Ps 119 (2; Dynamic of Obedience)

How can a young man

keep his path pure?

Indeed / by complying / with your word.

I have sought you / with my whole heart:

let me not stray / from your commands.

I have hidden your sayings / in my heart

so as not to sin / against you.

You are blessed, / Yhwh:

teach me / your laws.

With my lips / I repeat

all the rulings / from your mouth.

I find as much joy / in the way shown / in your terms

as in all possible wealth.

I want to meditate / on your charges

and keep my eyes / on your paths

I take delight / in your laws

I do not forget / your word.

There is a drama to obedience—to keep one’s path ‘pure’ one must keep his eyes on Yhwh’s path. In order to keep Yhwh’s commands, one must constantly implore Yhwh to teach him His laws. In order to enter into the joy of Yhwh’s ways, one must implant those ways in the secret of one’s heart. In order to keep the ways in your heart, you must repeat them with your lips. And, in order to repeat them with your lips, you must understand them as coming from Yhwh’s mouth. The psalmist and Yhwh stand ‘face to face’, ‘mouth to mouth’, constantly moving back and forth between giving and receiving. And it is this constant dynamic that produces obedience, that enacts Yhwh’s charges, that extends Yhwh’s creative governance over the Cosmos. This the truth the psalmist seeks to implant within the ‘young man’, his son. He tells him—delight in your father’s ways. Let them well up within you so that can be a constant source of living water. Plant them deep within so that they can remain a constant source of abiding life. Let them be the awe outside of you, that compels your heart down the path to the Presence.