Psalms 119

Cry for understanding according to the word. Arminian readers hear earnest plea for light promised in Scripture—progress in the law above secondary wants.

Shared priority: understanding that approaches God outranks earthly advantage. Ask according to the word’s promise.

Calvin: repeats that his chief desire, regarding all else secondary, was progress in the divine law. Cry denotes earnestness—chiefly inflamed that the light of understanding by which we excel beasts and approach God may be preferred to earthly advantages. According to thy word: prefers fulfillment of the promise to endue with understanding (parallel to deliver according to thy word in v. 170). God liberally promises blessings; enlightening by his Spirit unto true wisdom ranks among the chief promises. Taught: nothing more desired than God’s guiding light; this is the peculiar gift of the Holy Spirit—vain to ask what he had naturally or might attain by painstaking; the promise invites the faithful to offer themselves to be enlightened—guide of the blind, teacher of little ones and the humble.

Cry for Spirit-given understanding according to the promise. Not native wit perfected by effort alone.

Plea for deliverance according to the word. This is promise-shaped rescue—safety asked on what God said.

Shared comfort: God assures help in all dangers. Commend life to his protection when shut up by many deaths.

Calvin: after asking right understanding, implores deliverance—continually involved in multiplied dangers impossible to escape unless God stretch forth his hand. Does not specify particular distress: in general terms he thought how shut up on every side by innumerable deaths. Inestimable comfort: God assures that in all dangers he will be ready to help.

Plea; deliver according to the word. Promise-backed rescue from surrounding deaths.

Praise poured forth because God teaches statutes. Those in Wesley’s line hear fluent thanks as the fruit of being taught—privilege of discipleship.

Shared order: taught first, then bubbling praise. Outward sound is not enough without inward teaching.

Calvin: high privilege to be admitted among God’s disciples and profit in his school—if so privileged, he will hasten to render thanks with fluent tongue. Naba: metaphor from bubbling fountains—not simply speak but pour forth speech copiously. Rejoicing will testify he desires nothing more than to be thoroughly imbued with heavenly truth. Truly wise: first submit to the Word, not follow imaginations; second, God opens understanding and subdues it to obedience. Joins both: when God sets the law before us he also teaches inwardly. Ears stricken with outward sound are not enough unless God illuminate by the Spirit of understanding and correct obduracy by the Spirit of docility. Teachers labor in vain until virtue is given; the truly taught are not led from law and Scriptures by secret revelations like fanatics who trample the Word for foolish fancies.

Lips pour praise when God teaches. Outward word plus inward Spirit; no Word-despising revelations.

Tongue sings of the word because all commandments are right. Wesleyan Arminians hear teaching that overflows to others once truth roots in the heart.

Shared duty: according to measure of faith, communicate what was received for the church’s edification. What God has taught is not meant to be buried.

Calvin: when he has profited in the law he will also teach others. Order: divine truth take root in hearts before we teach; yet every man according to measure of faith ought to communicate what he received, that doctrine for common edification may not be buried. Reason that stirs the godly: by this means righteousness is spread. Honoring commandments as righteousness does not merely approve them but shows that until this rule bears sway the world is sad horrible confusion.

Rooted truth shared; world unordered without this rule.

Hand ready to help because precepts chosen. Arminians hear devoted choice as the plea’s companion—not merit purchase, but sincere preference that still needs God’s hand.

Shared realism: those yielded to the word continually need help. Choosing the law costs a struggle with fleshly impulses.

Calvin: devoted to the law’s doctrine, he requests God’s hand stretched forth for aid. Those who yield to be governed by the word continually need help. The more sincerely one studies to be good, the more Satan troubles and enemies multiply. When God sees those who embraced the truth remaining steadfast, he is so much the more inclined to aid. Choose: nothing hindered him from devoting himself to the law. No one applies this mind to love of the law without great struggle—thoughts drawn away by depraved flesh. Choosing shows it is not ignorance or inconsiderate zeal; partaking flexibility common to men and feeling flesh’s impulses, they purposely subdue minds to God’s obedience.

Hand to help—I have chosen precepts. Steadfast choosers still plead for continual aid.

Arminians hear patient desire comforted by Scripture—delight in the law while waiting for deliverance.

Shared warning: many want safety while fleeing God; true longing aims at God’s salvation and finds consolation in the word.

Calvin: all desire happy circumstances and none avowedly repudiates God’s favor; yet ideas of happiness are so confused that few direct aspirations to God—ambition, avarice, lust imagining prosperity the farther they recede from him. In proportion as each desires to be safe he provokes God by seeking safety elsewhere. Hebrew construction denotes steadfast constancy of desire—had longed, not begun only now. Manner of patiently longing: seeking consolation in all calamities from the word; whoever does not comfort himself by reliance on grace promised in the word will quail at the slightest assault. Kept thoughts close upon the divine word lest turned from hoping for God’s salvation.

Long for salvation; law my delight. Word-anchored longing versus self-made safety.

Wesley: Judgments—Thy word or testimonies, which are the only ground of my hope in thy help.

Arminians hear life asked for praise’s sake—live to thank, helped by the word. Shared end: prolonged life aimed at God’s praise; rules/word as succor.

Calvin: if futures, a rejoicing—when thou hast bestowed life I will show I am not ungrateful; life safe under God’s faithful guardianship though hidden under death’s shadow; assured confidence from quickening grace in the word. Majority take optative: asks life prolonged that he may exercise himself in singing praises. Judgments as commandments giving help is harsh; better—perceiving himself among wolves, he calls God to protect by restraining the wicked by secret providence. Or, as judgments often means commandments in this psalm: attribute to the word the office of giving succor—God does not feed with delusive promises but confirms the word by palpable operation of his hand. Calling the law to help is encomium on the word’s efficacy. Some: uprightness in keeping commandments as defense—he offers no objection.

Live and praise; judgments/word help. Life for praise; worded providence for succor.

Lost-sheep confession with a servant’s plea and memory of the commandments. Wesleyan Arminians hear remaining grace in the very asking: still God’s servant, still not forgetting what he commanded—strayed yet not abandoned to blank forgetfulness, and therefore bold to cry Seek me.

Shared pastoral close: both camps end on the Shepherd seeking the servant. The psalm closes in dependence, not self-rescue.

Calvin: not to be understood as confessing sins—as if drawn into Satan’s trails—an opinion many hold erroneously; that contradicts the second clause denying he had forgotten God’s law. Poor solutions: wandering only before calling, or partly withheld by godly affection—the same time is in both clauses. Connect by although: Although I have wandered like a lost sheep, yet I have not forgotten the law. Meaning: chased by enemies’ force, he moved place to place in fear seeking retreats. David so hunted that exile found no secure place. Similitude fits: driven and hunted, yet never turned aside from the law. Wolves everywhere—he prays God to bring him back and give safety and tranquillity, to cease wandering as a vagabond. Good ground for being heard: though provoked by manifold wrongs he never swerved from the fear of God—referred to the general course of life more than particular acts (even noting adultery’s temporary insensibility does not erase holy patience in adversities).

Lost sheep under the hunt; seek thy servant—Shepherd restores to safety. Memory of the statutes marks fidelity under persecution more than a merit ticket; God must seek and settle the vagabond.