119: Zayin

I don’t always believe everything Hebrew scholars say about their alphabet (or anything else). As I may have mentioned, they have a tendency to be whimsical.

Nevertheless, they suggest the letter Zayin [ז] represents movement and struggle, not to mention the number seven. Literally, it means “weapon” or “sword”, and looks like one — or so it is claimed — if you angle your eyeballs exactly the right way when you squint at it.

I’m still trying to see it, but then I’m about as Hebrew as a polar bear. To me it looks more like a club or maybe a wooden mallet.

On to the Zayin portion of Psalm 119 …

Psalm 119:49-50 — Comfort in Affliction

“Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.”

Probably not by coincidence, this is the seventh section of the psalm, the seventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the first of seven times the psalmist mentions affliction. This is not to say he has portrayed his life thus far as a walk in the park, but his concerns have been limited to the anticipation of verbal abuse and the failure of his public testimony. Now, in the section of the psalm headed with a letter symbolizing struggle and conflict, he speaks of genuine suffering.

In the Old Testament, affliction is associated with slavery, being unloved, the shame of being unable to conceive, the predations of invaders, great labors, sickness, poverty and punishment. The pain may be emotional or physical, but it is all consuming and intense. Interestingly, our psalmist doesn’t identify the specifics of his affliction, leaving his readers able to relate to all possible options. Our God cares for the afflicted and gives comfort to those in need.

The psalmist’s hope in his affliction is not a miraculous change of fortune at the moment it would please him, but rather the word and promise of God, which in his good time he will always — ALWAYS — fulfill. It is these in which he hopes, and these in which he takes comfort. Comfort doesn’t always change our circumstances, anymore than Isaac’s love for Rebekah could bring his mother Sarah back from the dead. Nevertheless, comfort provided him with a way through his grief to the other side.

Psalm 119:51-53 — Comfort in the Rules

“The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law. When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O Lord. Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law.”

The Insolent

The psalmist is probably referring to the same people in verse 53 as in verse 51: they are insolent, mocking the servant of God, but they are also wicked. Having set aside the law of God, they draw their strength from the numbers they can muster to agree with them. This is a meaningless metric — a day is coming in which, for a moment at least, nobody will oppose the wicked as the godly will have vanished from the earth, and yet good will remain good and evil will remain evil notwithstanding. Moral truths are objective realities, not to be redefined or inverted at the whim of the majority.

That said, numbers provide the wicked with the illusion of comfort, just as the 450 prophets of Baal probably thought their numbers would save them from the sword of Elijah. Again, much like Elijah, hot indignation seizes the psalmist as he looks at men and women brazenly forsaking the law of God, though it did not manifest in taking up the sword. Most times it does not.

At any rate, perhaps we can get a little better idea about the source of the psalmist’s affliction from these verses. It may have been similar to the “torment” of Lot’s righteous soul described in 2 Peter, over “the lawless deeds he saw and heard” in Sodom.

Rules from of Old

The psalmist takes comfort in “your rules from of old”. There’s something lovely about moral principles and directions that stand the test of time. Woke ideology is a comparatively new flip of the moral compass, but it is already showing its gray hairs and needs a kind hand and the help of a walker to get it to the nursing home. Depending on which bit of woke virtue signaling you mean, anywhere between 54% (puberty blockers for under sixteens) and 70% (‘trans women’ in women’s sports) of the population now say they oppose it. Woke culture will not last no matter how hard it is pushed because it does not reflect reality. It’s a man-made system of thinking, not eternal truth. It has no staying power.

In contrast, the Lord’s rules are “from of old”. They worked then, and they work now. If there are rules that applied then and don’t today (and there are a few of these), there are also sound, logical reasons for the changes, which the word of God clearly explains.

That’s comforting. We can trust God’s directions to be for our good. They have been tried and proved to work time and time again.

Psalm 119:54-56 — A Song, a Blessing and a Memory

“Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law. This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.”

Songs in the House

Verse 54 is a lovely turn of phrase. The “house of my sojourning” may refer to the body in which man dwells or the world in which he lives, but either way, the children of Israel were sojourners with God. In Leviticus, the Lord calls Israel “strangers and sojourners with me”. David makes this personal in the psalms when he writes, “I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.” Hebrews too speaks of men and women of old who died in faith, not having received the promises, but acknowledging they were strangers and exiles on earth.

This natural alienation from the world might be debilitating if we thought the world our home, but it’s not. Hebrews again speaks of “a better country, a heavenly one”. This is what we seek, and it’s not surprising some of us sing on the way there. And if you’re going to sing, what better to sing about than eternal truth?

Your Name in the Night

As I’ve gotten older, I can’t count the number of times I wake up a little after midnight and can’t get back to sleep. Nothing provides a more effective mental reset in the quiet and dark than reaching for my backlit Kindle and looking up a chapter of Daniel, Hebrews or John. The other night on a whim it was Ruth, and what a lovely story it is on so many levels.

That may not be exactly the sort of thing the psalmist had in mind. For one thing, he would have needed to light a candle rather than a Kindle. For another, his wife might have objected. But the line works as well metaphorically as literally: in dark times there is nothing more needful than men and women who will remember the name of the Lord and keep his laws regardless of the consequences. In view of the “affliction” he mentions in this same passage, it may be these moments to which he is referring.

This Blessing Has Fallen

The ESV is a little misleading here in introducing the word “blessing” more or less out of nowhere. As true as it may be that keeping the Lord’s precepts is conducive to happiness, there is certainly nothing in the Hebrew to suggest the text is best translated that way. The vast majority of translators link it to the previous verse with something like “This is my practice, I obey your precepts.”

May it be our practice too.