Psalm 119:26 NKJV
26
I have declared my ways, and You answered me;
Teach me Your statutes.
My Thoughts
The two things that jumped out at me with this verse are the need we have for an open communication with our Father. David shows confidence in knowing that if he declares his ways, then God will answer him. Then, knowing that God has heard him, he goes further and asks that the Lord would teach him, not that he could learn God’s ways on his own, but that the Lord would teach him. I wonder if John was thinking of this scripture when he wrote:
1Jo 5:14-15 KJV – 14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.
In Psalm 119:26, this verse highlights the importance of confession, demonstrating that we must openly declare our ways to receive divine understanding and learning. The commentaries below reveal that sincere confessions bring about God’s mercy, and David seeks to be taught God’s statutes, signifying a desire for spiritual growth. Overall, the verse encapsulates a journey toward understanding and adherence to God’s teachings amid life’s challenges.
Note: 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 26, which is in the 4th section, which is called ד DALETH. According to the hebrews4christians.com website, the letter Daleth is the 4th letter of the Aleph-Bet, having the numeric value of four. The pictograph for Dalet looks something like a closed (hanging) tent door. The bent shape of the valet symbolizes a needy person who is bent over; the meaning of the word Daleth is poor or impoverished, and it represents the lowliness of possessing nothing of one’s own. As a door, Daleth also symbolically represents the choice to open ourselves to the hope of our dreams or to remain closed off and alienated.
The eight verses of “ד DALETH” alphabetically arranged:
Verse 25. (D)epressed to the dust is my soul: quicken thou me according to thy word.
Verse 26. (D)eclared have I (to thee) my ways, and thou heardest me: teach me thy statutes.
Verse 27. (D)eclare thou to me the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.
Verse 28. (D)ropping (marg.) is my soul for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word.
Verse 29. (D)eceitful ways remove from me; and grant me thy law graciously.
Verse 30. (D)etermined have I upon the way of truth; thy judgments have I laid before me.
Verse 31. (D)eliberately I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, put me not to shame.
Verse 32. (D)ay by day I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.
—Theodore Kubber.
…..Bill
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Commentaries:
William Cowper
“I have declared my ways,” etc. This verse contains a prayer, with a reason after this form:—‘O Lord, I have oft before declared unto thee the whole state and course of my life, my wanderings, my wants, my doubts, my griefs: I hid nothing from thee, and thou, according to my necessity, didst always hear me: therefore now, Lord, I pray thee to teach me; by thy light illuminate me that I may know thy statutes and receive grace to walk in them.’ This is a good argument in dealing with the Lord,—’I have gotten many mercies and favorable answers from thee; therefore, Lord, I pray thee to give me more;’ for whom he loves, he loves to the end; and where he begins to show mercy he ceaseth not till he crown his children with mercy. And so gracious is the Lord, that he esteems himself to be honored as oft as we give him the praise that we have found comfort in him, and therefore come to seek more.
Next, it is to be marked how he saith, “I have declared my ways, and thou heardest me:” these two go well together, Mercy and Truth: truth in the heart of man confessing; mercy in God, hearing and forgiving: happy is the soul wherein these two meet together. Many there are who are destitute of this comfort; they cannot say, God hath heard me, and all because they deal not plainly and truly with the Lord in declaring their ways unto him.
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Charles Spurgeon
“I have declared my ways.” Open confession is good for the soul. Nothing brings more ease and more life to a man than a frank acknowledgment of the evil which has caused the sorrow and the lethargy. Such a declaration proves that the man knows his own condition and is no longer blinded by pride. Our confessions are not meant to make God know our sins, but to make us know them.
“And thou heardest me.” His confession had been accepted; it was not lost labor; God had drawn near to him in it. We ought never to go from a duty till we have been accepted in it. Pardon follows upon penitent confession, and David felt that he had obtained it. It is God’s way to forgive our sinful way when we from our hearts confess the wrong.
“Teach me thy statutes.” Being truly sorry for his fault, and having obtained full forgiveness, he is anxious to avoid offending again, and hence he begs to be taught obedience. He was not willing to sin through ignorance, he wished to know all the mind of God by being taught it by the best of teachers. He pined after holiness. Justified men always long to be sanctified. When God forgives our sins, we are all the more fearful of sinning again. Mercy, which pardons transgression, sets us longing for grace, which prevents transgression. We may boldly ask for more when God has given us much; he who has washed out the past stain will not refuse that which will preserve us from present and future defilement. This cry for teaching is frequent in the Psalms; in Psa 119:12 it followed a sight of God, here it follows from a sight of self. Every experience should lead us thus to plead with God.
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Enduring Word
I have declared my ways…teach me Your statutes: The idea behind I have declared my ways is that the psalmist told God everything about himself and his life. He confessed fully and freely before God. (Guzik)
i. “Can each one of us now say, in this sense, ‘I have declared my ways’ to the Lord? For this should be done, not only at our first coming to him, but continually throughout the whole of our life. We should look over each day, and sum up the errors of the day, and say, ‘I have declared my ways,’ – my naughty ways, my wicked ways, my wandering ways, my backsliding ways, my cold, indifferent ways, my proud ways.’” (Spurgeon)
ii. The psalmist had a wonderful liberty in conversation; he spoke to God as a dear friend. “How often do we treat our Almighty Friend as if we were weary of dealing with him!” (Bridges)
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Albert Barnes
I have declared my ways – That is, I have declared or recounted them to thee. I have made mention of my cares, troubles, anxieties, and purposes. I have laid them all before thee, reserving or keeping back nothing.
And thou heardest me – Thou didst answer me. It is only when we declare all our ways before God, that we can hope he “will” hear us. It is right and proper that we should go before God with all our cares and troubles. There is nothing that gives us anxiety, of which we may not speak to him, however trivial it may seem to be – even as a child speaks to a mother of the smallest matter that troubles him. When this is done, we may be assured that God will not turn away from us, or disregard our cry.
“I told him all my secret grief;
My secret groaning reached his cars;
He gave my inward pains relief,
And calmed the tumult of my fears.”
Teach me thy statutes – Make known to me thy will. Acquaint me with what thou wouldst have me to do. See Psalms 119:12.
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John Gill
I have declared my ways,…. That is, to the Lord; either the ways he had chose and desired to walk in, and not wander from, and therefore entreated help and assistance, guidance and direction, in them; or his sinful ways and actions, which he acknowledged and confessed, lamented and bewailed, and entreated the forgiveness of; or all his counsels and cares, his affairs and business, in which he was concerned, and which he declared and committed to the Lord, to be directed and assisted in; or all his wants and necessities, which he spread before him at the throne of grace; which he did not as though the Lord was ignorant of these things, but partly as knowing it was the will of God that he should be inquired of by his people, to do the things for them they want; and partly to ease his own mind, and encourage his faith and hope in the Lord;
and thou heardest me: and directed him in the way he should go, and what he should do; forgave him his sins, and supplied his wants;
teach me thy statutes; which he desired to learn and obey, in gratitude for being heard and answered by him;
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Matthew Henry
The great intimacy and freedom that had been between David and his God. David had opened his case, opened his very heart to God: “I have declared my ways, and acknowledged thee in them all, have taken thee along with me in all my designs and enterprises.” Thus Jephthah uttered all his words, and Hezekiah spread his letters, before the Lord. “I have declared my ways, my wants, and burdens, and troubles, that I meet with in my way, or my sins, my by-ways (I have made an ingenuous confession of them), and thou heardest me, heardest patiently all I had to say, and tookedst cognizance of my case.” It is an unspeakable comfort to a gracious soul to think with what tenderness all its complaints are received by a gracious God, 1 Jn. 5:14, 15.
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Adam Clarke
I have declared my ways — ספרתי sipparti, “I have numbered my ways,” I have searched them out; I have investigated them. And that he had earnestly prayed for pardon of what was wrong in them, is evident; for he adds, “Thou heardest me.”
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Miscellaneous Quotes
“Declared.” As if he had read them out of a book. The saints know their ways. A man that hath light with him seeth the way, and can tell you all about it; another is in darkness and knoweth nothing: the one taketh observation of his course, the other doth not.
“Thou hast heard me.” God’s goodness is seen in his hearing what we lay open before him. If great ones let a poor man tell his tale at large, we count it honorable patience; but it is God’s glory to hear our wants, our weakness through sin, the invincibleness of our evils, our utter impotency in ourselves even to seek redress. That mode of procedure would lose the favor of man, but it winneth favor with God. The more humbly we confess all our wants, the more confident we may be that God will hear us. He teacheth the humble, for the humble scholar will give to his master the honor of that he learns.
“I have rehearsed (said with myself) my ways;” and “thou hast heard my private confession.” “I have declared to others what my way is, and thou hast heard me,“ so discoursing; wherefore “teach me,” seeing I communicate what I receive. It is a plea derived from his carefulness to learn, and from the use he had made of that he had learned. The godly, like candles, light each other.
—Paul Bayne.
“Teach me thy statutes.” The often repetition of this one thing in this Psalm argues,
1. The necessity of this knowledge.
2. The desire he had to obtain it.
3. That such repetitions are not frivolous when they proceed from a sound heart, a zealous affection, and a consideration of the necessity of the thing prayed for.
4. That such as have most light have little in respect of what they should have.
5. As covetous men think they have never gold enough, so Christian men should think they have never knowledge enough.
—Richard Greenhorn.
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Cross-References
Psalm 119:12 (KJV )
12 Blessed art thou, O Lord:
Teach me thy statutes.
Psalm 86:11 (KJV )
11 Teach me thy way, O Lord; I will walk in thy truth:
Unite my heart to fear thy name.
Psalm 25:4 (KJV )
4 Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths.
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Closing Thoughts
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:1-5 NKJV
ד DALETH
25
My soul clings to the dust;
Revive me according to Your word.
26
I have declared my ways, and You answered me;
Teach me Your statutes.
27
Make me understand the way of Your precepts;
So shall I meditate on Your wonderful works.
28
My soul melts from heaviness;
Strengthen me according to Your word.
29
Remove from me the way of lying,
And grant me Your law graciously.
30
I have chosen the way of truth;
Your judgments I have laid before me.
31
I cling to Your testimonies;
O Lord, do not put me to shame!
32
I will run the course of Your commandments,
For You shall enlarge my heart.
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