Pronouns

They stand this day by Your ordinances, for all things are Your servants.  Psalm 119:91  NASB

They – The odd thing about pronouns is that without a reference point we have little idea what they actually mean.  If I were to write, “He said something critically important,” but I didn’t tell you who “he” is, how could you evaluate my claim?  The best example of this inherent ambiguity is perhaps the theological confusion over John 1:2.

οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.

The opening word is οὗτος, a pronoun.  But how should it be translated?  Here are the choices:

οὗτος [houtos, houtoi, haute, hautai /hoo·tos/]. Pron. From the article 3588 and 846; GK 4047; 355 occurrences; AV translates as “this” 157 times, “these” 59 times, “he” 31 times, “the same” 28 times, “this man” 25 times, “she” 12 times, “they” 10 times, and translated miscellaneously 33 times. 1 this.^[1]

Why do virtually all translations employ “he”?  Because the translations reflect the doctrinal decision to treat the pronoun as a reference to the pre-incarnate Christ (Trinitarian) rather than view the reference to the neuter “it” (as God’s word, without the imported capitalization).  Thus we have: He was in the beginning with God.  But  if we translate the pronoun as a neuter, we would have “It was in the beginning with God,” and from a Hebrew perspective, this makes perfect sense  because God’s spoken word is the foundation of all that is.

So, what is the “they” in this verse.  Chabad’s translation offers clarification.  “For Your judgments they stand today, for all are Your servants.”  So now we know that what stands (“they”) are the judgments (mišpāṭ), and as you will recall, mišpāṭ is more than just rules and laws.  mišpāṭ is the full governance of the creation—everything that is required to bring about order and continuance.  In other words, what the psalmist tells us is that all the natural laws, all the moral structures, all the social and political declarations—everything that is needed to make the whole creation work—is established by the permanence of God.

Now the only question left is “Who are these servants?”  Does the psalmist mean that as a result of mišpāṭ, we are obligated as His servants, or does he mean that the mišpāṭim themselves are His servants (personifying the operations of governance)?  It’s ambiguous, particularly since “all” isn’t “all things” but rather simply the noun “all.”  All what?  All men, all beings, all created objects—or all the mišpāṭim?  Let me suggest that the psalmist is quite aware of the wickedness of some of God’s created beings, but in this verse he stresses the role of servant (thus, obedience) of all.  Therefore, it’s most likely that “all” refers to mišpāṭ.  Every one of God’s governing operations plays the role of a servant, that is, they are all perfectly obedient and respectful of their Creator.  It will never be the case that some natural law will rise up against God and demand that gravity not work, or that some moral principle stops being operational.  These are, fortunately, set in stone.  That means the world is orderly.  However, it also means that men can interfere with some of these orderly processes, like the moral ones.  We might not be able to change the function of gravity, but we certainly disrupt God’s orderly design for social responsibility.  We can’t erase it since there will always be the long-term consequences, but we can surely make a mess of it in the short term (and the short-term can be centuries).  Nevertheless, the psalmist tells us that all of these processes serve God, not us, and that should make us realize that alignment with them is alignment with God.  In the long run, you can’t survive living against the grain.

Topical Index: mišpāṭ, they, houtos, pronouns, John 1:2, Psalm 119:91

GK Goodrick-Kohlenberger

AV Authorized Version

^[1] Strong, J. (1995). In Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.