1. How I love your law! All the day it is my meditation. 2. Your commandment will make me wiser than my enemies, For it is mine forever. 3. I have more insight than my teachers, For your testimonies are my meditation. 4. I will understand more than the elders, For your precepts I keep. 5. From every path of evil I restrain my feet, That I may observe your word. 6. From your judgments I do not depart, For you teach me. 7. How sweet to my palate is your saying, More than honey to my mouth! 8. From your precepts I get understanding; Because of this I hate every path of falsehood.
The theme of these eight verses is in verse 104: From your precepts I get understanding. That word “get understanding,” which appears also in verse 4, is one of three synonyms for wisdom that this stanza of the psalm uses. The others are “make wise” (v.2) and “have insight” (v.3). True wisdom is that knowledge of God and his ways that we derive from his word.
The psalmist develops that theme in verses 2–4, where he claims a wisdom greater even than the elders. These verses neatly exemplify the way that the Scriptures sometimes use parallel parallelisms (each of the three verses states essentially the same thing) to take us deeper into a subject. There are two progressions here. The first is from enemies to teachers to elders. The second is from having to meditating to keeping.
The psalmist’s enemies were those who did not keep God’s law. They opposed him because of his righteousness and hated the God whom he represented. Their knowledge and their way were folly. It was not difficult for him to be wiser than they. He needed only to possess the commandment, to know it with his mind and to have it written on his heart.
But from his enemies he turns to his teachers. His teachers were those who taught him the law from his youth, who instilled the knowledge of it in his mind and chastened him faithfully to bring that knowledge home to him. They were wise. Nevertheless, their student has excelled them. He has gained more insight than they. And he has done this through meditation on the Lord’s testimonies. In fact, he loved the law so much that he made it his meditation all the day (v.1). He devoted his life with all constancy to the law, and thus progressed beyond what his teachers had been able to give him.
From his enemies he turns to the elders. The word “elders” can mean simply those who are older or those who have, through age and wisdom, achieved the status of wise men or counsellors among their people. They not only knew the law but had had extensive experience in practicing it. They knew the breadth of its applications, the intricacies of its ways and the difficulties of a godly walk. They could warn about snares and the weakness of the flesh. They were in a position to teach the youth and to guide him on the path of life. But the psalmist claims more wisdom even than they, for he himself has kept it with all diligence and made it sweeter to him than honey.
The second progression, therefore, is from having to meditating to keeping. The psalmist was wiser than his enemies because he had the law, wiser than his teachers because he had built on their teaching by meditation, and wiser than the elders because he not only understood but kept the precepts.
These three things come to us always in that order. Before we can meditate, we must have – the law must be in our minds and hearts. Then we can begin to study and to think about its beauties. And before we can keep, we must meditate. Because we are inclined to dullness of hearing, hardness of heart and departures from the way, we need constant reminders, daily meditation, to stir ourselves up to remember and obey.
We must begin with a passionate delight in the commandments; How I love your law! Then we will be moved to have, to meditate and to keep.