32
I will run the course of Your commandments,
For You shall enlarge my heart.
My Thoughts
Quite a journey from verse 119:25 until now, from clinging to the dust to running in the way of God’s commandments. David confessed his sins, went through depression, learned to speak of the Lord’s wonders, and had his sins forgiven. David’s desire is that by these things he is able to run in the path that the Lord has laid out for him, with energy and a passion for the Lord. I think William Bridge gives us the right idea when he said, “The secret of Christian energy and success is a heart enlarged in the love of God.” You can see the “enlarged heart” in someone’s life by the charity, love, and confident expectation of good that is displayed in the way that they live; the evidence of the Holy Spirit in them.
In Psalm 119:32, David expresses a commitment to diligently pursue God’s commandments with enthusiasm, reflecting a transformative journey from despair to active faith. Commentators highlight the necessity of divine assistance; the heart must be “enlarged” by God to fulfill this commitment. This enlargement symbolizes a spiritual awakening, allowing for greater love, joy, and freedom to obey. The act of running in devotion showcases a zealous and earnest attitude toward God’s teachings, emphasizing that true obedience stems from a liberated heart. Overall, these reflections stress an explosive relationship between human effort and divine grace in spiritual growth.
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 32, the final verse of 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
A Path to Spiritual Energy
Commentaries:
Matthew Henry
That the more comfort God gives us the more duty he expects from us, v. 32. Here we have,
1. His resolution to go on vigorously in religion: I will run the way of thy commandments. Those that are going to heaven should make haste thither and be still pressing forward. It concerns us to redeem time and take pains, and to go on in our business with cheerfulness. We then run the way of our duty, when we are ready to it, and pleasant in it, and lay aside every weight, Heb. 12:1.
2. His dependence upon God for grace to do so: “I shall then abound in thy work, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.“ God, by his Spirit, enlarges the hearts of his people when he gives them wisdom (for that is called largeness of heart, 1 Ki. 4:29), when he sheds abroad the love of God in the heart, and puts gladness there. The joy of our Lord should be wheels to our obedience.
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Charles Spurgeon
“I will run the way of thy commandments.” With energy, promptitude, and zeal, he would perform the will of God, but he needed more life and liberty from the hand of God.
“When thou shalt enlarge my heart.” Yes, the heart is the master; the feet soon run when the heart is free and energetic. Let the affections be aroused and eagerly set on divine things, and our actions will be full of force, swiftness, and delight. God must work in us first, and then we shall will and do according to his good pleasure. He must change the heart, unite the heart, encourage the heart, strengthen the heart, and enlarge the heart, and then the course of the life will be gracious, sincere, happy, and earnest; so that from our lowest up to our highest state in grace we must attribute all to the free favor of our God. We must run; for grace is not an overwhelming force which compels unwilling minds to move contrary to their will: our running is the spontaneous leaping forward of a mind which has been set free by the hand of God, and delights to show its freedom by its bounding speed.
What a change from Psa 119:25 to the present, from cleaving to the dust to running in the way. It is the excellence of holy sorrow that it works in us the quickening for which we seek, and then we show the sincerity of our grief and the reality of our revival by being zealous in the ways of the Lord.
For the third time, an octave closes with, “I will.” These “I wills“ of the Psalms are right worthy of being each one the subject of study and discourse.
Note how the heart has been spoken of up to this point: “whole heart“ (Psa 119:2), “uprightness of heart“ (Psa 119:7), “hid in mine heart“ (Psa 119:11), “enlarge my heart.” There are many more allusions further on, and these all go to show what heart work David’s religion was. It is one of the great lacks of our age that heads count for more than hearts, and men are far more ready to learn than to love, though they are by no means eager in either direction.
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Enduring Word
I will run the course of Your commandments: After beginning low in the dust, now the psalmist is running. He has moved in a beautiful progression, from confessing to choosing to clinging to running. (Guzik)
For You shall enlarge my heart: The psalmist comes back to a familiar theme, not only of the greatness of God’s word, but also of his acute sense of weakness and dependence upon God. He must have his heart enlarged: made bigger, stronger, better, and more steadfast. His confidence is that God would do this through His word. (Guzik)
“The remedy, therefore, is in that enlargement, which embraces a wider expanse of light, and a more full confidence of love…. He does not say – I will make no efforts, unless thou work for me; but if thou wilt enlarge – I will run. Weakness is not the plea for indolence, but for quickening grace…. The secret of Christian energy and success is a heart enlarged in the love of God.” (Bridges)
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Albert Barnes
I will run the way of thy commandments – That is, I will not merely keep them, which might be expressed by “I will walk in them,” but I will hasten to keep them; I will do it with alacrity, as when one runs to accomplish an object. I will devote to them all the energies of my life.
When thou shalt enlarge my heart – Or, more literally, “For thou wilt enlarge my heart;” expressing confidence that God would do this, so that he would be thus inclined and enabled to keep his commandments. It is an acknowledgment of dependence, and at the same time, the expression of a confident belief that God would grant him the grace needful for him. The phrase “to enlarge the heart” means to make it free; to deliver it from all hindrances to what is right; to fill it with noble and holy purposes; to stimulate and animate it. The heart is contracted or made narrow by selfishness, pride, vanity, ambition, covetousness; it is made large by charity, love, hope, benevolence. Sin narrows the soul; religion enlarges it.
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John Gill
I will run the way of thy commandments,…. Not only walk but run in it, which is expressive of great affection to the commands of God, of great readiness and cheerfulness, of great haste and swiftness in the way of them, and of great delight and pleasure therein;
when thou shall enlarge my heart; with the knowledge of God, his word, ways, worship, and ordinances; with his love more fully made known, and with an increase of love to him; with the fear of him, and a flow of spiritual joy and peace; and when delivered from straits and difficulties, from weights and pressures, and everything that may hinder walking or running; and being in circumstances which may lead and encourage to the one as to the other; see 1 Kings 4:29, Isaiah 60:5.
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Explanatory Sayings
And exactly in accordance with this view of the enlargement of heart, which the Psalmist desired, is the practical result which was to follow on its attainment. He was already walking in the way of God’s commandments, but what he proposed to himself was the running that way: “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.” A quickened pace, a more rapid progress, a greater alacrity, a firmer constancy, a more resolute and unflinching obedience, these were the results which the Psalmist looked for from the enlargement of his heart. And truly, if all the faculties of mind and body be dedicated to God, with a constant and vigorous step will man press on in the way that leadeth to heaven. So long as the dedication is at best only partial, the world retaining some fraction of its empire, notwithstanding the setting up of the kingdom of God, there can be nothing but a slow and impeded progress, a walking interrupted by repeated halting, if not backslidings, by much of loitering, if not of actual retreat; but if the man be all heart, then he will be all life, all warmth, all zeal, all energy, and the consequence of this complete surrender to God will be exactly that which is prophetically announced by Isaiah:“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”—Henry Melvill, 1798-1871.
This running, as it is the fruit of effectual calling, so it is very needful; for cold and faint motions are soon overborne by difficulty and temptation: “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us“ (Heb 12:1). When a man hath a mind to do a thing, though he be hindered and jostled, he takes it patiently, he goes on and cannot stay to debate the business. A slow motion is easily stopped, whereas a swift one bears down that which opposeth it; so is it when men run and are not tired in the service of God. Last of all, the prize calls for running: “So run that ye may obtain“ (1Co 9:24).—Thomas Manton.
“I will run.” It was not the walking, “the way of God’s commandments,” but the running, “the way of God’s commandments,” to which David aspired. The text has no connection with the case of one who habitually pursues the opposite path; it has exclusive reference to the pace at which the line of duty is to be traversed… It may not unnaturally excite surprise, that “the sweet singer of Israel“—he who was emphatically declared to be “a man after God’s own heart“—should, nevertheless, in the words of the text, seem to imply that he was not yet “running the way of God’s commandments.” But, dear brethren, the greater an individual’s comparative holiness, the more intense will be his longing for absolute holiness. To others, David might appear to be speeding marvelously along the path of life; and yet he himself deemed his movements to be far less rapid. It is humility that was one of the evidences of his holiness. —Hugh B. Moffat, 1871.
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Cross-References
Hebrews 12:1 (KJV)
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
1 Kings 4:29 (KJV)
29 And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore.
Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)
31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings as eagles;
They shall run, and not be weary;
And they shall walk, and not faint.
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Closing Thoughts
Jude:
20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
21 keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,
And to present you faultless
Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
25 To God our Savior,
Who alone is wise,
Be glory and majesty,
Dominion and power,
Both now and forever.
Amen.
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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