Provide for your servant
That I may live and keep your word.
Open my eyes,
That I may take in the wonders of your law.
I am a stranger in the land;
Do not hide from me your commands!
My soul is torn up
with constant longing for your judgments.
You rebuke the proud;
Cursed are those who wander from your commands.
Roll away from disgrace and contempt,
For I have tended your statutes.
Though princes sit and whisper against me,
Your servant will meditate on your stipulations.
Your decrees are my delight,
They are my counselors.
The third stanza of Psalm 119 highlights the alienation that a life according to the word of God brings about. The Psalmists prayer begins, of course, with his renewed desire to grasp God’s word. But he moves to the recognition that this has made him an alien in the land, a weirdo. Yet this can be borne as long as God’s Word is not hidden. He is not unaffected by the disgrace and contempt he suffers; yet there is no regret. There is no hope for those who reject God’s Word. So even in the midst of slander and danger, he will make time to attend to Scripture. Even when the powerful are lost to him, he has the surest of counsellors.
