Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 119:9
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed [thereto] according to thy word.
9. Derek, ‘way,’ LXX , denotes the course of conduct marked out by God’s law. Cp. Deu 5:33; Deu 9:12, &c.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
9. a young man ] Who most needs help to keep himself pure from sin (Psa 25:7). Cp. Psa 34:11 ff.; and the constant address of the teacher to his disciple in the Book of Proverbs, ‘My son.’
by taking heed &c.] The answer to the question of the previous line. The object of the verb is not expressed, and the exact meaning is doubtful. It may be ‘by taking heed to himself according to the rule of Thy word’; cp. P.B.V., ‘even by ruling himself after thy word’: or more probably, ‘by observing thy statutes ( Psa 119:4 ; Psa 119:6) according to thy commandment.’ The LXX and Jerome seem to represent a different reading, ‘by observing thy words.’
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
9 16. Beth. Love for God’s law the safeguard and the joy of life.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Wherewithal – This begins the second portion of the psalm, extending to Psa 119:16, in which all the verses begin with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet ( b), indicated in our translation by the word Beth. These names of the letters, inserted for convenience, are no part of the psalm, as it is not so marked in the original. This mode of indicating the divisions of the psalm is special to our version. It is not in the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, or the German versions. The word wherewithal means by what (Hebrew); that is, What means shall a young man adopt by which he may cleanse his way? it indicates a state of inquiry. The case supposed is that of a young man pondering the question how he may be saved from the corruptions of his own heart, and escape the temptations to which he is exposed in early years, and lead a pure and upright life. There can be no more important inquiry for one just entering on the journey of life; there can be found nowhere a more just and comprehensive answer than is contained in this single verse. All the precepts of ancient and modern wisdom, all the teachings of pagan morality and religion, and all the results of the experience of mankind, could furnish nothing in addition to what is here suggested. The world has no higher wisdom than this by which to guide a young man, so that he may lead a holy life.
Shall a young man – The remark here might be applied also to those who are in middle life, or even to those who are in more advanced years, but it is applied here especially to the young, because it may be supposed that in the other cases the matter may be regarded as settled by experience; because to the young, as they commence life, the inquiry is so momentous; and because it is a question which it may be supposed will come up before the mind of every young man who has any right aspirations, and any proper conception of the dangers which encompass his path.
Cleanse his way? – Make his course of life pure and upright. The language does not necessarily imply that there had been any previous impurity or vice, but it has particular reference to the future: not how he might cleanse himself from past offences, but how he might make the future pure. The inquiry is, how he might conduct himself – what principles he could adopt – under what influence he could bring himself – so that his future course would be honest, honorable, upright.
By taking heed thereto … – The word thereto is not in the original. The Hebrew is, To keep according to thy word; or, in keeping according to thy word. Prof. Alexander supposes that this means to keep it (his way) according to thy word; and that the whole is a question – How may a young man so cleanse his way as to keep it according to thy word? – and that the answer to the question is to be found in the general strain of the psalm, or in the general principles laid down in the psalm. But it is clear that the answer to the question must be found in the verse, or not found at all; and the most natural construction is that in our translation. So DeWette renders it: How can a young man walk guiltless? If (or, when) he holds (or, keeps) himself according to thy word. The meaning clearly is If he governs himself according to the law of God – if he makes that law the rule of his life and conduct, he would be enabled to do it. All other things might fail; this rule would never fail, in making and keeping a man pure. The more principles of common honesty, the principles of honor, the considerations of self-interest, the desire of reputation – valuable as they may be – would not constitute a security in regard to his conduct; the law of God would, for that is wholly pure.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 119:9
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.
How a young man may cleanse his way
I. This is the great practical problem for life. It is more especially the question for young people.
1. You are under special temptations not to ask it. There are so many other points in your future unresolved that you are only too apt to put aside the consideration of this one in favour of those which seem to be of more immediate importance. And you have the other temptation, common to us all, of living without any plan of life at all. At your age, judgment and experience are not so strong as inclination and passion; and everything has got the fresh gloss of novelty upon it, and it seems to be sometimes sufficient delight to live and get hold of the new joys that are flooding in upon you.
2. It is worth while for you to ask it. For you have got the prerogative that some of us have lost, of determining the shape that your lifes course is to take.
3. You have special temptations to make your ways unclean.
II. We can only make our way clean on condition of constant watchfulness. Take heed to thyself is the only condition of a pure and noble life. That such a condition is necessary will appear very plain from two considerations. First, it is clear that there must be constant watchfulness, if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into. And it is also plain if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into it. We are creatures evidently made for self-government. Our whole nature is like a monarchy. There are things in each of us that are never meant to rule, but to be kept well down under control, such as strong passions, desires rooted in the flesh which are not meant to get the mastery of a man. And there are parts of our nature which are as obviously intended to be supreme and sovereign; the reason, the conscience, the will.
III. This constant watchfulness, to be of any use, must be regulated by Gods Word. The guard on the frontier who is to keep the path must have instructions from head-quarters, and not choose add decide according to his own phantasy, but according to the Kings orders. Or, to use another metaphor, it is no use having a guard unless the guard has a lantern. In the Word of God, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in Christ, who is the Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guido. A guide of conduct must be plain–and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of Christianity, there are none about its morality. A guide of conduct must be decisive–and there is no faltering in the utterance of the Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance–and the morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but deals with large principles. A guide for morals must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into mens consciences, and to work out in mens practice, a portion of the morality of that Book. If the world kept the commandments of the New Testament, the world would be in the millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine hundredths of all the sorrow of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream. Here is the guide for you, and if you take it you will not err.
IV. All this can only be done effectually if you are a Christian. My psalm goes as far as the measure of revelation granted to its author admitted; but if a person had no more to say than that, it would be a weary business. It is no use to tell a man, Guard yourself; guard yourself. Nor even to tell him, Guard yourself according to Gods Word, if Gods Word is only a law. The fatal defect of all attempts at keeping my heart by my own watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same. And so there may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. You want a power outside of you to steady you The only way to haul a boat up the rapids is to have some fixed point on the shore to which a man may fasten a rope and pull at that. You get that eternal guard and fixed point on which to hold in Jesus Christ, the dear Son of His love, who has died for you. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
On cleansing our ways
The picture in his mind was of this sort. There stood before him a young man who had not long set out on the journey of life; and who yet, to his own deep surprise and disgust, found many shins of travel already upon him. He had not meant to go wrong; as yet, perhaps, he was not gone very far wrong. And yet where did all this filth come from? And how is it to be got rid of? How is he to make his way clean, and keep it clean?
I. If we are to make our life pure, noble, satisfying, we are to take heed to it: We are to think about it, and to force ourselves to walk according to our best thoughts and aims. Carlyle sums up the whole teaching of Goethe in the brief citation, Think of living. Many never look forward and think of their life as a whole, and of how they may make the best of it. God has put this great and solemn gift of life into their hands: yet they never really think of it as His gift, nor ask themselves what they mean to do with it, what they have done with it, or how they may so use it as to show that they are not unworthy to be trusted with it. Nay, more; many of them do not even think of it bit by bit, day by day, step by step. So far from considering what they can make of their life as a whole, how they may make it pure and fair and bright; they do not so much as ask, What shall I do with my life to-day, so as to make it as clean, as fair, as useful as I can? Is it any wonder that they often wander round and round without making any real advance; and sink, again and again, into the very sloughs from which, again and again, they have been drawn out; or fall, again and again, into the very traps from which they have been set free? But to think is not enough. We want a high and true standard to which to refer, by which we may measure and direct our thoughts.
II. And this standard the psalmist gives us when he tells us to take heed to our ways according to the Word of God. It bids you remember that you have a soul as well as a body; that moral virtues and graces are still more valuable than mental gains and shining parts; that there is a world above and beyond this present world, a life above and beyond this mortal life; and it warns you to provide for that as well as for this. It asks you to believe that God is more than man, the soul more than the body, virtue better than pleasure, goodness better than gain, and the life to come more and better than the life which now is. It demands that when the claims of God clash with those of man, as they sometimes will, or the claims of the soul clash with those of the body, or the claims of virtue and goodness with those of gain and pleasure, or the claims of eternity with those of time, that you sacrifice the lower claims to the higher, that you sacrifice passing and inferior interests to interests which are noble and enduring. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Moral culture of young men
I. Young men require cleansing. Somehow or other, from the very commencement of moral agency, impure thoughts enter the mind, and impure emotions are awakened. So that cleansing is required almost at the beginning, because spiritual uncleanness is
(1) Inimical to peace of conscience.
(2) A hindrance to true soul growth.
(3) An obstruction to Divine fellowship.
II. Moral cleansing requires circumspection in life. By taking heed thereto. If you tread the path of vanity, avarice, sensuality, selfishness, you will go down deeper and deeper in moral filth. If you tread the path of virtue as trod by Jesus of Nazareth, you must take heed that you tread that path constantly and not turn to the right hand or to the left. Take heed. There are many on all hands who will try to turn you from the path.
III. Circumspection of life should be guided by the Divine Word. Thy Word, that contains the map; Thy Word, there burns the lamp; Thy Word, there dwells the inspiration. (Homilist.)
Young manhood: its peril and its rescue
I. Its peril. One thing that makes it hard for a young man to succeed in his manhood is the prevalence among us of influences that work distractingly and scatteringly. It takes time and a certain amount of leisure if a man is going to be at his best. We are torn hither and thither by multiplicity of interest.
2. Another disadvantage under which our young men are suffering is that they have so largely slipped their old anchorages. They have cut adrift from the past. Hereditary tastes, ideas and methods are ignored. The age to which a custom or doctrine has attained is taken as measure of its inherent absurdity. To be old-fashioned is, with them, to be silly.
3. Another tooth in the jaw of the Babylonian lion is the rum-shop and the wine-cup.
4. Still another incisor that pricks into and tears the life of our young manhood is the prevalence among us of so much that works personal impurity, in the shape of coarse literature, dirty pictures and houses of ill-repute.
5. Another obstacle that obstructs the efforts of our young men to maintain their manliness is the engrossing love of money.
II. The service of succour that we can render.
1. Prayer. Christ teaches us that He not only regards the prayer of faith when offered by those who need help, but that He regards the prayer of faith when offered in behalf of those who need help. Prayer generates work, and so makes us co-operate with God in bringing the answer to our own prayer.
2. Another thing we can do is to contribute in a material way to the work of the Young Mens Christian Association that has the interests of our un-homed young men in particular charge.
3. But we must not relegate to organization the work and responsibility that devolves upon us in our character of individual Christians. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
The young mans conduct
I. It requires moral cleansing.
1. There are several elements more or less impure in a young mans life that must be cleansed:–
(1) Animalism. The senses are likely to control him.
(2) Illusion. His imagination creates fictitious joys and dignities.
(3) Vanity. The tendency of the young to overrate themselves is all but universal.
2. From these elements of impurity he must be cleansed. The animal must give way to the spiritual, the fictitious to the real, the vain to the sober and the humble.
II. Its moral cleansing requires personal circumspection. By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. Sanctify them through Thy truth: for Thy Word is truth, said Christ. Now ye are clean through the Word I spoke unto you. By personal circumspection the Word must be applied
(1) For correction;
(2) for guidance. (Homilist.)
A young mans way
I. The Bible makes a great deal in its teaching about the ways of men.
1. There is the way of the transgressor, which is hard; and the way of the fool, which is right in his own eyes; and the way of the slothful, which is a hedge of thorns; and the way of the wicked, which is as darkness. And there is the way of the righteous, which is plain, and which the Lord knows; and the way of the saint, which is preserved; and the way which is like the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
2. There is variety in the ways of individual men at different periods of their life. There is the peculiar bent and passion of the old man, the characteristic of the man in middle life, and, differing from these, the way of a young man.
II. What is meant by cleansing the way. It is something very deep and pure which is intended, or Job would never have said, What is man that he should be clean? It is something very practical and searching, or Isaiah would not have begun his prophecies with the call, Wash you, make you clean, etc. It is something intended to cover the whole area of life, or it never would have been made an ordinance in the old dispensation to have the vessels and persons clean that came into the presence of God; nor would Jesus in the new, in so solemn a way have washed the feet of His disciples to make them every whit clean. It is the cleanness which is part of Gods life which is intended. God is of purer eyes than to look upon sin. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever. It is the cleanness which is also the holiness of God–cleanness from sin, from evil, from guile, from insincerity; the very quality praised by the adoring angels when they cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, in the presence of God. The question, therefore, means, Wherewithal shall a young man lead a holy life like the life of the Holy God? Wherewithal shall he make his way the way of a saint?
III. The answer to this question is By taking heed thereto according to Gods Word. By taking Gods Word as the light, the guide, and the director of the way; by considering your steps in the light of that Word; by taking that Word as the chart, the pilot, and the propeller of your way. For the young soul who receives this Word and makes it his bosom companion, who accepts its light as the guide of his way, who follows the Lord whom it commends–life from that hour is changed. His heart is fixed on the strength of God. His career is along the lines of the life of God. He will be no more a straw tossed in the wind, a dead log swung hither and thither by the swirl in the river, a wave driven this way and that by the wind; but a life–a stream from the life of God–a life made wise by the indwelling of Gods truth in the mind, and by the constraint of His love in the heart. (A. Macleod, D. D.)
To young men
I. The character of the way spoken of.
1. Its moral aspect. The law cannot relax its claims; it is inexorable, and cries, Pay me that thou owest. it smiles on the obedient, and frowns on the disobedient. Hence, your every word, thought and deed should be subject to its authority.
2. Its social aspect. Evil communications corrupt good manners is a truth which receives daily corroboration. Hence, how important that young men should be very particular in forming connections, and that great care should also be observed in making companionships (Pro 1:10; 2Co 6:14; 2Co 6:17). Divine grace does not destroy our social nature; it sanctifies it, and directs our social instincts in a pure channel; so that whilst sinners are joining hand in hand, Christians may enjoy the communion of saints.
3. Its intellectual aspect. Mental culture is an important part of your duty. When Virgil was asked by a friend why he studied so much accuracy in the plan of his poems, the propriety of his characters, and the purity of his diction, he answered, I write for eternity. Let it be, my young friends, the daily language of your hearts and life, I am living for eternity.
4. Its spiritual aspect. Your soul in its origin, capacities, immortality, and the price paid for its redemption, has a claim on your attention and efforts to save it.
II. What is implied in the phrase, Cleanse his way?
1. That the young man must ponder his steps. Want of reflection and forethought is characteristic of youth.
2. That he must resist temptation. Wealth, pleasure, fashion, company, amusements, pernicious books, and sensual enjoyments surround you, and you are in danger of being unduly influenced by them.
3. That he improve by the use of his privileges.
4. That he prepare for eternity.
III. How is this to be done? All your proceedings are to be regulated by Gods Word. Its cautions and threatenings must serve to preserve you from sin and danger. Its precepts and doctrines must guide you in your journey through life: and its precious promises and bright examples must allure you to scenes of felicity and glory beyond the grave.
IV. Lessons. A young mans way is–
1. Highly critical. Beset with snares, dangers, and enemies. Demanding constant watchfulness and prayer.
2. Deeply solemn. Leading to heaven or hell, eternal happiness or endless woe.
3. Personally responsible. The means of salvation within reach. (James White.)
To young men
I. The danger to which young men are exposed.
1. The depraved nature common to them as well as others.
2. The strength of their passions.
3. Their inexperience.
4. The incitements of wicked men.
5. The evil example of others.
6. Want of solid religious principles.
II. The Divinely-provided remedy, or preventive to pollution.
1. We must begin by seeking regenerating grace.
2. We must keep constant watch over our own hearts, or they will ensnare us.
3. We must pay strict attention to every part of our conduct.
4. We must seek assistance from the proper quarter. (W. Peddie, D. D.)
A young man cleansing his way
I. What is implied in the question. That for a young man to cleanse his way is–
1. A necessary thing.
2. A difficult thing.
3. A noble thing (verse 1). Such are beautiful in youth, and strong in their radiant manhood. They are the flower of the race. They are the hope of the Church. And the Lord Jesus, beholding them, loves them.
II. What is taught in the answer.
1. He must have a fixed purpose to cleanse his way. Determination is everything in religion, as in other matters. The young man who is firmly resolved to live a holy life will succeed in doing so, provided he lays hold of the grace of God, and uses the appointed means of sanctification.
2. He must take Holy Scripture as his guide. The Bible is the cleanest book in the world. Its ideals are the noblest. It is the purity of the Divine Word that has invested it with indestructible vitality. The morality of Scripture satisfies our moral being as the very perfection of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; and Scripture shows us that fair ideal of purity embodied in an actual human life–the life of the Son of God in our nature. (C. Jerdan, LL. B.)
Religion the only safeguard of youth
The infidel, Thomas Paine, was one night haranguing a promiscuous company, gathered in the common room of the New York tavern where he had his lodgings, on the great harm done to the world by the Bible and the Christian religion. When he paused for breath, he was much astonished at the remark of a stranger, who said, Mr. Paine, you have been in Scotland. You know there is not a more rigid set of people in the world than they are in their attachment to the Bible. When a young man loaves his fathers house, his mother in packing his chest always puts a Bible on the top of his clothes. The infidel nodded acquiescence. You have also been in Spain, continued the stranger. The people have no Bibles, and in that country you can hire a man for a dollar to murder his neighbour, who never gave him any offence. Mr. Paine answered that this was so. Then, see how the argument stands, said the advocate for Christianity. If the Bible were so bad a book as you represent it to be, those who use it would be the worst members of society; but the contrary is the fact. Our prisons, almshouses, and penitentiaries are filled with men and women whose ignorance or unbelief prevents them from reading the Bible.
I. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will walk in the ways of honesty. Make it a rule, young men, never to sacrifice integrity for broad.
II. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will cultivate a spirit of reverence. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will utter no profane oath; and when he comes into Gods holy temple, it will always be with uncovered head, as becomes the presence-chamber of the King of kings.
III. Another thing which will distinguish those who walk in obedience to Gods laws is that they will be found in the ways of sobriety. By one of the laws of ancient Greece, every offence committed by a drunken person received double punishment. Christian nations would do well to adopt it.
IV. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will be found in the ways of purity. Keep thyself pure (1Ti 5:22).
V. The young man who rules himself after Gods Word will be religious. Youth is the stormy cape, within sight of which many a frail bark is lost; and Gods Word is the only chart which can guide one safely On his voyage. (J. N. Norton.)
The cleansing Word
I. The question.
1. Mans ways need cleansing.
2. Youth is the most important time for this.
(1) The youngest person has contracted defilement and sin.
(2) The young may die.
(3) Youth is a time of the greatest danger.
(4) The young are forming those associations and habits which go on increasing in strength, and give colour to all the actions of their future lives.
(5) In youth the hopes of your parents, and friends, and masters, look for some reward for the pains they took with you in early infancy.
II. The answer.
1. How does the Word of God provide for this cleansing of the way?
(1) By pointing out to the young man the evil of his way. The Bible tells him what God is, and what he is, and what evil is in him and in his way.
(2) By discovering an infallible remedy for the disorders of his nature. And that remedy is the salvation that is by Jesus Christ.
(3) By becoming a directory in all the paths of duty to which they may be called.
2. You must take heed to it. This implies–
(1) Care and thoughtfulness.
(2) Prayer. (D. Wilson, M. A.)
Take heed to thy way
I. The senses is which the Word of God is a cleanser of the way of life.
1. It purifies as a rule.
2. Gods Word is an instrument by which He cleanses the heart. So Jesus prayed–Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth. The Word that said, Let there be light, and in a moment changed the darkness and confusion of the aboriginal elements into the light, order, and beauty of creation, is the same Word which breathes the breath of spiritual life into the new creature in Christ Jesus.
II. The manner is which the Word of God is to be applied to cleanse the young mans way. By taking heed thereto.
1. This implies an earnest study of the Word; frequent and unintermitred contemplation.
2. It also implies a care and watchfulness over our own hearts and ways.
III. The reasons which should appeal to youth to take heed to their way.
1. How reasonable it is in itself. Ought not God to have our first and best, who loved us first and gave us His best?
2. Temptation is never so strong and fiery as in the tropical clime of youth.
3. The fearful hindrances to the work of grace which increase and aggravate upon the postponement of repentance. (J. B. Owen, M. A.)
Clean ways
A way has a direction, and leads somewhither. A way is continuous, and if we are in it, we are advancing in it. A way differs in its direction from other ways, and diverges more and more from them the farther one travels upon it. There is hardly any error so perilous as that of imagining that there can be isolated acts or states of mind. Every present has its closely affiliated future. Every deed, every reverie, every thought, is a cause. We are moving on in character, as in years. Let me beg you, then, to see whither you are going, whither your way leads. Start not in a direction which you are not willing to follow to the end. Take not your first step on any evil way, unless you are ready to encounter the dishonour, degradation, misery, and ruin which have visibly overtaken the advanced travellers on that way. Remember, our ways lead on through the death-shadow; and I know that there is but one way on which you are willing that death should overtake you,–but one way whose steps brighten under the shadow, and in which you can hope to walk with those whom you would crave as your companions in the life everlasting. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way, or, more literally, make his way clean? This is a metaphor which appeals vividly to our experience. What is there so disheartening as the necessity of treading muddy streets? We sedulously seek, if they are to be had, clean paths for our feet, and bewail ourselves when we cannot find them. We are ashamed, even though no other eye be upon us, if we are forced to prolong travel-stain or any squalid condition of person or attire. Can it be that there is one so imbruted that he feels not the travel-stain of sinful ways,–that there is not a close-clinging sense of impurity when the soul has debased itself by foul deeds, indulgences, or associations? Must there not be a self-loathing, a self-contempt, in those who are making themselves vile? Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. What is the Word of God? An unerring and undying conscience, a sense of right and wrong, native in the soul of man, is Gods Word to you and me. There is never a question of duty, in which you do not know what you ought to do. There is never a sinful compliance to which you are tempted or urged, of whose moral character you have the slightest doubt. So long as you obey your conscience, you are taking heed to your way according to the Word of God. But this phrase has for us another meaning–another, yet the same. The Word of God–the very same word which speaks to us in con-science–has lived incarnate in the one sinless Son of Man, or rather, not has lived, but ever lives, in the heaven whither He has gone before us, and where His welcome awaits our following Him, in His Gospel, fresh as when the words of grace and truth fell from His lips, in the pure spirits trained in His nurture, in the examples of excellence that have transmitted His holiness in a line of living light all down the Christian ages, and in whom the Christ within has shone forth in radiant beauty. (A. P. Peabody, D. D.)
Taking heed to Gods Word
You are to take heed. Look at the pilot at the helm, when he is steering the vessel, in the storm, amidst the rocks: what is he doing? Taking heed. He is all eye, all sensibility, all intelligence, as to the position in which he stands. That is taking heed. Look at the sentinel, walking his weary round, when he knows that the enemy is at hand. Hearken to his footsteps; why, they seem to be but the echo of the mans sensibility of alarm and of danger. He is taking heed. And you are to take heed to your way. What did God give you faculties for, but to be employed? You have the faculty for observation: employ it. You have the faculty for examination: employ it. You have the faculty for reflection: employ it. You have the power of taking heed: employ it. And recollect that no man can do this for you. It is to be done individually, vigilantly; you, as a man alive to your danger, are to enact the part of the pilot amidst the rocks. And doing this according to Gods Word, you shall not labour in vain, nor spend your strength for nought. You can discern between good and evil, you know what is offensive, and you know what is pleasing to God; you know what you must do to be saved; you know that yonder is a scene of profligacy and vice, and that here is an opportunity for serving and worshipping God; you know that there is a literature which is saturated with all manner of ungodliness, and that here lies a Book which will lead you to glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life. Take heed, then; and take heed, according to Gods Word. When your vigilance is once excited, and your mind is all in action, and you leave your house of business, and are plied with all manner of fascinations, take heed what you are about; but be sure to take heed according to the requirements, the directions, the expostulations, the promises of Gods Word. To take heed according to the maxims of the world, or the suggestions of fashion, would only be to mock your misery, and accelerate your downfall; but taking heed according to Gods Word, that Word being hid away in your hearts, for constant and appropriate use, you will be able to say with a voice which he will be forced to listen to, Get thee behind me, Satan, and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ shall make you free. But this requires attention, diligence, and personal effort. How will Gods Word enable you to take heed? You must get it into your memories, it must be associated with your recollections, it must be ready whenever you want it, your hearing of it having been mixed with faith; and when it has thus been lodged and assimilated there, it will be the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. (W. Brock.)
A clean life
Some years ago, in most of the large railway stations of England, there was a picture which greatly amused me. It represented a little boy who had been washed, and stood half white and half black beside a bath. A certain kind of soap had been used in the boys ablutions, and the result was that, although he had not become white, he was half white and half black. Like some people of my acquaintance, I thought many a time; not so dirty as they once were, but they are far from clean yet. We ought to be clean every whit–that is, clean in all our thoughts, words, and especially in our conduct. Let us all aim at having a clean life. Almost the first thing that we discover when we begin to think about ourselves and the world in which we live is this need of cleansing. Sin has defiled everything, and its marks are upon our hearts. How can we remedy this? what can be done for us to remove the stain which seems fixed so fast in the fibres of our lives? What would you think of a negro who washed his face, and scrubbed it with all his might, in order to make it white? He could not make his skin fair like ours, even if he used all the soap in England, and all the washing powders, too; because the black lies underneath the skin, and it cannot be got at by rubbing. Once a year farmers wash their sheep so as to cleanse the wool, but then all the dirt is on the outside. That which defiles us, however, is inside us, and so it cannot be so easily got rid of. We must become clean within, and to do this for us is Gods good work. Mr. Moody tells us that one day he promised to take his little boy out for a drive. But the child played about in the dirt, and made himself quite unfit to be seen. Let me come with you, father, he pleaded. No, Willie, you are not ready. I must take you in and wash you. Oh, papa! Ise ready. No, you are all over dirt. Mamma washed me; Ise clean. Finding that he could not convince the child that he had contracted dirt since he had been washed, Mr. Moody lifted Willie up in his arms and showed him his face in a looking-glass. Says Mr. Moody, The looking-glass stopped his mouth, but I did not wash his face with it! Now, the Bible is a looking-glass, and intended to show us our need of cleansing; and if you will but prayerfully study it you will see your need of cleansing. George Herbert, while catechizing asked, after other questions about mans misery, Since man is so miserable, what is to be done? and the answerer could not tell. He asked him again what he would do if he were in a ditch? This familiar illustration made the answer so plain, that he was even ashamed of his ignorance; for he could not but say he would haste out of it as fast as he could. Then the minister asked whether he needed a helper, and who was that helper? And then we must be kept clean, and that every day. For one thing, we must avoid that which would defile us, and that we can do if we are careful. A gentleman, when he brought his son to London in order that he might apprentice him to an engineer, made up his mind to give him a few words of kindly counsel. He turned over in his mind how best to say what ought to be said, without getting any nearer the solution. But as they walked along the street,, they observed that the roadway was very muddy. The youth was about to cross in the mud, but his father stopped him. Wait, he said, we will seek a clean crossing. Always seek a clean crossing in life. After he had been left alone in town, the youth pondered these words, and dimly began to see their meaning. Seek a clean crossing in life; mind where you go, and keep out of the mud. There are some places that are known by almost every one to be evil–keep away from them; seek a clean crossing. There is another thing said in the text about the cleansing Word of God, and that is, we must frequently consult it. On board ship the captain consults his chart, and shapes his course by it. The Bible is our chart, a map of the roads through life along which we must tread in order to reach heaven. A chart kept wrapped up would be useless; look at it, study it, and then follow its guidance. At times we are perplexed as to what is the right and wise course for us to adopt. We are perplexed, and do not know whom to consult. Open your Bible, and you will probably find there some one in precisely the same circumstances. You will certainly find some text suitable for you, and will thus learn what to do. The entrance of Thy Word giveth light, says a psalm, and many people can testify that this witness is quite true. (N. Wiseman.)
Go by the directions
Go by the directions. I saw a picture once which has stuck to my memory for years and years. It was a picture of a dark, wild, stormy night, and a traveller was standing up in the stirrups of his horse at a parting of the way, trying to read the directions on the finger-post. How eagerly he was looking! I can see him yet holding the lighted match carefully in his hand lest the wind should blow it out before he had read the directions l It was a good thing for him that there were directions, and it is a good thing we have them, too. Where are our directions? They are–the Bible. That is Gods Word to us, telling us which road to take when we come to the parting of the way. Go by the directions Do what God says, and you will never go wrong. (J. R. Howatt.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
LETTER: BETH – Second Division
Verse 9. A young man cleanse his way] orach, which we translate way here, signifies a track, a rut, such as is made by the wheel of a cart or chariot. A young sinner has no broad beaten path; he has his private ways of offence, his secret pollutions: and how shall he be cleansed from these? how can he be saved from what will destroy mind, body, and soul? Let him hear what follows; the description is from God.
1. He is to consider that his way is impure; and how abominable this must make him appear in the sight of God.
2. He must examine it according to God’s word, and carefully hear what God has said concerning him and it.
3. He must take heed to it, lishmor, to keep guard, and preserve his way-his general course of life, from all defilement.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
BETH
Young man; or, any man. But he names the
young man, because such are commonly void of wisdom and experience, heady and wilful, and impatient of admonition, full of violent passions and strong lusts, and exposed to many and great temptations.
Cleanse his way; reform his life, or purge himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
By taking heed thereto according to thy word; by a diligent and circumspect watch over himself, and the examination and regulation of all his actions by the rules of thy word.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
9. The whole verse may be readas a question; for,
by taking heedisbetter, “for” taking heed, that is, so as to do it. Theanswer is implied, and inferable from Psa 119:5;Psa 119:10; Psa 119:18,&c., that is, by God’s grace.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
b, BETH.–The Second Part.
Ver. 9. BETH. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?…. Some think David means himself, and that he was a young man when he wrote this psalm; and which they think is confirmed by Ps 119:100; but neither of them seem conclusive; rather any young man is meant, and who is particularly mentioned, because young men are liable to sins and snares, to carnal lusts and sensual pleasures, which are of a defiling nature. Some are of opinion that a young man, or babe in Christ, is intended, that needs direction in his way, and instruction about the manner of cleansing it. But the former sense seems best, and expresses the concern of the psalmist for the education and right information of youth; which is a matter of great moment and advantage to families, neighbourhoods, and commonwealths. The question supposes the young man to be impure, as every man is by birth, being conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity; is a transgressor from the womb, and his heart, ways, and actions, evil from his youth: and the difficulty is, how he shall be cleansed; how one so impure in his nature, heart, and ways, can be just with God, or become undefiled in the way, as in Ps 119:1; to which some reference may be had: or how he can have his heart made pure, or a clean one be created in him; or how his way, life, and conversation, may be corrected, reformed, and amended. The answer is,
by taking heed [thereto] according to thy word; that is, to his way and course of life, and steering it according to the direction of the word of God. But I think the words may be better rendered and supplied thus, “by observing [what is] according to thy word” p; which shows how a sinner is to be cleansed from his sins by the blood of Christ, and justified by his righteousness, and be clean through his word; and also how and by whom the work of sanctification is wrought in the heart, even by the Spirit of God, by means of the word; and what is the rule of a man’s walk and conversation: he will find the word of God to be profitable, to inform in the doctrines of justification and pardon, to acquaint him with the nature of regeneration and sanctification; and for the correction and amendment of his life and manners, and for his instruction in every branch of righteousness, 2Ti 3:16.
p “observando secundum verbum tuum”, Cocceius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The eightfold Beth. Acting in accordance with the word of God, a young man walks blamelessly; the poet desires this, and supplicates God’s gracious assistance in order to it. To purify or cleanse one’s way or walk ( , cf. Psa 73:13; Pro 20:9) signifies to maintain it pure ( , root , Arab. zk , to prick, to strike the eye, nitere ;
(Note: The word receives the meaning of (vid., supra, p. 367), like Arab. dhr and bhr , from the signification of outshining = overpowering.)
vid., Fleischer in Levy’s Chaldisches Wrterbuch, i. 424) from the spotting of sin, or to free it from it. Psa 119:9 is the answer to the question in Psa 119:9; signifies custodiendo semetipsum , for can also signify “to be on one’s guard” without (Jos 6:18). The old classic (e.g., Psa 18:31) alternates throughout with ; both are intended collectively. One is said to hide ( ) the word in one’s heart when one has it continually present with him, not merely as an outward precept, but as an inward motive power in opposition to selfish action (Job 23:12). In Psa 119:12 the poet makes his way through adoration to petition. in Psa 119:13 does not mean enumeration, but recounting, as in Deu 6:7. is the plural to ; , on the contrary, in Psa 119:138 is the plural to : both are used of God’s attestation of Himself and of His will in the word of revelation. signifies, according to Psa 119:162, “as over” (short for ), not: as it were more than (Olshausen); the would only be troublesome in connection with this interpretation. With reference to , which has occurred already in Psa 44:13; Psa 112:3 (from , Arab. hawn , to be light, levem ), aisance, ease, opulence, and concrete, goods, property, vid., Fleischer in Levy’s Chald. Wrterb. i. 423f. , Psa 119:15, are the paths traced out in the word of God; these he will studiously keep in his eye.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| 2. BETH. | |
9 Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.
Here is, 1. A weighty question asked. By what means may the next generation be made better than this? Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? Cleansing implies that it is polluted. Besides the original corruption we all brought into the world with us (from which we are not cleansed unto this day), there are many particular sins which young people are subject to, by which they defile their way, youthful lusts (2 Tim. ii. 22); these render their way offensive to God and disgraceful to themselves. Young men are concerned to cleanse their way–to get their hearts renewed and their lives reformed, to make clean, and keep clean, from the corruption that is in the world through lust, that they may have both a good conscience and a good name. Few young people do themselves enquire by what means they may recover and preserve their purity; and therefore David asks the question for them. 2. A satisfactory answer given to this question. Young men may effectually cleanse their way by taking heed thereto according to the word of God; and it is the honour of the word of God that it has such power and is of such use both to particular persons and to communities, whose happiness lies much in the virtue of their youth. (1.) Young men must make the word of God their rule, must acquaint themselves with it and resolve to conform themselves to it; that will do more towards the cleansing of young men that the laws of princes or the morals of philosophers. (2.) They must carefully apply that rule and make use of it; they must take heed to their way, must examine it by the word of God, as a touchstone and standard, must rectify what is amiss in it by that regulator and steer by that chart and compass. God’s word will not do without our watchfulness, and a constant regard both to it and to our way, that we may compare them together. The ruin of young men is either living at large (or by no rule at all) or choosing to themselves false rules: let them ponder the path of their feet, and walk by scripture-rules; so their way shall be clean, and they shall have the comfort and credit of it here and for ever.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
The Beth Section
Scripture v. 9-16:
Verse 9 inquires from just what source a young man (an immature man) “may cleanse his ways,” to avoid bringing further defilement to his life. It is answered “by taking heed thereto according to thy word,” Pro 1:4; Pro 20:11; Psa 17:4. Though passions of lust in youth are strong, the word of God is the safest source of protection against a life of defeat and regret, as set forth Luk 15:13; 2Ti 2:22.
Verse 10 confides “with my whole (honest) heart have I sought thee,” a worthy thing, blessed thing for every youth, 2Ch 15:12; 2Ch 15:15; 1Sa 7:3; Psa 78:37; Jer 3:10; Dan 9:3; Hos 10:2; Zep 1:5. The psalmist personally, and on behalf of Israel, appealed “O let me not wander (stray) from thy commandments,” because of danger lurking for those who do, like a lamb wandering from its shepherd and flock, 2Ch 11:16; Psa 119:176; Pro 21:16.
Verse 11 adds “thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee,” because of its restraining power, Through the conscience, the memorex system and monitor of the soul, Rom 2:14-15; Deu 6:6; Luk 2:51; 1Sa 25:29. The word of God, in mind and heart, is the best preservative against sin, Psa 37:31; Pro 7:1.
Verse 12 pronounces a praise blessing on the Lord God, requesting, “teach me thy statutes,” or cause me to learn them, I’m teachable,” is the idea: “I’m willing and desire to know and keep them,” is the spirit expressed Ezr 8:21; 1Pe 3:15; 2Pe 3:15.
Verse 13 testifies “with my lips (testimony) have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth,” a worthy act of obedient service to God, Psa 66:16; Psa 119:46; Act 1:8. Though he had “hidden His word in his heart,” v. 11, he did not keep It there; nor should one do so now, but share it with others, Deu 6:6-7; Deu 6:12.
Verse 14 relates the psalmist had rejoiced in God’s testimonies, as much as in all riches, above all accumulated wealth about him, Psa 4:7; Psa 19:10; Pro 8:18.
Verses 15,16 relate his resolve to meditate in the Lord’s precepts, have respect to His ways, delight in His statutes, and forget not His words, a resolution of high value for all men; For therein is prosperity and great spiritual health and success found, Jos 1:8; 2Jn 1:2.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
9. Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way? In this place he repeats, in different words, the same truth which he formerly advanced, That, however much men may pique themselves upon their own works, there is nothing pure in their life until they have made a complete surrender of themselves to the word of the Lord. The more effectually to excite them to this, he produces, in an especial manner, the example of children or youths. In mentioning these, he by no means gives an unbridled license to those who have arrived at mature years, or who are aged, as if they were competent to regulate their own life, and as if their own prudence served as a law to them; but because youth puts men where two ways meet, and renders it imperative for them to select the course of life which they mean to follow, he declares that, when a person sets about the regulation of his life, no advice will prove of any advantage, unless he adopts the law of God as his rule and guide. In this way the prophet stimulates men to an early and seasonable regulation of their manners, and not to delay doing so any longer, agreeably to the words of Solomon, “Remember thy Creator in thy youth, ere the days of trouble come, and the years which shall be grief unto thee,” Ecc 12:1 (402) They who defer from time to time become hardened in their vicious practices, and arrive at mature years, when it is too late to attempt a reformation. There is another reason, arising from the fact, of the carnal propensities being very powerful in youth, requiring a dortble restraint; and the more they are inclined to excess, the greater is the necessity for curbing their licentiousness. The prophet, therefore, not without reason, exhorts them particularly to attend to the observance of the law. We may reason from the greater to the less; for if the law of God possesses the power of restraining the impetuosity of youth, so as to preserve pure and upright all who take it for their guide, then, assuredly, when they come to maturity, and their irregular desires are considerably abated, it will prove the best antidote for correcting their vices. The reason, therefore, of so much evil prevailing in the world, arises from men wallowing in their own impurity, and being disposed to yield more to their own inclination than to heavenly instruction. The only sure protection is, to regulate ourselves according to God’s word. Some, wise in their own conceit, throw themselves into the snares of Satan, others, from listlessness and languor, live a vile and wicked life.
(402) — “ Et les ans qui se seront en fascherie.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
BETH.
(9) Wherewithal.There can be little question that the right rendering of this verse is By what means can a young man purify his way, so as to keep it according to Thy word? but from Jos. 6:18 we might render keep himself. The English rendering, which follows the LXX. and Vulg. is, of course, possible, but the other is more natural and more in accordance with the general drift of the psalm. The answer is supposed, or rather left to be inferred, from the whole tenor of the psalm, which is that men, and especially-young men, whose passions and temptations are strong in proportion to their inexperience, can do nothing of themselves, but are dependent on the grace of God. The omission of a direct answer rather strengthens than impairs the impression on the reader.
We must not, from the mention of youth, conclude that this psalm was written in that period of life. Perhaps, on the contrary, it is one who, like Brownings Rabbi ben Ezra, while seeking how best to spend old age, looks back on youth, not with remonstrance at its follies, but with the satisfaction that even then he aimed at the best he knew.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
, Beth.
9-16. After the general preliminary given in “Aleph,” the value of the divine word, as the guide of early life, is considered. The youthful lack of experience is compensated by its lessons, and the buoyancy of youthful spirits is sustained by its rich, joyous sympathies.
“Religion never was designed To make our pleasures less.”
Have I hid Meaning, not only I have learned it by heart, but I have hoarded it as my choice treasure. “One practises self-control,” says a Greek philosopher, “as long as he remembers thought-regulating words.” Such words are thy statutes.
I will delight myself Here is expressed the glad resolve of a young heart. The writer may have been no longer young, but he speaks from the standpoint of youth, and utters an early covenant.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Beth. Of the Distinguishing Signs of an Irreproachable Life.
v. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? v. 10. With my whole heart have I sought Thee, v. 11. Thy Word, v. 12. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, v. 13. With my lips have I declared, v. 14. I have rejoiced in the way of Thy testimonies, v. 15. I will meditate in Thy precepts, v. 16. I will delight myself,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Psa 119:9. Wherewithal shall a young man Or, Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way, that he may observe thy word? The original word zakkah, rendered, cleanse, signifies to make clean, purify. See Psa 73:13. 2Sa 11:4. But, on the whole, I consider our version as more elegant than the other given above, because it contains a fine and satisfactory answer to the question in the former clause. Have I hid, in the 11th verse, signifies, treasured up, like something of inestimable value: it may be read, Have I laid up within, &c.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 696
GODS WORD THE MEANS OF SANCTIFICATION
Psa 119:9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.
THERE is much despondency in the human mind, especially in reference to the great work of sanctification. There are many who wish to become holy; but they know not how: they would mortify sin; but they cannot: they would serve God in newness of life; but to attempt it, appears to them a hopeless task. The people of the world, if exhorted to give themselves up to God, do not hesitate to affirm that, in the existing state of things, it is impossible: and many who have begun to do this in their own strength, and found its insufficiency for so great a work, have given up in despair, and returned to their former state of carelessness and indifference. But, whilst we acknowledge the impossibility of serving God aright by any strength of our own, we must deny that it is altogether impracticable to fulfil his will. On the contrary, if any man ask, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? we are prepared to answer, that it may be done, by taking heed thereto, according to Gods word.
We have here,
I.
A difficulty proposed
How shall a young man cleanse his way?
If this question were asked in reference only to outward defilements, it would not be without its difficulties
[Consider to what temptations a young man is exposed. Those which arise from within, are exceeding great And they are continually strengthened by those occurring from without. Every thing he sees around him has a tendency to foster and to gratify some bad passion; whilst the examples on every side countenance and encourage the indulgence of it. To render evil the less formidable, every one agrees to strip it of its proper names, and to affix to it some gentle appellation that shall conceal its odiousness, and cast a veil over its deformity. Nay, as if it were not sufficient to cloke its malignity, many become its panders and its advocates, and endeavour to laugh out of the world all that squeamishness that betrays a fear of evil, and an aversion to the commission of it. Is it any wonder if young men, so circumstanced, fall into sin? or is it easy for them to keep their garments clean in such an ensnaring and polluting world as this? ]
But if the question be asked in reference to the sanctity which God requires, the difficulty will appear great indeed
[It is not a Pharisaic righteousness, a cleansing of the outside of the cup and platter, that God requires, but real holiness, both of heart and life. We must seek to be cleansed from secret faults, as well as from those which are more open; and never account our end fully accomplished, till we are pure as the Lord Jesus Christ is pure, and perfect as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. But how shall a young man so cleanse his way? How shall he mortify the whole body of sin, keeping in subjection so many unruly appetites, correcting so many unhallowed dispositions, and putting forth into constant exercise so many heavenly graces as are comprehended in real piety? Indeed, we may ask, How shall young persons of either sex so walk before God? In respect of outward decorum, females, from the restraints of education, have a great advantage: perhaps, in reference to vital godliness also, they may be considered as more favoured than the other sex, because they have more opportunity for serious reflection. But real piety is uncongenial with our fallen nature; and to attain it is no easy task to any, of either sex, or of whatever age or quality or condition. The very names by which the divine life is described in Scripture sufficiently shew that it is neither attained nor exercised without great difficulty. A race, a wrestling for the mastery, a warring of a good warfare, all require much exertion; and not for a moment only, but till the victory is accomplished. It must be confessed, therefore, that a young mans course is very difficult; that strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, in which he has to walk; and that if ever he gain the kingdom of heaven, he must take it by violence.]
Happy is it for us, however, that we have, on divine authority,
II.
The difficulty solved
To the question asked, How shall he cleanse his way? the answer is given, even by taking heed thereto according to thy word. The Holy Scriptures afford, to every human being,
1.
A sure directory
[There may doubtless be particular cases, even to our dying hour, in which it may be difficult to discover the precise line of duty. But, for the most part, the way of righteousness is clearly defined; and it is our own blindness only that makes it appear intricate or doubtful. There is no corruption of the heart which is not there condemned, nor any holy affection which is not there delineated. There every thing is described in its proper colours: piety is exalted as the perfection of our nature; and sin is declared to be an abomination in the sight of God. The example of our blessed Lord also is there portrayed with the utmost exactness; so that, whatever doubt might obscure a precept, the true light is reflected on it, and a perfect standard is exhibited before us. It cannot be through. ignorance, therefore, that any shall err, if only they will make use of the light afforded them in Gods blessed word.]
2.
Sufficient encouragement
[There is not a precept in the whole inspired volume which is not made also the subject of a promise. God has engaged to give us a new heart, and to renew within us a right spirit, and to cleanse us from our filthiness and from all our idols: so that, however inveterate any lust may be, here is provision against it; and however arduous any duty be, here is sufficient strength promised for the: performance of it. How effectual the word is, when duly improved, may be seen in the general description given of it by the Psalmist: The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned; and in keeping of them there is great reward [Note: Psa 19:7-11.], Here, whether in respect of direction or efficacy, its sufficiency for our necessities is fully declared. But yet more satisfactory is the declaration of St. Peter, when he affirms, that by the exceeding great and precious promises of Scripture we may be made partakers of the divine nature, and be enabled to escape the corruption that is in the world through lust [Note: 2Pe 1:4.]. By the word, therefore, we may cleanse our way; not externally only, but really, truly, spiritually, and to the full extent of our necessities: so that the difficulty in our text is completely solved; and to the inquiry there made, we are prepared to answer, Having these promises, dearly Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness both of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God [Note: 2Co 7:1.].]
Address
1.
Let the Scriptures of Truth be studied by you
[Do not form your standard by the opinions of men, or labour to cleanse your way by superstitious observances that have been devised by man; but look to the word of God as the proper rule of your conduct, and seek for holiness in the way that is there prescribed. Be careless in your way, and your ruin will ensue [Note: Ecc 11:9.] But let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; and you shall find it the power of God to the salvation of your souls.]
2.
Devote to piety your early youth
[Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, says Solomon. You must not stay till you are advanced in life before you cleanse your way, but engage in that work while yet you are young. In the appointment of the sacrifices which were offered under the Law, the lambs were to be but a year old: and in the first-fruits presented unto God for a meat-offering, special care was to be taken that green ears should be offered, beaten out indeed of full ears, but still green, and needing to be dried with fire before they could be ground to flour [Note: Lev 2:14-16.]. Does not this shew what use is to be made of our early youth? Methinks, it speaks powerfully: and I pray God that this day the greenest ears amongst you may be consecrated to the Lord, and receive from him some blessed tokens of his favourable acceptance. Let the youngest, who are as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word; and they shall grow thereby [Note: 1Pe 2:2.]: and let the young men have the word of God abiding in them; and they shall overcome the wicked one [Note: 1Jn 2:14.].]
3.
Live in the daily habit of self-examination
[Inward and unperceived uncleanness will come upon you, if you be not always on your guard. A mariner may be drawn from his course by currents, as well as driven by winds: and therefore from day to day, he consults his compass and his chart, to see whether there have been any deviation from his destined path. The same precautions must be used by you. You must not only examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith, but what progress you are making in the faith. Do this, beloved, daily, and with all diligence; so shall ye be blameless und harmless, the sons of God, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, shining among them as lights in the world, and holding forth in your walk and conversation the word of life [Note: Php 2:15-16.]: and be assured, that in so ordering your conversation aright, you shall at last behold the salvation of God.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
BETH.
Psa 119:9
The question here put, and with which this second part opens, is not simply intended for the youthful part, but for all. And the answer, in referring to Christ the uncreated word, and to the scriptures of Christ the written word, plainly manifests its reference to be universal. And I cannot but beg the Reader, that as he passed through the whole, of this beautiful Psalm, whenever he comes to the expression, WORD, he will pause over it, and examine whether it is not spoken of the person of Him, who is the eternal WORD, that in the beginning was with God, and is God. Oh! how blessed to look to him in all things! Joh 1:1 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 119:9 BETH. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed [thereto] according to thy word.
Ver. 9. Wherewithal shall a young man ] Semipuer, a lad, a stripling, who hath his name in Hebrew of tossing to and fro; confer Eph 4:14 , and the same word signifieth youth and tow, Isa 1:31 , or rather the shreds that fall from tow and flax, when whiffied; to note the vanity of youth, and its aptness to be enkindled, when once affections begin to boil within them. The Greek word for a youth comes from another that signifieth to be hot, and to boil up, or scald, of , and of . Such a one, therefore, had need (if ever he think to be blessed, as Psa 119:1 ) to cleanse his ways by cleaving to the word; since an impure heart and an undefiled inheritance will not stand together.
Cleanse his way
By taking heed thereto according to thy word
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
A CLEANSED WAY
Psa 119:9
There are many questions about the future with which it is natural for you young people to occupy yourselves; but I am afraid that the most of you ask more anxiously ‘How shall I make my way?’ than ‘How shall I cleanse it?’ It is needful carefully to ponder the questions: ‘How shall I get on in the world-be happy, fortunate?’ and the like, and I suppose that that is the consideration which presses with special force upon a great many of you. Now I want you to think of another question: ‘How shall I cleanse my way?’ For purity is the best thing; and to be good is a wiser as well as a nobler object of ambition than any other. So my object is just to try and urge upon my dear young friends before me the serious consideration for a while of this grave question of my text, and the answers which are given to it.
If I can get you once to be smitten with a passion for purity, all but everything is gained. But I shall not be content if even that is the issue of my pleading with you now, for I want to have you all Christians. And that is why I have asked you to listen to what I have to say to you on this occasion.
I. So, first, we have here the great practical problem for life: ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?’ Or, in other words, ‘How may I live a pure and a noble life?’ It is a question, of course, for everybody: it is the question for everybody, but it is more especially one for you young people. And I wish to urge it upon you for two or three reasons, which I very briefly specify.
First, I desire to press upon you this question, because, as I have said, you are under special temptations not to ask it. There are so many other points in your future unresolved, that you are only too apt to put aside the consideration of this one in favour of those which seem to be of more pressing and immediate importance. And you have the other temptation, common to us all, but especially attending you as young people, of living without any plan of life at all. The sin and the misery of half the world are that they live from hand to mouth, knowing why they do each single action at the moment, but never looking a dozen inches beyond their noses to see where all the actions taken together tend; and so being just like weathercocks, whirled round by every wind of temptation that comes to them. If they are good or pure they are so by accident, by impulse, or because they have never been tempted. They have no definite plan or theory of life which they could put into words if anybody asked them on what principles, and for what end, and towards what objects they were living. And as everybody is tempted into such an unreflecting way of life, so you especially are tempted to it, because at your age judgment and experience are not so strong as inclination and passion; and everything has got the fresh gloss of novelty upon it, and it seems to be sometimes sufficient delight to live and get hold of the new joys that are flooding in upon you. And therefore I want you to stop and for a moment think whether you have any plan of life that bears being put into words, whether you can tell God and your own consciences what you are living for.
And I urge this question upon you for another reason-because it is worth while for you to ask it. For you have still the prerogative that some of us have lost, of determining the shape that your life’s course is to take. The path that you are going to tread lies all unmarked out across the plain of life. You may be pretty nearly what you like. Life is before you, with great blessed possibilities; it is behind some of us. All the long years which you may probably have are all plastic in your hands yet; they are moulded into a rigid shape for men like me. We have made our beds, and we must lie on them. You have your life in your own hands; therefore, I beseech you, while you have not to ask this question with the bitter meaning with which old men that have made their paths, and made them filthy, have to ask it-’How shall an old man cleanse his way, and get rid of the filth?’-consider how you may secure that your way in the untrodden future shall be clean, and do not rest till you get an answer.
And I press it upon you for another reason, because you have special temptations to make your ways unclean. It is a fearful ordeal that every young man and woman has to face, as he or she steps across the dividing boundary between childhood and youth, when parental authority is weakened, and the leading-strings are loosened, and the young swimmer is as it were cut away from the buoys, and has to battle with the waves alone. There are hundreds of young men in Manchester, there are many of them here now, who have come up into this great city from quiet country homes where they were shielded by the safeguards of a father’s and a mother’s love and care, and have been flung into this place, with its every street swarming with temptation, and companions on the benches of the university, at the desks, in the warehouses, and the workshops, leading them away into evil and teaching them the devil’s alphabet-young men with their evenings vacant and with no home. Am I speaking to any such standing in slippery places? Oh, my young friend! there is nothing in all these temptations, the fascinations of which you are beginning to find out, there is nothing in them all worth soiling your fingers for; there is nothing in them all that will pay you for the loss of your innocence. There is nothing in them all except a fair outside with poison at the core. You see the ‘primrose path’; you do not see, to use Shakespeare’s solemn words, ‘the everlasting burnings’ to which it leads. And so I plead with you all, young men and women, to lay this question to heart; and I beseech you to credit me when I say to you that you have not yet touched the gravest and the most pressing problem of life unless you have asked yourselves in a serious mood of deep reflection, ‘Wherewithal shall I cleanse my way?’
II. So much for the first point to which I ask your attention. Now, secondly, look at this answer, which tells us that we can only make our way clean on condition of constant watchfulness. ‘By taking heed thereto.’
That seems a very plain, simple, common-sense answer. The best made road wants looking after if it is to be kept in repair. What would become of a railway that had no surfacemen and platelayers going along the line and noticing whether anything was amiss? I remember once seeing a bit of an old Roman road; the lava blocks were there, but for want of care, here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven them apart; there they were split by the frost, here was a great ugly gap full of mud; and the whole thing ended in a jungle. How shall a man keep his road in repair? ‘By taking heed thereto.’ Things that are left to go anyhow in this world have a strange knack of going one how. You do not need anything else than negligence to ensure that things will come to grief.
And so, at first sight, my text simply seems to preach the plain truth: if you want to keep your road right, look after it. But if you look at your Bibles, you will see that the word ‘thereto’ is a supplement, and that all that the Psalmist really says is ‘by taking heed.’ And perhaps it is to himself rather than to his ‘way’ that a man is exhorted to ‘take heed.’ ‘Take heed to thyself’ is the only condition of a pure and noble life.
That such a condition is necessary, will appear very plain from two considerations. First, it is clear that there must be constant watchfulness, if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into And it is also plain, if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into it.
First, it is plain if we consider what sort of a world this is that we have got into. It is a world a great deal fuller of inducements to do wrong than of inducements to do right; a world in which there are a great many bad things that have a deceptive appearance of pleasure; a great many circumstances in which it seems far easier to follow the worse than to follow the better course. And so, unless a man has learned the great art of saying ‘No!’ ‘So did not I because of the fear of the Lord’; he will come to rack and ruin without a doubt. There are more things round about you that will tempt you downwards than will draw you upwards, and your only security is constant watchfulness. As George Herbert says:-
‘Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack,
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw.’
And the same lesson is pealed out to us if we consider what sort of creatures we are that have got into this world all full of wickedness. We are creatures evidently made for self-government. Our whole nature is like a monarchy. There are things in each of us that are never meant to rule, but to be kept well down under control, such as strong passions, desires rooted in the flesh which are not meant to get the mastery of a man, and there are parts of our nature which are as obviously intended to be supreme and sovereign: the reason, the conscience, the will.
There is a deal of pestilent talk which one sometimes hears, amongst young men especially, about ‘following nature.’ Yes! I say, ‘Follow nature!’ and nature says, ‘Let the man govern the animal!’ and ‘Do not set beggars on horseback,’ nor allow your passions to guide you, but keep a tight hand on them, suppress them, scourge them, rule them by your reason, by your conscience, and by your will.
Suppose a man were to say about a steamship, ‘The structure of this vessel shows that it is meant that we should get a roaring fire up in the furnaces, and set the engines going at full speed, and let her go as she will.’ Would he not have left out of account that there was a steering apparatus, which was as plainly meant to guide as are the engines to drive? What are the rudder and the wheel for?-do they not imply a pilot? and is not the make of our souls as plainly suggestive of subordination and control? Doth not nature itself teach you that you do not follow, but outrage, nature, when you let your passions rule, and that you only then follow nature when you bow the whole man under the dominion of the conscience, and when conscience stands waiting for the voice of God?
‘Unless above himself he can erect
Himself, how mean a thing is man!’
III. This constant watchfulness, to be of any use, must be regulated by God’s Word. ‘Taking heed thereto, according to Thy word.’
The guard on the frontier who is to keep the path must have instructions from headquarters, and not choose and decide according to their own phantasy, but according to the King’s orders. Or to use another metaphor, it is no use having a guard unless the guard has a lantern, and the lantern and light is the Word of God.
That brings me to say, and only in a word or two, how inadequate for the task of regulating our own lives our own watchfulness is. Conscience is the captain of the guard, and there is only one judgment in which conscience is always and infallibly right, and that is when it says, ‘It is right to do right; and it is wrong to do wrong.’ But when you begin to ask conscience, ‘And, pray, what is right and what is wrong?’ it is by no means invariably to be trusted; for you can educate conscience up or down to almost anything; and you can warp conscience, and you can bribe conscience, and you can stifle conscience. And so it is not enough that we should exercise the most watchful care over our course, and decide upon the right and the wrong of it by our own judgments; we may be fearfully wrong notwithstanding it all. It is not enough for a man to have a good watch in his pocket unless now and then he can get Greenwich time by which he can set it, and unless that has been secured by taking an observation of the sun. And so you cannot trust to anything in yourselves for the guidance of your own way or for the determination of your duty, but you must look to that higher Wisdom that has condescended to speak to us, and give us in this Book the revelation of its will. Men rebel against the moral law of the Bible, and speak of it as if it were a restraint and a sharp taskmaster. Ah, no! It is one of the greatest tokens of God’s infinite love to us that He has not left us to grope our way amidst the illusions of our own judgments, and the questionable shapes of human conceptions of right and wrong, but that He has declared to us His own character for the standard of all perfection, and given us in the human life of the Son of His love the all-sufficient pattern for every life.
So I need not dwell at any length upon the thought that in that word of God, in its whole sweep, and eminently and especially in Christ, who is the Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guide. A guide of conduct must be plain-and whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of Christianity there is none about its morality. A guide of conduct must be decisive-and there is no faltering in the utterance of the Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstance-and the morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but deals with large principles. The morality of the Gospel, if I may so say, is a morality of centres, not of circumferences; of germinal principles, not of special prescriptions. A guide for morals must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into men’s consciences, and to work out in men’s practice, a portion of the morality of that Book. People tell us that Christianity is worn out. Ah! it will not be worn out until all its moral teaching has become part of the practice of the world, and that will not be for a year or two! The men that care least about Christian doctrines are foremost to admit that the Sermon on the Mount is the noblest code of morality that has ever been promulgated. If the world kept the commandments of the New Testament, the world would be in the Millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine-hundredths of all the sorrow, of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream. Here is the guide for you, and if you take it you will not err.
My dear young friend! did you ever try to measure one day’s actions by the standard of this Book? Let me press upon you this: Cultivate the habit-the habit of bringing all that you do side by side with this light; as a scholar in some school of art will take his feeble copy, and hold it by the side of the masterpiece, and compare line for line, and tint for tint. Take your life, and put it by the side of the Great Life, and you will begin to find out how ‘according to Thy word’ is the only standard by which to set your lives.
IV. And now I have one last thing to say. All this can only be done effectually if you are a Christian. My psalm does not go to the bottom; it goes as far as the measure of revelation granted to its author admitted; but if a person had no more to say than that, it would be a weary business. It is no use to tell a man, ‘Guard yourself, guard yourself,’ nor even to tell him, ‘Guard yourself according to God’s word,’ if God’s word is only a law .
The fatal defect of all attempts at keeping my heart by my own watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same, and so there may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. You want a power outside of you to steady you. The only way to haul a boat up the rapids is to have some fixed point on the shore to which a man may fasten a rope and pull at that. You get that eternal guard and fixed point by which to hold in Jesus Christ, the dear Son of God’s love, who has died for you.
You want another motive to be brought to bear upon your conduct, and upon your convictions and your will mightier than any that now influence them; and you get that if you will yield yourself to the love that has come down from heaven to save you, and says to you, ‘If you love Me, keep My commandments.’ You want for keeping yourself and cleansing your way reinforcements to your own inward vigour, and you will get these if you will trust to Jesus Christ, who will breathe into you the Spirit of His own life, which will make you ‘free from the law of sin and death.’
You want, if your path is to be cleansed-the youngest of you, the most tenderly nurtured, the purest, the most innocent wants-forgiveness for a past path, which is in some measure stained and foul, as well as strength for the future, to deliver you from the dreadful influence of the habit of evil. And you get all these, dear friends! in the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin.
So, standing as you do in the place where two ways meet, and with your choice yet in your power, I beseech you, turn away from the broad, easy road that slopes pleasantly downwards, and choose the narrow, steep path that climbs. Better rocks than mud, better the painful life of self-restraint and self-denial than the life of pleasing self.
Oh! choose the better portion, choose Christ for your Leader, your Law, your Lord! Trust yourselves to that great sacrifice which He made on the Cross, that all the past for you may be cleansed, and the future may be swept clear; and, so trusting, be sure He will be with you, to keep you and to guide you into the path which His own hand has raised above the filth of the world; the path of holiness, along which you may walk with feet and garments unstained till you come to Zion, ‘with songs and everlasting joy upon your heads,’ and bless Him there for all the way by which He led you home.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 119:9-16 (Beth)
9How can a young man keep his way pure?
By keeping it according to Your word.
10With all my heart I have sought You;
Do not let me wander from Your commandments.
11Your word I have treasured in my heart,
That I may not sin against You.
12Blessed are You, O Lord;
Teach me Your statutes.
13With my lips I have told of
All the ordinances of Your mouth.
14I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies,
As much as in all riches.
15I will meditate on Your precepts
And regard Your ways.
16I shall delight in Your statutes;
I shall not forget Your word.
Psa 119:9 a young man The author of Psalms 119 often expresses the need for young followers to maintain their godly living.
The pure way is defined as keeping God’s revelation (i.e., word). This demands a constant guarding (BDB 1036, KB 1581).
Psa 119:10 With all my heart See note at Psa 119:2 b.
I have sought You This verb (BDB 205, KB 233) is used often in this Psalm (cf. Psa 119:2; Psa 119:10; Psa 119:45; Psa 119:94; Psa 119:155). It denotes a diligent life of prayer, study, and worship.
wander This verb (BDB 993, KB 1413, Hiphil imperfect used in a jussive sense) is found in a negative statement in Psa 119:21; Psa 119:118. It is used only three times in Psalms, but six times in Proverbs. It was used of unintentional sins in Lev 4:13; Num 15:22. Be careful of that which causes faithful followers to take their eyes off the clearly marked paths of YHWH.
Psa 119:11 Your word I have treasured in my heart This phrasing is used of Mary’s response to the angel’s message (cf. Luk 2:19; Luk 2:51). God’s word is extremely valuable (cf. Psa 19:10; Psa 119:14 b). Is your Bible valuable to you? Do you read it, study it, do it, and teach it to others (cf. Ezr 7:10)?
This verb (BDB 860, KB 1049, Qal perfect) is literally hide and is an idiom for memorizing God’s word (cf. Job 23:12; Pro 2:1; Pro 7:1).
Psa 119:12 teach me This is a Piel imperative (BDB 540, KB 531). It is used often in Psalms 119 (cf. Psa 119:7; Psa 119:12; Psa 119:26; Psa 119:64; Psa 119:66; Psa 119:68; Psa 119:71; Psa 119:73; Psa 119:99; Psa 119:108; Psa 119:124; Psa 119:135; Psa 119:171). Truth does not come by human effort but by
1. the Spirit of God
2. God’s revelation
3. personal commitment to God
4. diligent study
5. personal application
Psa 119:13 This line of poetry implies a worship setting in the temple.
Psa 119:14 To the faithful follower God’s revelations are the most valuable things on earth (cf. Psa 19:10; Psa 119:72; Psalms 127; Pro 8:10-11; Pro 8:19).
Psa 119:15 This verse has two cohortatives.
1. meditate – BDB 967, KB 1319, Qal, cf. Psa 119:23; Psa 119:27; Psa 119:48 (twice), 78,148. Meditation on God’s word starts the Book of Psalms (cf. Psa 1:2). This meditation is illustrated in Deu 6:6-9.
2. regard – BDB 613, KB 661, Hiphil, cf. Psa 119:6; Psa 119:15; Psa 119:18
These two imply diligent study! This takes time, effort, commitment, and scheduling! See Seminar of Bible Interpretation online at www.freebiblecommentary.org.
Psa 119:16 I will delight BDB 1044, KB 1613, Hithpalpel imperfect, cf. Psa 119:24; Psa 119:35; Psa 119:47; Psa 119:70; Psa 119:77; Psa 119:92; Psa 119:143; Psa 119:174.
I will not forget BDB 1013, KB 1489, Qal imperfect, negated, cf. Pa. Psa 119:61; Psa 119:83; Psa 119:93; Psa 119:109; Psa 119:141; Psa 119:153; Psa 119:176 (the final line of Psalms 119).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
a young man. The writer not necessarily a youth.
way = path. Not the same word as in Psa 119:1.
By taking = So as to take. Put interrogation at end of the second line instead of the first.
word = the articulate subject-matter of what is said. The tenth in order of the ten words of this Psalm. See note on Psa 18:30. App-73. Not the same word as in Psa 119:11. Some codices, with Aramaean, Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate, read “words” (plural)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psa 119:9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? A vital and solemn question. His way is full of temptations, and he himself has strong passions. How shall he make his way clean, and keep it so? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Without heed he will soon be in the mire, but carefully walking with Gods word as his rule, by the blessing of Gods grace it will keep him out of sin.
Psa 119:10. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandment.
There might be thought in this confession to be some commendation of himself, and therefore he salts it with this prayer: I have sought thee, Lord, sincerely, but still, notwithstanding that, I am very apt to stray away, and I shall sadly wander unless thou keep me. O let me not wander from thy commandments.
Psa 119:11. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
The best thing put into the best place for the best of all purposes. There is no antidote against sin like the possession of the Word of God in the soul.
Psa 119:12. Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.
Thou art blessed, make me blessed. Thou art the happy God, instruct me in the way of happiness.
Psa 119:13. With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth.
I am a learner, but I have tried to be a teacher too. I have not kept the Word of God to myself as though it were only a personal treasure for me, but what I have heard in the secret-chamber of fellowship, that have I spoken on the housetops. Have you published abroad what you know? Then you are the person to learn more. When men drop their money into a money box, they have to break it to get it out again, and if they have not need of it they will not do so. God doth not care to drop his treasure into a heart that never useth it and imparteth it. Let your lips speak what your heart learns.
Psa 119:14. I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches.
If all sorts of riches were put together, I have found them all, and more than them all, in thy testimonies. I am rich in all respects when I have thee.
Psa 119:15. I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy way.
Meditation treads the wine press and gets the juice out of the grapes. A man may read too much if he reads without meditation. I will meditate. It is the harvesting by reaping of what we have sown by reading.
Psa 119:16. I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.
I will take a deep pleasure in them, and I will find an intense joy in every pondering of them. I will not forget thy word. I will never let it go out of the precincts of my memory: I will recall again and again. I will always have a text of thy precious Book ready to my tongue.
Psa 119:17. Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word.
Give me much of thy comfort, royally of thyself: deal bountifully with me: I have great necessities, am a mass of wants, therefore, Deal bountifully with me that I may live. And I have great tendencies to wander. Great risks and perils. Give me abundance of grace that I may keep thy word.
Psa 119:18. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
The wonders are there: cause me to behold them. A man may have a fair landscape before him, rich in all beauties of form and colour, but if his eyes be closed, what is he better for it?
Psa 119:19. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
I am a stranger in the earth. I do not belong now to it: I am born and bound for heaven: I am a pilgrim here: men do not understand me, neither have I any settled business here. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me. Oh, remember that I am thy alien,thy banished one: send me love-messages from the old home and loved country.
Psa 119:20. My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times.
Broken souls are many: but not on this account! Oh, how few are in danger of breaking, through such a longing as this ! Would God there were many more that did sigh and cry after the Word of God; for longings such as these are sure to lead to an earnest search, and the earnest search will increase knowledge and increase grace.
Psa 119:21. Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments.
A proud man is surely a sinful man. He may think himself a righteous man, but he cannot be so. He has gone far astray from the very essence of Gods law, which is that he should walk humbly with his God.
Psa 119:22. Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy testimonies.
A man that does that is pretty sure to be reproached and to be contemned by man; for they think that one who follows God faithfully is very old-fashioned, he has not much spirit, he has not drunk in the philosophy of the age, he is a fossilized Christian, and so on. Well, we can bear all such reproach: still are we truly glad when we escape it.
Psa 119:23. Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy servant did meditate in thy statutes.
And a great mans word goes a long way with some people. They think a prince a great authority. But thy servant did meditate in thy statutes. He did not burst out in angry reply, he did not give fierce railing for railing, but he sat himself down as quietly as he could, the more abundantly to meditate in Gods statutes. What calmness there is here, and what wisdom! for if princes should speak against us, and the great ones of the earth should rail, what matters it? If they drive us away from our faith, it would matter, but if they drive us to our Bibles, it is a benefit.
Psa 119:24-25. Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors. My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word.
Here he prays for quickening. He felt the spiritual death that was so natural to him, the heaviness of his heart, the tendency to sink, the attractions of the world.
Psa 119:26. I have declared my ways, and thou heardest me: teach me thy statutes.
Open confession is good for the soul, and I have made this confession: thou hast heard me: now teach me thy statutes.
Psa 119:27. Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.
Lord ground me and found me in thy knowledge: give me to know fully, firmly, what I do know. I would not be as a man that eats, but thinks not, whence the bread came, but I would wish to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.
Psa 119:28. My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word.
Will not this prayer suit some that are in this house this morning who are very dull and depressed? Oh, if your soul sinks, still pray and say: Strengthen thou me. You want strength, dear friends. If you had more strength, your trouble would not crush you; your soul would not melt if you had more strength and confidence.
Psa 119:29-30. Remove from me the way of lying: and grant me thy law graciously. I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me.
As a captain lays out his chart so as to keep his course correctly and safely, so I try to sail by it. I have chosen thy law, and precept, and command as my course, and I would fain keep to them.
Psa 119:31. I have stuck unto thy testimonies: 0 LORD, put me not to shame.
I am glued to them: there is no separating me, no tearing me apart, from them. O Lord, put me not to shame.
Psa 119:32. I will run the way of thy commandment, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.
I will go quicker and faster, I will have more energy, more flaming zeal, in thy service When thou shalt enlarge my heart. O Lord, it is very narrow and very contracted, I cannot think great thoughts, nor do great things, nor believe great promises, unless thou shalt enlarge my heart. Lord, give me a larger heart, stronger to obey, tenderer to love, for thy names sake!
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Psa 119:9-16
Psa 119:9-16
STROPHE 2
HE OBSERVES IT WITH HEART, LIP, AND WAY; AND REJOICES IN IT
Beth
“Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to thy word.
With my whole heart have I sought thee:
Oh let me not wander from thy commandments.
Thy word have I laid up in my heart,
That I might not sin against thee.
Blessed art thou, O Jehovah:
Teach me thy statutes.
With my lips have I declared
All the ordinances of thy mouth.
I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies,
As much as in all riches.
I will meditate on thy precepts,
And have respect unto thy ways.
I will delight myself in thy statutes:
I will not forget thy word.”
Many comments are suggested by these verses, but all of them seem to be of a very ordinary kind; and we shall allow these beautiful words to stand just as they are written.
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 119:9. God’s word is designated by a Hebrew term that is here rendered by the simple English one, which is ‘word. It is used 38 times in this chapter and indicates that. God said or spoke the document intended as a rule of action, rather than merely influencing that action of man by bodily contact or power over him. God has always proposed to lead man into righteous living by appealing to his intelligence; by saying something to him. In this verse the Psalmist is thinking especially of the young man who should cleanse his way by hearing what God says to him.
Psa 119:10. Wholeheartedness is the main thought in this verse. A halfhearted profession will cause one to wander from the commandments.
Psa 119:11. It will do very little good to depend upon a manual turning to the Word of God if we do not retain it in the heart. That is why David hid it there that he might always be fortified against sin. It is the same thought that is sugggested in 1Pe 3:15, in which one has the Lord dwelling in him through the Truth.
Psa 119:12. Bless in this place is from a word that means to praise and adore. Such adoration would logically prompt one to desire a knowledge of His statutes.
Psa 119:13. The judgments are defined at Psa 119:7. David had such faith in them that he wished to repeat them for the instruction of others.
Psa 119:14. There will not be any additional term introduced for the Word of God until verse 91. I therefore request the reader to recognize the particular term in each verse, which will be italicized, and see its definition at the proper place near the beginning of the chapter. Paul bade Christians to rejoice in the Lord (Php 3:1), and David said he would rejoice in the Lord’s testimonies.
Psa 119:15. Both parts of this verse are related to the same thought. If one meditates on the precepts of the Lord, it will cause him to show respect to the ways of life that are expected of the servants of the Lord.
Psa 119:16. We have the interesting circumstances of seeing two of the terms used in this verse. It is logical that if one takes delight in the sacred statutes, he will not forget the divine word coming from the same source.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The Clean Path
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to thy word.Psa 119:9.
1. It is a great matter to know what is the right question to put, and how to put it rightly. The secrets of nature disclose themselves to the man who knows how to question her properly; for he is already on the line of its solution when he sees clearly what the exact problem is. So also in any discussion, he who can lay aside all extraneous and irrelevant matter, and put his finger on the real point at issue, has already half won the battle; for our errors mainly arise from our mixing up of what is essential with subordinate points, the settlement of which is of no vital consequence. It is the same in the affairs of practical life. There, too, it is all-important to put clearly before our minds what is the supreme question we have to deal with as moral and responsible beings. Our character will depend on the answer to that, but the answer will not be difficult if we put the question rightly. Here we are, for a few short years, in a world of struggle and conflict, having duties to ourselves and to each other and to God, having also various endowments and various temptations. What is the line of thought which should press on each of us as the supreme matter for our most serious consideration? What is the question which every young man should put to himself as he looks out on the troubled sea of life with which he has to battle, and where he may make shipwreck if he take not heed?
2. The question of our text, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? if not absolutely the foremost, is yet among the weightiest thoughts which we should be laying to heart. There are, no doubt, still graver questions which we will do well to put to ourselves. What is the chief end of man? What is that by failing to achieve which we shall lose the very object of our existence? Or, again, What shall a man do to be saved? or yet further, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his heart? These are points of still greater moment, and carry deeper results than the question of the Psalmist here. At bottom, no doubt, he had in view the cleansing of the heart as well as of the way; for his was no shallow spirit, that cared only for mere outside behaviour. The Psalmist knew that we must begin by purifying the fountain if the stream is to be made pure. But the question, as he formally puts it, points to our actions rather than our desires and affections, and so far it is defective. Still, any young man who shall put before him the cleansing of his way as the aim which he must specially strive to reach, will surely make a very much worthier life for himself than they do who start in the race careless whether the way they take be miry or clean.
I
An Anxious Question
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
There are many questions about the future with which it is natural for young people to occupy themselves; and it is to be feared that the most of them ask more anxiously How shall I make my way? than How shall I cleanse my way? It is needful carefully to ponder the questions: How shall I get on in the worldbe happy, fortunate? and the like. But there is another and more important question: How shall I cleanse my way? For purity is the best thing; and to be good is a wiser as well as a nobler object of ambition than any other.
1. The question of the Psalmist broadly stated is this, Can a man live, in all respects and in all his paths, a pure and beautiful life? and can all his ways be clean? We know well how much the question involves; we know also what the answer means; but we can answer without hesitationas an ideal, Yes. A man can go into the world, and take his part in all natural and necessary engagements, and yet have, all through, a cleansed way. He may go into business, become a politician, enjoy pleasure, and build up a home, without inevitable stain, without wading to his object through dishonour; and is not this just what we want, to make all life what it ought to be? If the way of business were clean, if the ways of pleasure were clean, if the sanctities of domestic life were all kept unsullied, what a world it would be! What would become of fraud, and over-reaching, and plotting, and treachery, and strife, and the sickening suspicions of one another that now half choke human love and threaten to starve or poison the charities of life? We all know what would become of these things. They would die away as naturally as the mists before the advance of day. And why should it not be? Why should not a man begin life with the deep conviction that his may be a cleansed way?
2. But when the Psalmist speaks of cleansing our way, he implies that, at some points at least, our way has led us through the mire. The picture in his mind was of this sort. There stood before him a young man who had not long set out on the journey of life and who yet, to his own deep surprise and disgust, found many stains of travel already upon him. He had not meant to go wrong; as yet, perhaps, he has not gone very far wrong. And yet, where did all this filth come from? And how is it to be got rid of? And if, at the very outset of the journey, he has wandered into by-paths which have left these ugly stains upon him, what will he be like when he reaches the end of his journey? How can he hope to keep a right course, and to present himself, without spot, before God at the last? In short, how is he to make his way clean, and to keep it clean?
3. There are in our lives no isolated acts, but only ways. The wrong of which we say, Only this once, and it shall never be repeated, provokes its own repetition, starts us in its own direction. The violation of truth or integrity, with the expectation and purpose of retrieving it speedily, involves us in a labyrinth, in which we lose our way, and may never find our way back. The laws of sobriety or purity once transgressed, we have not the power which we previously thought we had to retrace our steps. We meant an act; we have found a waya precipitous way, too, on which we gain momentum with every step. A way has a direction, and leads some whither. A way is continuous; and, if we are in it, we are advancing in it. A way differs in its direction from other ways, and diverges more and more from them the farther one travels upon it. There is hardly any error so perilous as that of imagining that there can be isolated acts or states of mind. Every present has its closely affiliated future. Every deed, every reverie, every thought, is a cause. We are moving on in character, as in years. We are not to-day what we were a week ago. We are advancing either in holiness or in unholiness.
Nature moves physically towards perfection, and morally there must be the same unseen but necessary motion. For if the Darwinian theory be true, the law of natural selection applies to all the moral history of mankind, as well as to the physical. Evil must die ultimately as the weaker element in the struggle with the good. The slow consent of the worlds history is in the direction of moral goodness, as its physical development is ever toward higher forms. This progress, of course, does not necessarily embrace any particular form of life or especial race. A given race may die, or may remain stagnant. The development goes on with some new variety or form of life. Such a current of things towards righteousness, or towards physical perfection, is slow, almost imperceptible. It is like the silent motion of the stars of heaven through eternity towards one centre of the universe. But if once the theory of development be accepted and this fact be admitted, what higher evidence can be demanded of a benevolent and perfect Creator than a current of all things towards the best, a drift towards perfection, a silent, august, secular movement of all beings and forms of life, all thought and morals, all history and events towards the completely good and perfect?1 [Note: The Life of Charles Loring Brace, 302.]
Perhaps the present generation has heard more than enough about progress. Talk of that kind is an affectation that was always unprofitable, and has now become stale. Real progress needs no trumpeting. It announces itself like the flowing stream, which brawls only among the barren rocks, and is most felt as a beneficent agency that is penetrating and vitalizing in those parts where friction and noise are reduced to a minimum. True advancement is humble, earnest, practical. It is single-minded, simple-hearted devotion, ever growing in intelligence, to those grand objects which are dear to Christ and the angels, and the over-shadowing grandeur of which makes obtruding self-consciousness impossible. The Apostles advanced by forsaking the tradition of men and cleaving unto the word of the Lord, that they might do for the world what could be done in no other way. Luther advanced by bringing men up to the simple record of the New Testament, that they might find a firm footing as they passed into eternity and faced the awful facts of life and destiny. We can advance in the present day only as we come nearer to Jesus Christ, and bring others with us.1 [Note: James Stark, John Murker of Banff, 54.]
The poet sings
Our lives must climb from hope to hope,
And realize our longing,
but it is not often that the record of a mans progress towards a pronounced condition of spiritual exaltation is one of uninterrupted climbing. There are usually some prominent milestones that mark momentous crises in the journey, frequently some definite boundary to which one can point and say, This is where such a one first dedicated himself to the service of God and of his fellows. But with Quintin Hogg one can trace the ever-mounting path back to his earliest days until it is lost in the pure innocence that is Gods birth-gift to every little child. There is no apparent genesis of conviction, of dedication. From a child upward he seems to have been imbued with a sense of service owed to a Wonderful Benefactor, and though of course there must have been times of struggle and of darkness, they were principally of a mental rather than of a spiritual character, causing no interruption of his self-appointed labours and leaving no contemporary external indications of their presence.2 [Note: E. M. Hogg, Quintin Hogg, 35.]
II
A Simple Answer
By taking heed.
1. The answer, like the question of the text, is not perhaps the supremely best, but it is nevertheless very true, and needful to be borne in mind. We should begin by asking, Wherewithal shall I cleanse my heart? and the reply to that is, If any man be in Chriat he is a new creaturerenewed in the spirit of his mind after the likeness of Christ. But, allowing that, for the practical uses of life, nothing better could be said to one than this, Take heed to your ways, and direct them according to the Word of God.
For not a little of the evil of this world arises from the heedlessness of youth. We did not mean to do wrong. Very few do, at least in the beginning. There may be some who have from the first perverse and evil natures, wholly indisposed to go the right way. But on the whole these are not the common staple of human creatures. Most youths are not wishful to do wrong, but would rather, if it did not cost very much trouble, do right in the main. But they do not think as strenuously about it as they should. They are not very watchful of their conduct, or careful to guide it aright; and so they fall into a snare. It is this heedlessness, this inconsiderateness, which does not weigh seriously the step we are going to take, and the consequences it may involvethis is the beginning of many a downward course. Oh, we say, I did not think; I did not mean any wrong, and we are fain to consider that a sufficient excuse. But it is not a sufficient excuse. We ought to think. God has given us a power of seeing before and after that we may direct our steps aright; and it will not serve our purpose that we did not use that power, but blundered into the mire which we should clearly have avoided. The foremost duty of a man is to think what he is about.
The best made road wants looking after if it is to be kept in repair. What would become of a railway that had no surfacemen and platelayers going along the line and noticing whether anything was amiss? I remember once seeing a bit of an old Roman road; the lava rocks were there, but for want of care, here a young sapling had grown up between two of them and had driven them apart, there were many split by the frost; here was a great ugly gap full of mud, and the whole thing ended in a jungle. How shall a man keep his road in repair? By taking heed thereto. Things that are left to go anyhow in this world have a strange knack of going one how. You do not need anything else than negligence to ensure that things will come to grief.1 [Note: 1 A. Maclaren.]
One of the greatest of living Englishmen sums up the whole teaching of Goethe, the wisest German of the nineteenth century, in the brief citation: Gedenke, zu leben, which means literally, Think, to live. Carlyle translates, Think of living. But you will all get hold of its meaning if I say that what it comes to is this: If you would live rightly and well, you must thinkthink how it is best to live. So that, you see, two of the wisest men of our own time are of one mind with the Psalmist who lived between two and three thousand years before them. He says, If you would walk in pure and noble ways of life, think of your ways.1 [Note: S. Cox, The Birds Nest, 136.]
2. If we examine our self-consciousness, we shall find that it is never as to the qualities of actions that we feel doubt or hesitation. The questions which perplex us, and which it is unspeakably dangerous for a young person to begin to ask, are such as these: How far may I go in a wrong direction, and yet be sure to go no farther? Is there any harm in a slight compromise of principle? Can I not with ultimate safety trespass once, or a little way, on forbidden ground? Can I not try the first pleasant, attractive steps on a way which I am determined on no account to pursue farther? May I not go as far in the wrong as others are going, without reproach and without fear? Is there not some redeeming grace in companionship, so that I may venture with others a little farther than I would be willing to go alone? May not my conscience, under careful home-training and choice home-examples, have become more rigid and scrupulous than is befitting or manly in one who has emerged into comparative freedom? In these questions are the beginnings of evilthe first, it may be, fatal steps in miry ways.
If you once allow yourself to fall into a habit of evil of whatever kind, the idea that you are helpless, that you are made so, that it is your nature, will very speedily creep in and try to lay hold of your mind. Whether it be a sin of passion or of temper, which comes only at times, leaving you free to live a right and perhaps even a religious life in the intervals, and returning with a sort of easy victory in the hour of temptation, making your falls all the more miserable by their contrast with your happier and better moments; or some of those palsies of the soul which seem to benumb the willsloth for instance, or selfishness; or again, a petty fault which mars all your life without seeming ever to stain it deeply, making you ashamed, and justly ashamed, that you should find a difficulty in overcoming such a trifle; in such cases, over and above the temptation to the sin itself, there soon comes the added temptation to treat it as hopeless, to give up in despair, to reconcile yourself to your enemy, and say that you are made so, and cannot do otherwise. And this is indeed no trifling addition. The one chance of escape from habitual sin is never to intermit the struggle: do that, and you are quite sure to conquer; some better opportunity for getting power over the temptation presents itself; or the temptation seems to go away of itself, you do not know how; or it returns less and less frequently, till it returns no more; its going may be in one way or in another; but persevere in the battle, and go it surely will. Thus ere now have Christians overcome bodily temptations, to some men the severest trials of all; thus have Christians tamed down unruly temper; thus have they conquered pride and vanity; thus have they taught themselves to be true.1 [Note: Archbishop Temple.]
3. But it is not in man to direct his steps aright. Therefore God has bestowed on us what should be a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path. It is something to be heedful and to walk warily, for we are beset on all hands by snares and temptations. But that is not enough. For besides these dangers that encompass us without, we have other perils to face in the shape of false ideals, mistaken views of what a man should be and do. Therefore the Psalmist reminds us that we can cleanse our ways only by taking heed to them according to Gods Word. He meant, of course, the Law of the Lord as it had been made known to Israel of old. That was to be their practical guide in the path of duty in his day. It was not merely a doctrine they were to believe, but a commandment they must obey. And a noble law it was, of brave and manly and self-denying virtue, leading them up the steep heights of arduous duty to the fellowship of Israels God. Yet, good and precious though it was, quickening the soul to a higher life than the rest of the world dreamt of, we have now a surer word and a fairer example to direct us, a more potent inspiration also urging us to higher and holier attainments. Think of the Perfect Man, the model of holy beauty, who is in all things our example, who teaches how to be rich in poverty, how to be wise though unlearned, how to bear wrong meekly, how to be true and faithful and brave with all the world against Him, and how to forget Himself in the love He bore to all.
In St. Peter the love of God is shown in Christian example. A plain and simple mind, fixed on plain duties, finding in the great law of right a supreme satisfaction, St. Peter seems to think of our Lord chiefly as showing us what we ought to be and do, and sent by the infinite love of God for that purpose. Do Christians find their duty hard? Even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. Or, again, are Christians persecuted? They are reminded that Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust. And so throughout his writings St. Peter ever seems to think of Gods love as upholding a man in doing what it is right to do, in bearing what it is right to bear, and of Christs life as the assurance of that love.1 [Note: Archbishop Temple.]
4. In Christ, who is the Incarnate Word, we have an all-sufficient Guide on our way through life. A guide of conduct must be plainand whatever doubts and difficulties there may be about the doctrines of Christianity there is none about its morality. A guide of conduct must be decisiveand there is no faltering in the utterance of the Book as to right and wrong. A guide of conduct must be capable of application to the wide diversities of character, age, circumstanceand the morality of the New Testament especially, and of the Old in a measure, secures that, because it does not trouble itself about minute details, but deals with large principles. A guide for morals must be far in advance of the followers, and it has taken generations and centuries to work into mens consciences, and to work out in mens practice, a portion of the morality of that Book. If the world kept the commandments of the New Testament, the world would be in the millennium; and all the sin and crime, and ninety-nine-hundredths of all the sorrow, of earth would have vanished like an ugly dream.
I never saw a useful Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglect his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work, but God cannot make use of him, for there is not much for the Holy Ghost to work upon. We cannot overcome Satan with our feelings. The reason why some people have such bitter experience is that they try to overcome the devil by their feelings and experiences. Christ overcame Satan by the Word.1 [Note: D. L. Moody.]
5. The fatal defect of all attempts at keeping our heart by our own watchfulness is that keeper and kept are one and the same, and so there may be mutiny in the garrison, and the very forces that ought to subdue the rebellion may have gone over to the rebels. We want a power outside of us to steady us. We want another motive to be brought to bear upon our conduct, and upon our convictions and our will, mightier than any that now influence them; and we get that if we will yield ourselves to the love that has come down from heaven to save us, and says to us, If ye love me, keep my commandments. We want, for keeping ourselves and cleansing our way, reinforcements to our own inward vigour, and we shall get these if we will trust to Jesus Christ, who will breathe into us the spirit of His own life, which will make us free from the law of sin and death. We want, if our path is to be cleansed, forgiveness for a past path, which is in some measure stained and foul, as well as strength for the future, to deliver us from the dreadful influence of the habit of evil. And we get all these in the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanses from all sin.
How are we to be made holy? God has made full provision for it. There is wonderful provision laid down in the Word for our sanctification. First of all there is the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanseth from all sin. There is power in it to cleanse even the young mans heart. Secondly, there is the washing with the Word. You remember the Lord said to His disciples, Now, ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Thirdly, there is the keeping power of Christ Himself. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. The power of Christ to keep is another part of the provision that God has made to keep us holy. Then there is the Holy Spirit of God, whose special office on earth is to do this work of sanctification through Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ; the Word of the living God; the keeping power of Christ; the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. What a provision is this!1 [Note: J. Elder Cumming.]
Four letters that a child may trace!
Yet men who read may feel a thrill
From powers that know not time nor space,
Vibrations of the eternal will
With body and mind and soul respond
To Love and all that lies beyond.
On truths wide sea, thoughts tiny skiff
Goes dancing far beyond our speech,
Yet thought is but a hieroglyph
Of boundless worlds it cannot reach:
We label our poor idols God,
And map with logic heavens untrod.
Music and beauty, life and art
Regalia of the Presence hid
Command our worship, move our heart,
Write Love on every coffin-lid:
But infinitebeyond, above
The hope within that one word Love.2 [Note: Annie Matheson, Maytime Songs, 59.]
Literature
Cox (S.), The Birds Nest, 131.
Cumming (J. E.), in Convention Addresses delivered at Bridge of Allan, 1895, p. 59.
Griffin (E. D.), Plain Practical Sermons, ii. 465.
Hopps (J. P.), Sermons of Love and Life, 65.
Leitch (R.), The Light of the Gentiles, 157.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms li.cxlv., 281.
Murphy (J. B. C), The Service of the Master, 9.
Norton (J. N.), Warning and Teaching, 140.
Simeon (C.), Works, vi. 302.
Smith (W. C.), Sermons, 146.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, xxi. (1898), No. 22.
Wiseman (N.), Childrens Sermons, 205.
Christian World Pulpit, xii. 198 (A. P. Peabody); xxiv. 90 (H. W. Beecher); xxix. 315 (H. W. Beecher).
Church Pulpit Year Book, 1911, p. 271.
Preachers Magazine, iv. 272 (J. Feather).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
shall: Psa 25:7, Psa 34:11, Job 1:5, Job 13:26, Pro 1:4, Pro 1:10, Pro 4:1, Pro 4:10-17, Pro 5:7-23, Pro 6:20-35, Pro 7:7, Ecc 11:9, Ecc 11:10, Ecc 12:1, Luk 15:13, 2Ti 2:22, Tit 2:4-6
by taking: Psa 119:11, Psa 119:97-105, Psa 1:1-3, Psa 19:7-11, Psa 78:4-8, Deu 6:6-9, Deu 17:18, Jos 1:7, Joh 15:3, 2Ti 3:15-17, Jam 1:21-25
Reciprocal: Deu 4:15 – Take ye 2Ki 10:31 – took no heed 2Ch 34:3 – while he Neh 13:3 – when they Psa 17:4 – word Psa 39:1 – I said Psa 71:17 – thou hast Psa 103:18 – remember Pro 2:1 – hide Pro 2:11 – General Pro 6:22 – General Pro 23:26 – let Jer 3:4 – the guide Joh 17:17 – Sanctify 2Co 7:1 – let 2Ti 2:21 – purge 2Ti 3:16 – for instruction Heb 2:1 – the more
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
BETH.
Psa 119:9. Wherewith shall a young man Or, any man. But he names the young man, because such are commonly void of wisdom and experience, and exposed to many and great temptations. Cleanse his way Reform his life, or purge himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit. By taking heed thereto By diligently and circumspectly watching over himself, and examining and regulating all his dispositions and actions by the rule of thy word.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
119:9 BETH. Wherewithal shall a {a} young man cleanse his way? by taking heed [thereto] according to thy word.
(a) Because youth is most given to licentiousness, he chiefly warns them to frame their lives after God’s word.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. The cleansing power of God’s Word 119:9-16
A person can cleanse his or her conduct by obeying the Word of God (Psa 119:9). The writer testified that he had internalized and delighted in God’s Word to maintain moral purity (Psa 119:10-14). He made it a practice to think about God’s revelation continually (Psa 119:15-16).
"The act of ’hiding’ God’s word is not to be limited to the memorization of individual texts or even whole passages but extends to a holistic living in devotion to the Lord (cf. Deu 6:4-9; Deu 30:14; Jer 31:33)." [Note: Ibid., p. 740.]
"Clearly this psalm probes beyond the simplistic formulation of Psalms 1. A life of full obedience is not a conclusion of faith. It is a beginning point and an access to a life filled with many-sided communion with God." [Note: Brueggemann, p. 41.]
The word "path" (Heb. ’orah) is a synonym for "way." It occurs five times in this psalm (Psa 119:9; Psa 119:15; Psa 119:101; Psa 119:104; Psa 119:128).
Another important synonym for God’s law is "word" (Heb. dabar) that I have found 23 times (Psa 119:9; Psa 119:16-17; Psa 119:25; Psa 119:28; Psa 119:42-43; Psa 119:49; Psa 119:57; Psa 119:65; Psa 119:74; Psa 119:81; Psa 119:89; Psa 119:101; Psa 119:105; Psa 119:107; Psa 119:114; Psa 119:130; Psa 119:139; Psa 119:147; Psa 119:160-161; Psa 119:169). It is a general term for God’s revelation that proceeds from His mouth.
A poetical synonym for "word" is "saying" (Heb. ’imrah) that the translators have sometimes rendered "promise." It occurs 19 times (Psa 119:11; Psa 119:38; Psa 119:41; Psa 119:50; Psa 119:58; Psa 119:67; Psa 119:76; Psa 119:82; Psa 119:103; Psa 119:116; Psa 119:123; Psa 119:133; Psa 119:140; Psa 119:148; Psa 119:154; Psa 119:158; Psa 119:162; Psa 119:170; Psa 119:172).
Other responses to God’s Word that the writer mentioned and that occur first in this section are "rejoicing" (Psa 119:14; Psa 119:74; Psa 119:162), "meditating" (Psa 119:15; Psa 119:23; Psa 119:27; Psa 119:48; Psa 119:78; Psa 119:97; Psa 119:99; Psa 119:148), and "delighting" (Psa 119:16; Psa 119:24; Psa 119:35; Psa 119:47; Psa 119:70; Psa 119:77; Psa 119:92; Psa 119:143; Psa 119:174).