119: Tsadhe

The letter Tsadhe [צ] symbolizes justice and righteousness in both man and God. In Hebrew, tṣadîq [צַדִּיק] is the word for righteous, and the very first word in this stanza of Psalm 119. A writer at Hebrew Today says a righteous man is “a person who safeguards and protects his eyes from evil things and protects his mouth and speech from saying bad things”.

That’s certainly part of it, though it leaves out the positive aspects of righteousness.

If we had only Genesis to work with, we might consider righteousness purely in terms of what sins a man or woman does not participate in, like Lot in Sodom, revolted by the vile behavior of his godless neighbors and pleading with them not to do what came so naturally to them. However, by the time we get to Psalms, we find tṣadîq used positively. David writes, “The righteous is generous and gives.” So there is more to righteousness than simply avoiding evil, as the New Testament later brings out.

The psalmist probably had both positive and negative aspects of righteousness in view as he uses tṣadîq and various other related words throughout these eight verses, causing the English translators to repeat the words “right”, “righteous” and “righteousness” six times in this section alone to try to get the emphasis across.

Psalm 119:137-138 — The Right Stuff

“Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules. You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness.”

Righteousness begins with God. It’s a word never used in the Eden account, probably because innocence is not righteousness. Righteousness implies the existence of that which is not right and a rejected opportunity to fail. Declining the fruit Eve offered him was Adam’s solitary opportunity to act righteously, and he failed to do so. Ever since then, fallen man has followed Adam in giving in to temptation. But God is righteous, and he has made a way for man to be righteous too, at least in a relative sense. So the psalmist begins by praising a righteous God and his upright rules [yāšār, a synonym for tṣadîq meaning “straight and level”].

To say that rules are “right” is not to suggest that God is subject to some higher standard outside himself. The rules are right because the Lord is righteous. They proceed out of his character. Thus, in appointing his testimonies in Israel, God was acting consistently with his own nature. This is the sense of the word translated “faithfulness”. It implies steadiness. There is no “shadow of turning” with God. We need never worry that obedience to the least of his principles will disappoint. Testimonies appointed in righteousness and faithfulness have a beginning-to-end internal consistency. Unlike our laws, they hang together and never contradict one another. Any apparent contradiction between two provisions of God’s law is simply evidence we have misunderstood one or both, and need to go back to meditating on them.

Psalm 119:139-141 — Small and Despised

“My zeal consumes me, because my foes forget your words. Your promise is well tried, and your servant loves it. I am small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts.”

A Well-Tried Promise

A well-tried promise is one that doesn’t just look good on paper but works out favorably when tested under pressure in the real world. One of the things I find most compelling about the word of God is that simply obeying it reliably produces better results than any direction of my own I might come up with.

Because God can be relied on to keep his promise, the psalmist loves hearing and responding to it. He cannot imagine why anyone else would not feel this way, so when his enemies show disregard for the words of God, he heats up quickly. His zeal consumes him. He is jealous for God’s reputation and for the rightness of his edicts to be made evident to all men.

I am Small …

The word translated “small” is literally “younger”, a Hebrew figure of speech for relative insignificance. It does not refer to the physical size of the individual, but to his place in the world. This comes from the ancient Hebrew custom that the eldest son received the birthright and the double portion as an inheritance from his father, with all the family responsibilities that went with it. The non-firstborn sons were, relatively speaking, “small”.

God has a way of exalting the “small”. Concerning her twins in the womb, he told Rebekah, “The older shall serve the younger [same word].” Likewise Jacob, when blessing Joseph’s sons, exalted Manasseh over Ephraim, saying “His younger brother shall be greater than he.” Saul was chosen to be king from “the humblest [same word] of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin”, and David was anointed despite being the youngest of eight sons, so insignificant he was an afterthought.

Our Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, “too little [same word] to be among the clans of Judah”.

… and Despised

In typical Hebrew fashion, this is another way of saying the much same thing. The word translated “despised” may mean literally thought of as vile or worthless, but more often it simply means to be regarded as trivial. Esau “despised” his birthright [same word], trading it for a bowl of lentils when he was hungry. It was not that he hated the blessings of God, but that he cared about his stomach more. Goliath “despised” David. He probably didn’t loathe young boys on general principle. He simply saw a youth coming into battle and refused to take him seriously as a warrior.

This idea too is associated with Christ. In the indisputably Messianic Psalm 22, David speaks for the Lord Jesus, saying, “I am … despised by the people.” Isaiah says of him, “He was despised and rejected by men.” So the psalmist finds himself in good company. He who was both small and despised is righteousness incarnate, the only human being ever to mirror God’s righteousness perfectly. He never forgot a single one of God’s precepts.

Psalm 119:142-144 — A Final Appeal

“Your righteousness is righteous forever, and your law is true. Trouble and anguish have found me out, but your commandments are my delight. Your testimonies are righteous forever; give me understanding that I may live.”

Righteous Righteousness

The biblical phrases that sound the most tautological are often most revealing when you meditate on them. It took me a long, long time to get my head around “It is for freedom Christ has set us free”, for example. Of course it is! But there is much more to it than that.

So also here. God is eternal, and the moral standards that please him today are the same as those that pleased him in times past and those that will please him in the future. His righteousness remains what it is, never dimming, diminishing or going out of style, never becoming less relevant or useful to his servants. When righteousness manifests itself in the making of laws for human beings, it is “true”, another word that connotes stability and faithfulness over time.

Trouble and Anguish

Everyone has times when trouble and anguish catch up with him. It is good to remember we are not alone. Isaiah says, again in a Messianic context, “In all their affliction he was afflicted [same word].” No wonder he tells believers to bear one another’s burdens and to weep with those who weep. These are God-like qualities. The word translated “anguish” means distress or deprivation, referring not so much to a state of mind as to the imposition of extreme hardship, though it can also serve as a metaphor for anguish of spirit, as it does in Job.

Nevertheless, in all his hardship and affliction, the psalmist takes delight in the commandments of the Lord. In Proverbs, we read that in creating our world, God’s wisdom was daily his delight. If his word is sufficient to delight God, we too should find our delight in meditating on it.

Righteous Testimonies

Summing up what he has been saying, the psalmist points to the testimonies of the Lord, which are “righteous forever”. It is these testimonies or evidences of God’s righteousness and faithfulness to which he clings when his spirit needs refreshment.