Psalms 119:49

STROPHE 7

PROUD SEDUCERS TORMENT LAW-KEEPERS BUT CANNOT DEPRIVE THEM OF COMFORT AND JOY IN DOING SO

Zayin

"Remember the word unto thy servant,

Because thou hast made me to hope.

This is my comfort in my affliction;

For thy word hath quickened me.

The proud have had me greatly in derision:

Yet have I not swerved from thy law.

I have remembered thine ordinances of old, O Jehovah,

And have comforted myself.

Hot indignation hath taken hold upon me,

Because of the wicked that forsake thy law.

Thy statutes have been my songs

In the house of my pilgrimage.

I have remembered thy name, O Jehovah, in the night,

And have observed thy law.

This I have had,

Because I have kept thy precepts."

The new element in this strophe is the emphasis upon the proud seducers who oppose the psalmist, but have in no way diminished his loving respect for God's law, nor the comfort he receives from obeying it. Also, the mention of his "hot indignation" (Psalms 119:53) against such wickedness is here mentioned for the first time. The double affirmation that he indeed has kept the statutes of the Lord (Psalms 119:55b and Psalms 119:56b) is a recurring theme throughout the whole psalm, as in Psalms 119:15b,22b, and Psalms 119:30b.

"I have remembered thine ordinances of old" (Psalms 119:52). If the psalmist was a young man, as Delitzsch reasoned, he could not have meant here that he had personally remembered God's ordinances for some great length of time. "He is remembering all of the course of God's providential government of the world, including deliverances of God's servants."[24]