The Blessing of Living Bountifully in Faith

Psalm 119:17 NKJV

Deal bountifully with Your servant,
That I may live and keep Your word.

My Thoughts

We need to look at this verse as a prayer for the bountiful grace by which we can live in obedience to God our Father. It is by His grace (unmerited favor) that we are able to live and survive. This verse emphasizes the necessity of divine mercy for spiritual and physical life, highlighting that true life aligns with holiness. As a servant, the psalmist humbly requests blessings not based on merit but on God’s goodness. The section is linked to the letter Gimel, symbolizing the rich man’s charity towards the poor, reflecting the grace believers receive. Ultimately, the prayer expresses a desire for life to be used to honor and follow God’s commandments faithfully.

Psalm 119 is an acrostic pattern. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet; each of the 22 sections is given a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line in that section begins with that letter. Today, we’re looking at verse 17, which is in the 3rd section which is called Gimel ג. According to the hebrews4christians.com website: “the letter Gimmel is the third letter of the ‘Aleph-Bet’, having the numerical value of three. The pictograph for Gimmel is a camel. In the Talmud, it is said that the Gimmel symbolizes a rich man running after a poor man (the next letter Dalet) to give him tzedakah (charity).”

…..Bill

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Commentaries:

Charles Spurgeon

“Deal bountifully with thy servant.” He takes pleasure in owning his duty to God, and counts it the joy of his heart to be in the service of his God. Out of his condition, he makes a plea, for a servant has some hold upon a master; but in this case, the wording of the plea shuts out the idea of legal claim, since he seeks bounty rather than reward. Let my wage be according to thy goodness, and not according to my merit. Reward me according to the largeness of thy liberality, and not according to the scantiness of my service. The hired servants of our Father have all of them bread enough and to spare, and he will not leave one of his household to perish with hunger. If the Lord will only treat us as he treats the least of his servants, we may be well content, for all his true servants are sons, princes of the blood, heirs of life eternal. David felt that his great needs required a bountiful provision, and that his little desert would never earn such a supply; hence, he must throw himself upon God’s grace, and look for the great things he needed from the great goodness of the Lord. He begs for a liberality of grace, after the fashion of one who prayed, “O Lord, thou must give me great mercy or no mercy, for little mercy will not serve my turn.”

“That I may live.” Without abundant mercy, he could not live. It takes great grace to keep a saint alive. Even life is a gift of divine bounty to such undeserving ones as we are. Only the Lord can keep us in being, and it is mighty grace which preserves to us the life which we have forfeited by our sin. It is right to desire to live, it is meet to pray to live, it is just to ascribe prolonged life to the favor of God. Spiritual life, without which this natural life is mere existence, is also to be sought of the Lord’s bounty, for it is the noblest work of divine grace, and in it the bounty of God is gloriously displayed. The Lord’s servants cannot serve him in their own strength, for they cannot even live unless his grace abounds towards them.

“And keep thy word.” This should be the rule, the object, and the joy of our life. We may not wish to live and sin, but we may pray to live and keep God’s word. Being is a poor thing if it be not well being. Life is only worth keeping while we can keep God’s word; indeed, there is no life in the highest sense apart from holiness: life while we break the law is but a name to live.

The prayer of this verse shows that it is only through divine bounty or grace that we can live as faithful servants of God and manifest obedience to his commands. If we give God service, it must be because he gives us grace. We work for him because he works in us. Thus, we may make a chain out of the opening verses of the three first octaves of this Psalm: Psa 119:1 blesses the holy man, Psa 119:9 asks how we can attain to such holiness, and Psa 119:17 traces such holiness to its secret source, and shows us how to seek the blessing. The more a man prizes holiness and the more earnestly he strives after it, the more will he be driven towards God for help therein, for he will plainly perceive that his own strength is insufficient, and that he cannot even so much as live without the bounteous assistance of the Lord his God.

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Enduring Word

Deal bountifully with Your servant: This is a wonderful request: boldly asking for blessing (deal bountifully), while at the same time coming humbly before God (Your servant). The servant properly depends upon the master for his bounty. (Guzik)

i. In saying, Deal bountifully, the psalmist was asking for a lot, not just a little. “The believer, like [the psalmist], is a man of large expectations…. We may, indeed, be too bold in our manner of approach to God; but we cannot be too bold in our expectations from him.” (Bridges)

That I may live and keep Your word: This is why the psalmist asked for God’s blessing. It was not for personal indulgence or even comfort, but so that God’s word might be lived and kept. This is a wonderful, God-honoring prayer that is heard in heaven.

As the rest of this section will demonstrate, the psalmist prayed this because of great problems and pressures that had beset him. This section of the psalm shows us that the author was a man who had suffered deeply. He had known persecution (Psalm 119:22-23), deprivation and fear for his life (Psalm 119:17), seasons when he seemed to get nothing from God’s word (Psalm 119:18), and loneliness, rejection, and a sense of abandonment (Psalm 119:19-20).

In the midst of these trials, he wanted to live, not only surviving, but also a better quality of life, especially in regard to God.

(Guzik)

i. That I may live: “[This] is the first of many such prayers…. While some of them could refer simply to surviving an illness or an attack, others are clearly qualitative, speaking of life that is worthy of the name, or in our terms, spiritual life, found in fellowship with God.” (Kidner)

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Albert Barnes

Deal bountifully … – This commences the next portion of the psalm, indicated by the letter Gimel (ג g), the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, answering to our letter “g.” Each verse of this portion of Psalms 119:17-24 begins with this letter. There is a resemblance between the first word of this verse – גמל g^emol – and the letter – “Gimel” – which commences the eight verses of this portion of the psalm. The noun (derived from the verb) – גמל gâmâl – means a camel, and the letter gimel has been supposed to have derived its name from its having originally a resemblance to the camel’s neck. In some of the Phenician inscriptions, and in the Ethiopic alphabet, it has this form (Gesenius, “Lex”). The verb used here means to do, or show, or cause good or evil to anyone, and then to reward, or to recompense, either good or evil. Here it seems to be used in a general sense of doing good, or showing favor, as in Psalms 13:6; Psalms 116:7; Psalms 142:7. Compare Proverbs 11:17. It does not necessarily imply that the author of the psalm had any claim, or demanded this on the ground of merit. He begged the favor, the friendship, the interposition of God in his behalf.

That I may live – The continuance of life was dependent on the favor of God.

And keep thy word – For grace to do this he was equally dependent on God; and he asked that life might be continued, in order that he might honor the word of God by obeying it.

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John Gill

Deal bountifully with thy servant,…. Which character is mentioned, not by way of plea or argument for favour, but as expressive of modesty, sense of duty, and obligation to it. He pleads not his services by way of merit, but prays that God would deal bountifully with him, in a way of grace and mercy, or “render good” unto him, as the Targum; bestow it on him as a free gift. The Lord deals bountifully with men when he gives himself unto them as their portion and inheritance; his Son, and all things along with him; his Spirit, and the graces of it; and every daily needful supply of grace;

[that] I may live, and keep thy word; life natural is the bounty of God; he grants life and favor, he grants life as a favor, and all the mercies and blessings of it; and through the gracious dealings of God with his people, they live spiritually and live comfortably; in his favor is life; the life of faith is encouraged and invigorated in them by it; and eternal life is the free gift and bounty of God through Christ, by whom they have both a right unto it and meetness for it: and the desire of good men to live in this world is not to indulge themselves in carnal lusts and pleasures; not to live to themselves, nor to the lusts of the flesh, nor to the will of men; but to live soberly, righteously, and godly; to live by faith in Christ, and in hope of eternal life through him; and while they live to keep the word of God, and not forget it, as Aben Ezra interprets it, to lay it up for their own use, and preserve it for others, and observe its instructions, cautions, and directions.

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Matthew Henry

We are here taught,

1. That we owe our lives to God’s mercy. David prays, Deal bountifully with me, that I may live. It was God’s bounty that gave us life, that gave us this life; and the same bounty that gave it continues it, and gives all the supports and comforts of it; if these be withheld, we die, or, which is equivalent, our lives are embittered and we become weary of them. If God deals in strict justice with us, we die, we perish, we all perish; if these forfeited lives be preserved and prolonged, it is because God deals bountifully with us, according to his mercy, not according to our deserts. The continuance of the most useful life is owing to God’s bounty, and on that we must have a continual dependence.

2. Therefore, we ought to spend our lives in God’s service. Life is therefore a choice mercy, because it is an opportunity of obeying God in this world, where there are so few that do glorify him; and this David had in his eye: “Not that I may live and grow rich, live and be merry, but that I may live and keep thy word, may observe it myself and transmit it to those that shall come after, which the longer I live the better I shall do.”

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Adam Clarke

Deal bountifully — גמל gemol, reward thy servant. Let him have the return of his faith and prayers, that the Divine life may be preserved in his soul! Then he will keep thy word. From גמל gamal, to reward, &c., comes the name of ג gimel, the third letter in the Hebrew alphabet, which is prefixed to every verse in this part, and commences it with its own name. This is a stroke of the psalmist’s art and ingenuity.

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Miscellaneous Quotes

“Deal bountifully…that I may keep thy word,” etc. A faithful servant should count his past service richly rewarded by being employed yet more in further service, as this prayer teacheth; for David entreats that he may live and keep God’s word.

—David Dickson.

“Deal bountifully with thy servant,” etc. These words might be—Render unto thy servant, or upon thy servant. A deep signification seems to be here involved. The holy man will take the responsibility of being dealt with, not certainly as a mere sinful man, but as a man placing himself in the way appointed for reconciliation. Such we find to be the actual case, as you read in Psa 119:16, in the part immediately preceding—“I will delight myself in thy statutes; I will not forget thy word.” Now, the statutes of the Lord referred preeminently to the sacrifices for sin, and the cleansing for purifications that were prescribed in the Law. You have to conceive of the man of God as being in the midst of the Levitical ritual, for which you find him making all preparations: 1 Chronicles 22-24. Placing himself, therefore, upon these, he would pray the Lord to deal with him according to them; or, as we, in New Testament language, would say,—placing himself on the great atonement, the believer would pray the Lord to deal with him according to his standing in Christ, which would be in graciousness or bounty. For if the Lord be just to condemn without the atonement, he is also just to pardon through the atonement; yea, he is just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.

—John Stephen.

“Bountifully.” And indeed, remembering what a poor, weak, empty, and helpless creature the most experienced believer is in himself, it is not to be conceived that anything short of a bountiful supply of grace can answer the emergency.

—Charles Bridges.

“That I may live.” As a man must “live” in order to work, the first petition is, that God would “deal with his servant,” according to the measure of grace and mercy, enabling him to “live“ the life of faith, and strengthening him by the Spirit of might in the inner man.

—George Horne, 1730-1792.

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Cross-References

Psalm 116:7 (KJV )

⁷ Return unto thy rest, O my soul;

For the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.

John 1:16 (KJV )

¹⁶And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.

Ephesians 2:5 (KJV )

⁵Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

Ephesians 2:10 (KJV )

¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Philippians 4:19 (KJV )

¹⁹But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

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Closing Thoughts

“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.” Psalm 91:14-16 NKJV

Gimel ג: The word of God and the trials of life.

Deal bountifully with Your servant,
That I may live and keep Your word.

Open my eyes, that I may behold

Wondrous things from Your law.

I am a stranger in the earth;
Do not hide Your commandments from me.

My soul is crushed with longing
After Your ordinances at all times.

You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed,
Who wander from Your commandments.

Take away reproach and contempt from me,
For I observe Your testimonies.

Even though princes sit and talk against me,
Your servant meditates on Your statutes.

Your testimonies also are my delight;
They are my counselors.