O how love I thy law!
It is my meditation all the day (Psa 119.97).
The human heart was made to love, for it was fashioned in the image of God who is love and who has loved from eternity. Since the fall, our problem is not that love is completely absent but that we have our hearts set upon the wrong things, or upon the right things in the wrong way or degree. We love to yield to a hot temper when it arises within us; venting feels so good, at least for the moment, but this is completely evil. An example of a good and legitimate love is love of family, but even this is twisted if it becomes our supreme love.
But there is one thing in this world you cannot love too much. The excellence of all other things pale in comparison. The greater your affection for this, the healthier your soul. Loving this object in the proper way, even in the extreme, is eminently virtuous. The best people in the world are completely obsessed with it; while all God counts as evil either have no knowledge of it, or inwardly loathe it. The psalmist testified of this love burning in his heart.
A bibliophile is one who loves books, but godly bibliophiles know that there is one book which ranks above all others. Indeed it is in a class by itself—the “Bible” (the word itself means “book”). This book does not even need a title; say “The Bible” and everyone knows which book you have in mind. By grace the psalmist had come to the point where he could testify of great love to the great Book. His was a supreme Bibliophilia.
MY PASSIONATE AFFECTION
This verse begins with nothing less than an emotional outburst. “O how love I thy law!” The first word is an exclamation by itself, a powerful expression of feeling that is so strong words cannot do it justice, so this sound naturally came to be associated with intensity. If we were to ask one just come down from its peak, “Is Mount Everest a high mountain?,” his reply might begin with a long, extended, “O . . .”, and even if for a moment he said nothing else, we know immediately that he is not only answering in the affirmative, but stressing the incredible height of this celebrated summit.
The feeling is further intensified by the rest of the first line’s exclamatory form. “How love I thy law!” Our English translation correctly conveys the sense with an exclamation point. “How” is not exactly comparable to the poet’s famous question, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”1 Rather, he is tersely affirming that he loves it in an exalted degree. It is as if he said, “O, I love thy law so much—and how!”
The religious skeptic finds such a love quite perverse, for in his judgment the Bible is nothing more than a human book, and in some places a very flawed book at that. His ignorance and prejudice robs him of appropriate appreciation of the Bible.
The psalmist confesses the great reason for his love for Scripture. He recognizes it as the law of and from his beloved God. David says to the Lord, it is “thy law.”
A young woman treasures the love letters of her fiancé because he wrote them, but the connection between God and Scripture is even closer. By the time a love letter arrives, it only expresses the past thoughts of its author, what was on his mind the day he wrote it. If he is far away, for all she knows, he may have lost interest in her, or he may have died. In contrast, the Bible is a living Word from God, not only what he said in the past, but what he says as we hear it, for every time it is opened, God is speaking in the very words of Scripture by his Spirit. A closer romantic analogy would be a phone call from her beloved—an even greater assurance of his love.
Now it is apparent that unless one finds delight in God himself, there will be no delight in his Word, and that these delights always go together. Theological liberals have long accused ardent evangelicals with bibliolatry, the idolatrous worship of Scripture, but we should not in the least be intimidated by this slander. The Word is the necessary instrument by which we approach and know God himself. Professor E. Y. Mullins, an early Southern Baptist, explained it well:
The telescope is interposed between the eye and the heavenly body. The astronomer is not accused of worshiping the telescope or advised to pursue the science of astronomy without its aid. The telescope tells him what he could never discover without it. He relies upon it as an “authority,” and carries forward the discoveries of science. Thus it appears that the objector to an authoritative Bible is on the wrong scent altogether. He is unconvinced by arguments for an infallible or inerrant Bible, or he is unwilling to accept the decree of the early councils which may be supposed to have fixed the canon of Scripture. From these premises he proceeds to the attempt to convict the others of bibliolatry. But he has missed the point entirely. He has torn the Bible away from its true context in its own spiritual order and judged it thus.2
My friend, if you are not a genuine Christian, not a grain of this love can be found in your heart. Even a believer, only in his better frame of mind, can fully and heartily symphathize with the psalmist’s passionate love for Scripture.
MY PERSISTENT ATTENTION
The psalmist’s love for the sacred oracles unremittingly enticed him to them. They were his “meditation all the day.” The original is not the usual word for meditation; it is found only here, in verse 99, and in Job 15.4, there translated “prayer.” Alternative renderings include “study” and “reverently ponder.” It means “devotional thought, i.e., the act of giving considerable thought about a person or subject, with a focus on responding properly to the information” (emphasis mine, DBLBSD #8491). This correlates well to the particular word chosen for Scripture in the first line, “law” (Heb. torah), which here probably has the particular sense of “teaching, instruction” (DBLBSD #9368.2). It is a word connected to action.
When the new thing you just purchased comes with instructions, you do not expect to begin reading an abstract philosophy or a beautiful poem, but tangible directions about how to put together or use or maintain the item on the table. David writes as one steeped in the Hebrew concept of knowledge, not the Greek. The Hebrew approach started with the knowledge of God. It had as its goal to know God as the first requirement of true wisdom. The purpose of this was for learning to revere God in heart and conduct, and to be in complete submission to all his requirements, since they were authoritative, reasonable, and righteous. In contrast, since the Greek approach to knowledge lacked a verbal revelation, it started with man and his own thoughts. It aimed to elevate man’s higher nature through knowledge, and this with the goal of comprehending life, and finally, knowing oneself.
Because David’s ultimate aim was to know God more intimately and serve God better for his glory, it is no surprise that he loved nothing as much as God’s Word, all-sufficient for that divine purpose.
Luther complained of prevalent apathy in his day concerning the Bible and its teaching, and this problem is still with us. Many there are who say they believe the Bible, and almost as many might say they love it, but how few there are who can honestly claim to study and meditate on it daily, and fewer still dig into the Word with a deliberate intention to have their souls transformed and their lives reformed so that both are in more strict conformity to God’s revealed will!
Will not this make us blush? Have we no shame for our distance in spirit and practice from the praiseworthy example of this Old Testament saint? Who among us can honestly sit here and affirm that we do so love the Word of God that we meditate on it constantly for greater obedience? As Calvin said,
Where is the love and desire in us that David here mentions? Now when we shall realize such a vice is within us, we should immediately seek to amend it, and beg God to drive this coldness from our hearts, and that it would please him to enflame us so that we might learn to prefer his word above all our fleshly desires: so that we will escape the fascination of all this world’s vain follies, and that we may give attention to the main thing (paraphrase, Sermons on Psalm 119).
Supreme Bibliophilia is an exotic flower, planted by the Holy Spirit, rarely found and exceedingly delicate, requiring the dew of heaven and constant maintenance. If we really have a passionate affection for God’s Word, then we will give it our constant attention. To the degree we neglect Scripture altogether, or tolerate merely formal contact with it instead of submissive study, our coldness to God and his Word is exposed.
That one who thinks he is close to God while far from his Word is deluding himself. The fiancée who knows the one to marry her is calling on the phone while she deliberately ignores the ringing should come to realize how little she loves him. In the Bible, God is calling to commune with you and instruct you in the way you should go. Will you go away and entertain distractions? By the grace of Christ you can come to crave his voice so much that hardly an hour will hardly go by, much less a day, without the pleasure of meditation on Scripture. May it be so. Amen.
Notes:
1. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1881).
2. “Freedom and Authority in Religion,” p. 352.
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