The Difficult Verses (1)

You have rejected all those who stray from Your statutes, for their deceitfulness is useless.  Psalm 119:118  NASB

Rejected – This is a verse we might want to erase, especially after a few centuries in the evangelical world.  Is it true that God has rejected all those who do not follow His ḥōq?  Remember what ḥōq means?  It’s not quite the same as commandments or precepts or ordinances.  It’s the term for what is engraved, cut into stone, permanent.  Step back from the psalmist’s view in the 9^th century B.C.E. for a moment and ask yourself what this might mean for you.  Certainly it must involve God’s choice of Israel and Israel’s history with God.  To reject that is tantamount to rejecting the God of Israel.  That is the sin of supersessionism.  Makes you wonder how Augustine, Calvin, and Luther dealt with this verse.

First we have to know what the psalmist means by “rejected.”  Consider the Chabad translation: “You trampled all who stray from Your statutes, for their deceit is false.”  Notice that the verb sālâ is not translated “rejected.”  Instead, Chabad renders this “trampled.”  This word is used only twice in the Tanakh, here and in Lamentations 1:15.  Alter translates the verb as “spurned.”  What does that mean?  “To reject with disdain and contempt.”  Pretty strong.  If you read the passage in Lamentations, you might choose Alter’s rendition.  It is about God’s utter disgust with Jerusalem’s wanton idolatry.  God rejects every appeal because the heart of the people has not changed.  “Spurned” is probably correct.

What this means is that Chabad has softened the verse.  “You trampled” suggests that the punishment is finished.  Restoration is a possibility.  The offenders have received what they deserved but now they might be redeemed.  “Spurn” isn’t so kind.  If I wanted to provide some possible connection between the contemporary Christian world and the orthodox Jewish world, “spurn” is too strong.  It doesn’t leave any room for reconciliation.  Someone who read this verse and did not follow God’s statutes would certainly feel condemned, and perhaps irretrievably discouraged.  Hold that thought while we investigate the other crucial word here: ḥōq.

We’ll have to expand our understanding of this term.  “The LXX chiefly used three words to render ḥōq: prostagma‘order’ or ‘injunction,’ dikaiōma ‘regulation’ or ‘requirement,’ and nomimon ‘commandment.’”^[1]  Unfortunately, this makes the problem worse.  If you thought that the psalmist was only talking about those who reject God’s commandments, you truncated the idea.  It’s not just the Commandments (although even with those most Christians would have trouble claiming adherence to number four).  It’s all the customs, regulations, obligations, and requirements. In Judaism today, that numbers 613.  Of course, not all of them apply to every person, but every person is obligated to some of them.  Perhaps you don’t even know what they are.  Most Christians wouldn’t.  So, our problem is much more complicated.  Does the psalmist really mean to say that anyone who doesn’t follow the 613 as they personally apply is spurned by God?  Reconciling this with the contemporary view of God’s grace and forgiveness might be difficult.

The psalmist condemns those who “stray” from the statutes.  What does that mean?  The verb, šāgâ, clarifies an important point.  “The primary emphasis in the root šāgâ is on sin done inadvertently.”^[2]  Now we really have a dilemma.  If God spurns those who inadvertently wander from His statutes, what does this say about the ethical character of God?  Is He so demanding that even our misdeeds done in ignorance cause His rejection?  How can this be?

Perhaps we’ll find the answer in the last part of this verse.  “Their deceitfulness” indicates something about why they act in ignorance.  The verb, rāmâ, means “to beguile, deceive, mislead.”  The noun, tarmît, is used only five times in the Tanakh, but the idea is clear enough.  There is something about these people that is duplicitous.  The question is not ifthey have sinned unintentionally, it is rather why they have sinned unintentionally.  The answer seems to be that they once knew what the right way and have since abandoned it.  That is the context of Lamentations.  It’s not that Israel never knew.  It’s that they stopped caring.  Their ignorance is self-inflicted.  That’s why it is treacherously deceitful.

There is a significant difference between naïve ignorance, the kind of ignorance that was never aware of the requirement, and a deceitful ignorance, the kind of ignorance that turns away from what was once acknowledged as true.  The reason that these wayward people are spurned is because their current state of ignorance is the useless deception of imagining they have outgrown God’s requirements.  They’re sophisticated now, like the other nations.  They don’t need to pay attention to those “old” rules anymore.  This is, unfortunately, the Hebrew version of supersessionism.  Leaving the “old” behind just might be the recipe for judgment.

The Malbim suggests that this deceitfulness is not a mistake.  It’s wrong because it is a refusal to learn the truth.  Šāgâ is about those who accidentally err.  It’s about those who have a false way of looking at God’s directives.  It was this self-deception that caused them to sin.  They stopped seeking the truth because it was too costly.

Where does this leave us?  Well, after we notice that ignorance is no excuse under the law, perhaps there is some room for different levels of ignorance.  Some Jewish commentators suggest that kol, “all,” doesn’t mean everyone.  It just means “a lot.”  They cite other occurrences of the term where this is the case.  Unfortunately, the psalmist doesn’t clarify his thought.  We’re left with the question: Now how would you apply this verse?

Topical Index: rejected, spurned, ḥōq, tarmît, šāgâ, inadvertent sin, supersessionism, Psalm 119:118

^[1] Lewis, J. P. (1999). 728 חָקַק. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 317). Moody Press.

^[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2325 שָׁגָה. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 904). Moody Press.