the word of God, when we seek it out and search it in holy submission, and receive it like a new-born baby. In this way we gain understanding — divine wisdom — for our mind and our path. So it gives more wisdom than human experience does, 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. It learns to discern good and evil. This is not just obedience to a law. It is moral discernment grown up in the heart and will.
Each comparison has its own action. The third is the sharpest: the psalmist does not just study the precepts, he lives them.
If the psalmist had been taught to keep the precepts of the Lord in heart and life, then this was more than the oldest and most respected sinner had ever learned. It was more than the ancient philosophers had even hoped to know. He had the Word with him, and so he outstripped his enemies. He thought deeply on it, and so he outran his friends. He put it into practice, and so he outshone his elders. (Spurgeon, The Psalms)
Four young captives proved the claim in real life. They trained in the king's college in Babylon, and then the king examined them himself.
They were all brought before the king, and Nebuchadnezzar himself examined the students of his college. Among them all, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, so they stood before the king. "In all matters of wisdom and understanding that the king asked them about, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers in his whole kingdom" (vv. 19, 20). Each of them could have taken up the words of the psalmist: "I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts" (Psalm 119:98-100). May all the young Christians of today take this lesson to heart!
- Aged. Not officeholders. Just old, experienced men who gained their wisdom by living a long time.
- Ceiling. Their wisdom is limited in how long it lasts, how far it reaches, and how much it holds. God's word is not.
- Condition. God gives that knowledge on practical terms. "For I keep your precepts" is the hinge of the verse.
- Submission. Search the word in submission and it gives divine wisdom. Then it becomes a motive that turns the heart from every evil way.
- Proof. Daniel and his three friends were young, but the king found them ten times better than all his experts.