There is no psalm in the whole collection which has more the appearance of having been exclusively designed for practical and personal improvement, without any reference to national or even to ecclesiastical relations, than the one before us, which is wholly occupied with praises of God’s Word – or written revelation – as the only source of spiritual strength and comfort, and with prayers for grace to make a profitable use of it. The prominence of this one theme is sufficiently apparent from the fact, to which the Masora directs attention, that there is only one verse which does not contain some title or description of the Word of God. But, notwithstanding this peculiar character, the position of the psalm in the collection and, especially, its juxtaposition with respect to Psalms 108-118, its kindred tone of mingled gratitude and sadness, and a great variety of minor verbal correspondences, have led some of the best interpreters to look upon it as the conclusion of the whole series or system of psalms supposed to have been written for the use of the returned Jews at, or near, the time of the founding of the second temple.
The opinion, held by some of the same writers, that the ideal speaker, throughout this psalm, is Israel considered as the church or chosen people, will never commend itself as natural or likely to the mass of readers, and is scarcely consistent with such passages as verses 63, 74, 79, and others, where the speaker expressly distinguishes himself as an individual from the body of the people. The same difficulty, in a less degree, attends the national interpretation of the psalms immediately preceding. Perhaps the best mode of reconciling the two views is by supposing that this psalm was intended as a manual of pious and instructive thoughts designed for popular improvement and, especially, for that of the younger generation after the return from exile, and that the person speaking is the individual believer, not as an isolated personality but as a member of the general body with which he identifies himself, so far that many expressions of the psalm are strictly applicable only to the whole, as such considered, while others are appropriate only to certain persons or to certain classes in ancient Israel.
To this design of popular instruction and, especially, to that of constant repetition and reflection, the psalm is admirably suited by its form and structure. The alphabetical arrangement, of which it is, at once, the most extended and most perfect specimen, and the aphoristic character – common to all the alphabetic psalms – are both adapted to assist the memory as well as to give point to the immediate impression.
It follows, of course, that the psalm was rather meant to be a storehouse of materials for pious meditation than a discourse for continuous perusal. At the same time, the fact of its existence in the Psalter is presumptive proof that it was used in public worship, either as a whole or in one or more of the twenty-two stanzas into which it is divided, all the eight verses of each paragraph beginning with the same Hebrew letter.
From: Commentary on Psalms by Joseph A. Alexander; reprint (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1991), pp. 489-490. The quoted text is the introduction to Psalm 119. The Kregel publication is a reprint of a one-volume printing published in Scotland in 1864. Alexander’s commentary was originally published in three volumes under the title The Psalms Translated and Explained in the early 1850s.
Joseph Addison Alexander (1809-1860) taught at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, from 1833 until his death.
