Seven times a day do I praise thee
Because of thy righteous judgments (Psa 119.164).

The Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650 alters the wording of our text only slightly for singing, and with beautiful effect:

Sev’n times a-day it is my care
to give due praise to thee;
Because of all thy judgments, Lord,
which righteous ever be.

As everyone raised upon the Shorter Catechism knows, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” (#1). Toward the fulfillment of this, the very purpose for our existence, the Lord has given us Holy Scripture, indispensable for our spiritual recovery. Our original fitness and inclination to worship the Lord as creatures in his image was horribly degraded by the fall, but the gospel of Jesus Christ, that biblical evangel, becomes a word of quickening and renewal to God’s elect when it pleases him to recreate his sacred host for eternal service. And when we have been saved by means of God’s Word, we come to appreciate, being illumined by the Spirit of light, that the Bible is one of his greatest gifts to us, besides being the sphere where his glory shines brightest.
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Righteous art thou, O LORD,
And upright are thy judgments (Psa 119.137).

This verse begins the next eight-verse section of Psalm 119, the one beginning with the 18th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Tzaddi or Tsadhe.

To worship God is to relate properly to him—that is, to be, say, and do that which is according to his nature and his revealed will. Here the psalmist worships in the presence of God by rehearsing his inherent excellence. As the psalms were all intended to be sung by the holy congregation, the human writer is leading them to worship God using the very same words. No exaggeration of God’s glory is possible since it is infinite. The most exalted language is never too high in describing God.
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