A = B

You are good and You do good; teach me Your statutes. Psalm 119:68  NASB

Are/ do – In order to see what’s happening in this verse, we need to look at the Hebrew.

טוֹב אַתָּ֥ה וּמֵטִ֗יב לַמְּדֵ֥נִי חֻקֶּֽיךָ

Let’s transliterate and follow the Hebrew syntax:  “Good You and doing (causing) good; teach me statutes Yours.”

You will notice two oddities.  The first is the lack of the copula in the opening phrase.  The translators have added “are” but it doesn’t exist in the Hebrew text.  Why?  Because Hebrew doesn’t think in Greek terms.  In Greek (and Western thought), attributes are added to essence.  If I say, “That car is red,” what I am saying is that there is something called a car, and it just so happens that this “car” is a red one.  So, for example, we think of “car” essence despite the fact that it might red or blue, a Ford or Ferrari, old or new, etc.  Almost all Western nouns work this way.  The noun is the essence of the thing.  The adjectives are the accidental (that is, not permanent) additional features.  What matters is “car-ness,” everything else is just add-on.

But Hebrew doesn’t think like this, despite the translators attempt to force Hebrew into Greek categories.  Hebrew is not an essence-accident language.  It is a purpose-manifestation language.  A red car exists as a uniquely red machine whose purpose is movement.  This is why a candle isn’t a candle until it is lit.  The missing copula isn’t an accident of grammar.  It’s a way of thinking about the world.  In Hebrew thought what matters is the action, the “doing,” and we identify “things” according to their action, the fulfillment of their purpose.  So, the psalmist is not telling us that there is a God who happens to be good.  He is telling us that “good” is defined as God, and vise versa.  God = good.  Good = God.  No accidental attribute.  It is not possible to think of God without thinking of good; neither is it possible to think of “Good” without thinking of God.  And all of this means that the second word, ʾattâ, isn’t just a second person singular pronoun, “you.”  No sir, ʾattâ solidifies the equivalence between God and good.

Now that we know why there is no copula, we understand why the next word is a Hi’fil participle.  yāṭab isn’t something extra that God brings Himself to do.  It is the manifestation of who He is.  The psalmist uses the Hi’fil because this is a causative tense, so we should read this as “and causing good,” which, of course, is precisely what God’s ultimate purpose is.  God exists for goodness.  That’s what He wants because that’s who He is.  “Good You and causing good” is a Hebrew poetic way of saying “God-good creating goodness.”  “God saw all that He had made, and behold . . . very good.”  Yes, that’s right, there is no “it was” in Hebrew.

One last point.  If God-good manifests creating good, what do you suppose His human agents are to do in order to manifest what they were created to be?  And how do we fulfill our purpose?  “Teach me Your ḥŭqqê’—Your engravings, the history of Your dealings with Man.”  In other words, “Teach me how to be me.”

Oh, I forgot.  Is there something hidden here, something in the tet?  For us, we might think that discovering the relation of equivalence with the copula is a hidden gem, but this wouldn’t be a revelation for Hebrew speakers, so we’ll have to ask what a Hebrew speaker might find.  What else is hidden here?

Maybe the answer is not subtle.  If good is defined by God, then whatever God does it good—and that seems to be a paradox because from our perspective we often imagine that some divine acts are not so good.  This is the paradox of Western theology, and it is the reason why English Bibles usually translate a verse like Isaiah 45:7 without the actual meaning of raʿ (evil).  How can a good God be the author of evil?  The psalmist tiptoes into the deep end of the pool with this one.

Topical Index:  ḥŭqqê’, statutes, history, ʾattâ, you, good, copula, Psalm 119:68