Psalm 19
Psalm 19: A Song of the Torah and of Creation
Psalms are organized around three quite general themes: psalms of
C. S. Lewis, who called
What it contains is a profound (and moving) statement of of divine what we know about God, and God’s revelation in nature, and special revelation, in Scripture. The psalm is set in two parts: verses 1–6, then verses 7–11. There is a concluding section which the psalmist applies this revelation to himself (vv. 12–14).
Walter Brueggemann calls these two parts of God’s revelation “The Big Book and the Little Book,” the big book being the universe and the little book the Bible.
This is the meaning of glory in
The psalmist says of the heavens that “day after day they pour forth speech” and of the skies that “night after night they display knowledge” (v. 2). The skies reveal the glory of God every single night of the week, every week of the year, year after year, and they have done this since their creation, which scientists tell us was about 13.8 billion years ago. There has never been a moment in the much shorter history of the human race when the heavens were not testifying to us about God! Try to take that in. This is the hugeness of an eternal God! Recently my brother went to Iceland and I have been amazed at the raw beauty of creation through his photos of red hot lava, snowy icecaps and the awesomeness of the Northern Lights, the aurora borealis. God is quite breathtaking through creation.
The image David portrays in the psalm is literally of a gushing spring that copiously pours forth the sweet, refreshing waters of revelation - the goodness of an eternal being who loves and creates and loves to create, on and on throughout the existence of the universe.
the more one looks, the more the heavens gush forth knowledge.
John Stott calls the sun “a particular example” of the universal witness to God by the heavens. But, of course, it is more than this. As David describes the sun, from his perspective it is “the crowning achievement of God’s creation.”
A “tent for the sun” might be understood as the darkness into which the sun retreats each night and from which it emerges boldly each new day. David compares the sun to a bridegroom in two aspects: “like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion” and “like a champion rejoicing to run his course.” In each case, the image conveys the ideas of youthful strength, energy, and physical joy. Of course, David did not know all we know about the sun—how it is a ball of gases, chiefly hydrogen, burning itself up in a vast nuclear reaction, yet destined to continue burning for at least six billion years more, how it is so far away from earth that light radiating from its surface takes eight minutes to get here. Yet strangely, though knowing less about the sun than ourselves, David nevertheless praised God more. He knew that the sun is God’s handiwork and that it displays his glory.
The first part of the psalm, then, is a hymn of praise to God, who has revealed himself in the glories of the universe. It is the most natural thing in the world for the psalm to turn from the revelation in nature, which all human beings possess, to that special revelation of God in Scripture, specifically given to the Jews.
This second, specific revelation in the second part of the psalm is quite superior to the first part that the style of the poem quite naturally changes.
The name used for God changes. In the first half, the name is
The second part of this psalm reminds us of its Hebrew history, where words such as
All these characteristics portray the Bible as words to be honoured and obeyed. That is how David viewed the Bible, as the Word of God to be obeyed.
This is the same relationship found in Paul’s well-known description of the Bible in 2 Timothy: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. Because the Bible is not like other books, because it is “God-breathed,” that it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training us. It’s a reminder that the Bible has so much influence and authority in our lives.
The final three verses of this psalm are a concluding section, and in them they show that the psalmist has been learning.
His response to God’s self-revelation falls into two categories.
The first is prayer that God will forgive his sin and deliver him from other sins. David is aware of sin’s subtle nature and complexity, dividing it into categories: errors, which are wrongs innocently committed; hidden faults, that is, faults unknown to himself because so deeply ingrained in his personality, certainly not hidden to God; and wilful or deliberate sins.
David also knows that he can never be fully aware of these sins in order to seek forgiveness unless God reveals their presence to him by the written law.
We might remember the prayer of the tax collector in Jesus’ well-known parable, for although it is less detailed it contains the same essential elements. The tax collector prayed, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (
