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Let my tongue sing about Your word, for all Your commandments are righteousness.  Psalm 119:172  NASB

Sing – Do you sing the psalms?  It’s nice to think that this psalm is lyrical poetry designed to be sung.  Many psalms are.  But if we read only this English translation, we’d miss the wider implications of the use of the verb ʿānâ.  Yes, it could be translated “sing,” but it usually means “answer, respond, testify, speak” or “shout.”  The translators have chosen “sing” for reasons of their own, perhaps in order to produce some variety in English or to push us toward the idea of psalms as music, but in doing so, we miss a greater reality.  The poet isn’t just singing about God’s spoken words.  He’s replying to what God has said.  In the previous verse he gushed praise for God’s training.  Now he responds to those training words.  This isn’t a song he’s invented out of thin air.  It’s the other half of the communication, and it implies that God has actually spoken first.  Translating ʿānâ as “sing” could make us think that his “song” is primary.  Most songs are not responses to someone else’s voice.  But the poet isn’t the creative agent here.  He’s the respondent.  This is why Alter translates the word as “speak,” and Chabad as “proclaim.”

Now let’s ask, “What is the poet replying to?”  And the answer is, once again, an aspect of miṣwâ, God’s governance.  It’s not simply that God governs.  That’s the idea behind miṣwâ, a Hebrew word describing the full instructions necessary for human society to function as it was intended.  No, the psalmist focuses on the character of this governance.  He proclaims that all of it, every last detail, is ṣedeq, righteous.  What he means is that everything God says determines the way men should behave and all of that behavior meets the ethical and moral standards of the universe.  That’s what it means to live a straightforward life, to be in harmony with the creation, and to serve the Creator.  Perhaps the translators of the NASB thought that using “sing” expressed the joyous emotion of the poet, but what we must understand is that the poet’s words, no matter how we describe them, are a response to God’s righteous governing.

Of course, this raises a question for us.  Do we really think (and act upon) that all of God’s instructions are necessary, ethically upright, and morally correct?  All of them?  Is this how we treat those apparently antiquated regulations about our diet?  About our social relationships?  Our debts?  Or do we “modernize” the rules to fit our society’s religious perspectives?  Do we pretend that some of these are just cultural, that is, they belonged (past tense) to an ancient Israeli society but don’t apply anymore?  What kind of song are we singing when we pick and choose what we’re grateful for?

Topical Index: sing, ʿānâ, respond, reply, ṣedeq, righteous, Psalm 119:172