Who Am I?

How I loved Your teaching.  All the day it was my theme.  Psalm 119:97  Robert Alter

Theme – Remember the “perfect” tense—the completed action—of the first part of this verse.  The psalmist is describing his collective experience of God’s instruction.  He’s not projecting or anticipating something yet to be realized.  He’s saying that he has already enjoyed the well-being that comes with obedience to the Law.  This is testimony, not hearsay.  The verb is śîḥâ.  Here we have a noun form.  We can gather its meaning from the way it is used as a verb.

The basic meaning of this verb seems to be “rehearse,” “repent,” or “go over a matter in one’s mind.” This meditation or contemplation may be done either inwardly or outwardly. Since English differentiates these two notions, the word is usually rendered “meditate,” or “talk.  In the first instance it is used of silent reflection on God’s works (Ps 77:8 [H 7]; 9:12 [H 11]), and God’s word (Ps 119:15, 23, 27, 48, 78, 148). In the second instance it is used of rehearsing aloud God’s works (I Chr 16:9; Ps 105:2; 145:5).^[1]

But note that the form of the word here appears only three times in the Tanakh.  “Meditation, prayer, devotion. This word appears only three times in the ot. Each time it represents pious meditation, e.g. in Ps 119:97 the Psalmist exults in his love for God’s Law and declares, “It is my meditation all the day!”^[2]

We must also notice that there is no present tense copula in this verse.  In typical Hebrew fashion, the text expresses only “all day long my meditation.”  Translators provide the proper English grammar.  But doing so steers us away from the psalmist’s point.  This past experience of the personal well-being derived from God’s instruction is his identity.  On his gravestone we would find: A man enveloped in God.  Without torah, he just wouldn’t be who he is.  So, it’s not the case that he is an individual who meditates, or prays, or acts with devotion toward God.  Rather, his very existence is meditation, prayer, and devotion.  He can’t think of himself in any other way.  When he looks back on his life, what he sees is mediation, prayer, and devotion.  Just as ʾish (“man”) is not the gender identifier of an individual creature but rather the summation of the past relationships and the projection of future ones, so the psalmist is the summation of every past meditation, every offered prayer, every act of devotion.  This is who he is—and in this perspective, all he is.

Alter’s choice, “theme,” and the NASB choice “meditation,” don’t capture the scope of this claim.  The English choices lead us to the wrong implication, as if the psalmist is something apart from this experience and these actions.  But the Hebrew text draws an ontological identity.  I am this.  And I love God’s word for making me this.

Topical Index: śîḥâ, meditation, identity, Psalm 119:97

^[1] Cohen, G. G. (1999). 2255 שִׂיַח. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., pp. 875–876). Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.