Life Insurance (3)
Deal with Your servant according to Your graciousness, and teach me Your statutes. Psalm 119:124 NASB
According to – Perhaps the most important word in this verse is the preposition ki. It’s attached to the word ḥesed like this: כְחַסְדֶּ֗ךָ (ke–ḥăsdĕ’-kā, “according to ḥesed yours”). Such a tiny addition. Why is it so critical? Because the psalmist is not asking for yĕšûʿâ (salvation) on the basis of his own status or merit. He’s asking on the basis of God’s ḥesed. Despite the fact that the poet has claimed over and over that he is in alignment with God, that he loves God, that he cherishes the commandments, that he does all he can to be obedient—despite all that, he knows that he has no real standing before the One Holy God. How could he? How could any human being? We are as a species crushed by our own inability to live completely pure lives. We are cramped by our own selfishness, crowded with conflicting thoughts and deeds, preoccupied with our own agendas, exhausted by efforts to improve. In a word, sinful. Not because we were born that way, but rather because we chose the paths offered by the yetzer ha’ra. But it wasn’t some outsider holding gun to our heads. The battlefield is within, even if the public persona appears civilized and refined. And the poet knows this, perhaps better than some of us. If this is David’s work, we have both sides of the story. Our own histories are well-hidden.
We need ki.
God’s ḥesed is the full-orbed manifestation of His care for us. We won’t capture this idea in just a few words. You could take a look at these previous studies. I started writing about this word almost twenty years ago:
https://skipmoen.com/2006/07/practicing-hesed-1-no-limits/ a study that begins here and goes for the next 6 days
https://skipmoen.com/2012/01/personal-hesed/
https://skipmoen.com/2012/04/applied-hesed/
or any of these: https://skipmoen.com/?s=hesed
Still just scratching the surface. There are two books in my library on this word, each one more that 200 pages long. Here, in this psalm, we have the ultimate personal application. Without ḥesed there is no reason for God to care about us. With ḥesed there is an obligation for Him to care. That is an obligation He took on Himself, initiated at creation, celebrated when He passed between the slaughtered animals while Abraham slept. And since it is a personally-imposed divine obligation, we can count on it. We can’t count on us. As we are well aware, promise-keeping is not an inviolable human characteristic. But God’s promise-keeping is inviolable. So, Lord, deal with me according to Your eternal promise. I have no other leg to stand on.
Topical Index: ḥesed, ki, according to, promise, Psalm 119:124
