The Happiness Formula (1)

If Your Law had not been my delight, then I would have perished in my misery.  Psalm 119:92  NASB

Misery – Carefully consider this statement.  Could you say the same thing?  Is the law of God so wonderful, so amazing, so encouraging to you—so shaashuim, delightful—that without it you would be destroyed in affliction?  Can I be so bold as to suggest that’s probably not the case?  Most people I know, including me, unfortunately, are just trying their best to make it through the day or the week or the month.  The law of God (the tôrâ) isn’t at the very top of their list.  Oh, it’s on the list, alright, somewhere in the “things I need to think about” category, but it’s not supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  It’s not the kind of thing that we sit down and marvel at.  Perhaps it should be, and perhaps our Jewish brothers and sisters actually have this experience of God’s tôrâ, but it seems a distant dream for me.  As I write these words, I’m overwhelmed by all that I have to accomplish in the next few days.  I’m swamped with tasks, none of which allow me to mediate on the magnificence of His instructions.  In fact, there are plenty of times when His instructions seem more burdensome than freeing.  But such is my life.  Perhaps it’s not yours.

It certainly doesn’t seem to be the life of the psalmist, at least not in this psalm.  He rightly proclaims that if it weren’t for the security and trustworthiness of God’s tôrâ he would die in his misery.  What kind of death is that?  Well, ʿŏnî is a derivative of ʿānâ, the verb for “afflict, oppress, humble.”

The primary meaning of ʿānâ III is “to force,” or “to try to force submission,” and “to punish or inflict pain upon,” mostly in the Piel. . . It differs both from ṣārar which connotes restriction or binding; from yāgâ, the emotional side of distress (i.e. sorrow, grief), from šāpal, the objective state or condition of being low and/or humble, and from kānaʿ implying submission to another’s will.^[1]

Misery is forced pain, not willingly undertaken.  Yeshua didn’t go to the cross with ʿŏnî.  He chose that route.  But it seems that you and I often end up in misery without choosing it.  As the man in the movie[2] said, “You cannot control the things life does to you.  They’re done before you know it and they make you do other things, until at last everything comes between you and the man you wanted to be.”  How true!  The difference between misery and delight is not the difference between pain and pleasure.  It is the difference between reaction and perspective.  The psalmist doesn’t tell us that his life was one continuous joy ride.  He tells us that despite misery, his perspective is governed by tôrâ.  It’s a Job statement set to music: “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15).  I wonder how many of us could say the same.

Of course, it helps a bit to know that the psalmist also had his bad days.  Some of those musical poems slip toward the side of suffering.  Perhaps that’s why I love the blues.

Topical Index: ʿānâ III, affliction, misery, shaashuim, delightful, Psalm 119:92

^[1] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 1652 עָנָה. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 682). Moody Press.

[2] The International