Psalm 119:67 NKJV
67
Before I was afflicted I went astray,
But now I keep Your word.
Finding Strength in Trials
My Notes
The Mountain Top vs. The Valley
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When life feels easy, we’re often more vulnerable to complacency and sin.
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But trials humble us, bringing us to our knees, seeking God’s grace and presence.
Keep Running the Race
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Just like a runner ahead in a race shouldn’t look back, believers must stay focused on the path God sets.
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Looking around at worldly distractions can lead to stumbling.
God Knows What We Need
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The Lord understands our hearts better than we do.
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He allows hardship—loss, sickness, conflict—not out of cruelty, but to prepare our hearts, just as a farmer prepares the ground for planting (Isaiah 28:24–29).
Purpose of Discipline and Trials
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Trials draw us back to God, His Word, and worship.
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Though discipline feels painful in the moment, Hebrews 12:11 reminds us it yields “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” for those trained by it.
The Spiritual Cycle
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Struggle leads to seeking, seeking leads to truth, and truth leads to spiritual growth and peace.
It’s a reminder that even painful seasons can be purposeful.
David reflects on personal growth from adversity in Psalm 119:67, acknowledging that prior to affliction, he wandered from God’s word. The commentaries below emphasize that trials often serve as essential reminders to keep faith and stay aligned with God’s teachings. Afflictions foster humility and promote spiritual development, correcting errant behavior and deepening one’s devotion to God. The text suggests that while prosperity can lead to straying, trials bring individuals back, allowing for a more profound understanding of holiness and obedience. Ultimately, afflictions are framed as a divinely orchestrated means to enhance spiritual growth and awareness.
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 67, which is in the 9th section, which is called “Teth ט”. According to the hebrews4christians.com website, this letter is listed as “TET where the NKJV lists it as “TETH”, the letter Teth ט is the 9th letter of the Aleph-Bet, having the numeric value of nine. The pictograph for Teth ט looks like a snake coiled inside a basket.
The website https://www.abarim-publications.com/Hebrew_Alphabet_Meaning.html defines the meaning of the letter TETH as:
“The origin of the teth is a bit of a mystery. Klein derives from טות (twh), spin, and renders teth to knot, knot together, to twist into each other, to interweave. The letter teth indeed looks like a little vortex or spiral.”
……..Bill
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Commentaries:
Charles Spurgeon
“Before I was afflicted I went astray.” Partly, perhaps, through the absence of trial. Often our trials act as a thorn hedge to keep us in the good pasture, but our prosperity is a gap through which we go astray. If any of us remember a time in which we had no trouble, we also probably recollect that then grace was low and temptation was strong. It may be that some believer cries, “O that it were with me as in those summer days before I was afflicted.” Such a sigh is most unwise, and arises from a carnal love of ease: the spiritual man who prizes growth in grace will bless God that those dangerous days are over, and that if the weather be more stormy, it is also more healthy. It is well when the mind is open and candid, as in this instance: perhaps David would never have known and confessed his own straying if he had not smarted under the rod. Let us join in his humble acknowledgments, for doubtless we have imitated him in his straying. Why is it that a little ease works in us so much disease? Can we never rest without rusting? Never be filled without waxing fat? Never rise as to one world without going down as to another! What weak creatures we are to be unable to bear a little pleasure! What base hearts are those which turn the abundance of God’s goodness into an occasion for sin?
“But now have I kept thy word.” Grace is in that heart which profits by its chastening. It is of no use to plough barren soil. When there is no spiritual life, affliction works no spiritual benefit; but where the heart is sound, trouble awakens conscience, wandering is confessed, the soul becomes again obedient to the command, and continues to be so. Whipping will not turn a rebel into a child, but to the true child, a touch of the rod is a sure corrective. In the Psalmist’s case:
the medicine of affliction worked a change—”but;”
an immediate change—”now;”
a lasting change—”have I“
an inward change—”have I kept;”
a change towards God—”thy word.“
Before his trouble, he wandered, but after it, he kept within the hedge of the word, and found good pasture for his soul: the trial tethered him to his proper place; it kept him, and then he kept God’s word. Sweet are the uses of adversity, and this is one of them; it puts a bridle upon transgression and furnishes a spur for holiness.
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Enduring Word
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word: The psalmist speaks here of lessons learned the hard way. There was a time when he was far more likely to go astray from God’s word and the wise life revealed in it. Yet, under a season of affliction, he was now devoted to the word of God. (Guzik)
i. This principle has been demonstrated in nearly everyone who has pursued God. This is one reason why God appoints affliction for His people (1 Thessalonians 3:3).
ii. “Often our trials act as a thorn hedge to keep us in the good pasture, but our prosperity is a gap through which we go astray.” (Spurgeon)
iii. Bridges relates an old church prayer: In all time of our wealth – Good Lord, deliver us! “A time of wealth is indeed a time of special need. It is hard to restrain the flesh, when so many are the baits for its indulgence.” (Bridges)
iv. “As the scourging and beating of the garment with a stick beateth out the moths and dust, so do afflictions [beat out] corruptions from the heart.” (Trapp)
v. “Many have been humbled under affliction, and taught to know themselves and humble themselves before God, that probably without this could never have been saved; after this, they have been serious and faithful. Affliction sanctified is a great blessing; unsanctified, it is an additional curse.” (Clarke)
vi. “We gain solace here by remembering what the Bible says even of Jesus, ‘Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered’ (Hebrews 5:8).” (Boice)
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Albert Barnes
Before I was afflicted – The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, “Before I was humbled.” The Hebrew word has the general sense of being afflicted, and may refer to any kind of trial.
I went astray – The Hebrew word means to wander, to err, to do wrong, to transgress. Numbers 15:28; Job 12:16. It here means that he forgot his duty; that he fell into sin; that he departed from what was right; that he embraced erroneous views; that he lived in the neglect of his soul, the neglect of duty, and the neglect of God. Prosperity had not led him to fulfill duty, to seek salvation, to trust in God. This was, in his case, as it is in thousands of others, the experience of his life. Hence, affliction often becomes so necessary to check us when we are going astray, and so useful in recalling us to the ways of duty and of truth.
But now have I kept thy word – Since I was afflicted. The effect has been to recall me from my wanderings and to turn me to paths of duty and holiness. This is an effect often – very often – experienced; this is language which can be used by many a child of God. Of those who are the children of God, it may be said that they are “always benefited sooner” or “later” by afflictions. It may not be at the time of the affliction (compare Hebrews 12:11), but the “ultimate” effect is in all cases to benefit them. Some error is corrected; some evil habit changed; some mode of life not consistent with religion is forsaken; pride is humbled; the heart is quickened in duty; habits of prayer are resumed or formed; the affections are fixed on a better world; the soul is made more gentle, calm, humble, spiritual, pure. Afflictions are among the most precious means of grace. They are entirely under the direction of God. They may be endlessly varied and adapted to the case of every individual.
God knows every heart, and the best way to reach any heart. By sickness; by disappointment; by loss of property; by bereavement; by blighted hopes; by the ingratitude of others; by the unkindness of professed friends, and the malice of enemies; by domestic troubles; by the misconduct of children – perhaps the most severe of all human ills, and the hardest to bear; in ten thousand ways God can reach the heart, and break and crush it, and make it ready for the entrance of truth – as the farmer breaks and pulverizes the soil by the plow and the harrow, so that it shall be prepared to receive the seed. Compare the notes at Isaiah 28:24-29. Among those things for which good men have most occasion for thankfulness are afflictions; and when we lie down on the bed of death, and look over life and the divine dealings with us through life, as the glories of heaven are about to open upon us, we shall feel that among the chiefest mercies of God are those dealings of his holy hand, trying at the time, which kept us from going astray, or which recalled us when we had wandered from him – and “that in our life, now closing, there has not been one trial too much.”
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John Gill
Before I was afflicted, I went astray,…. From God; from his word, his ways and worship; like a lost sheep from the shepherd, the fold, the flock, and the footsteps of it; see Psalm 119:176; Not that he willfully, wickedly, maliciously, and through contempt, departed from his God; this he denies, Psalm 18:21; but through the weakness of the flesh, the prevalence of corruption, and force of temptation, and very much through a careless, heedless, and negligent frame of spirit, he got out of the right way, and wandered from it before he was well aware. The word is used of erring through ignorance, Leviticus 5:18; this was in a time of prosperity, when, though he might not, like Jeshurun, wax fat and kick, and forsake and lightly esteem the Rock of his salvation; or fall into temptations and harmful lusts, and err from the faith, and be pierced with many sorrows, as too much love of the world brings men into; yet he might become inattentive to the duties of religion, and be negligent of them, which is a common case;
but now have I kept thy word: having been afflicted with outward and inward afflictions, afflictions of body and mind; afflictions in person, in family and estate; afflictions in soul, through indwelling sin, the temptations of Satan, and the hidings of God’s face: all this brought him back again to God, to his word, ways, and worship; he betook himself to reading and hearing the word, if he might find any thing to relieve and comfort him under his trials; he observed the doctrines of grace in it, and kept the precepts of it, and walked in all the commandments and ordinances of it, being restored by afflictions.
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Matthew Henry
David here tells us what he had experienced,
1. Of the temptations of a prosperous condition: “Before I was afflicted, while I lived in peace and plenty, and knew no sorrow, I went astray from God and my duty.” Sin is going astray, and we are most apt to wander from God when we are easy and think ourselves at home in the world. Prosperity is the unhappy occasion of much iniquity; it makes people conceited of themselves, indulgent of the flesh, forgetful of God, in love with the world, and deaf to the reproofs of the word. See Ps. 30:6. It is good for us, when we are afflicted, to remember how and wherein we went astray before we were afflicted, that we may answer the end of the affliction.
2. Of the benefit of an afflicted state: “Now have I kept thy word, and so have been recovered from my wanderings.” God often makes use of afflictions as a means to reduce those to himself who have wandered from him. Sanctified afflictions humble us for sin and show us the vanity of the world; they soften the heart and open the ear to discipline. The prodigal’s distress brought him to himself first and then to his father.
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Miscellaneous Comments
“Before I was afflicted.” Prosperity is a more refined and severe test of character titan adversity, as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.
—Eliza Cook.
Man like a silly sheep doth often stray,
Not knowing of his way,
Blind deserts and the wilderness of sin
He daily travels in;
There’s nothing will reduce him sooner than
Afflictions to his pen.
He wanders in the sunshine, but in rain
And stormy weather hastens home again.
Thou, the great Shepherd of my soul, O keep
Me, my unworthy sheep
From gadding: or if fair means will not do it,
Let foul, then, bring me to it.
Rather then I should perish in my error,
Lord bring me back with terror;
Better I be chastised with thy rod
And Shepherd’s staff, than stray from thee, my God.
Though for the present stripes do grieve me sore,
At last they profit more,
And make me to observe thy word, which I
Neglected formerly;
Let me come home rather by weeping cross
Than still be at a loss.
For health I would rather take a bitter pill,
Than eating sweet meats to be always ill.
—Thomas Washbourne, 1606-1687.
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Cross-References
Jeremiah 31:18 (KJV)
18 I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus;
Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised,
As a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke:
Turn thou me, and I shall be turned;
For thou art the Lord my God.
Hebrews 12:5–11 (KJV)
5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? 8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. 9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. 11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
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Closing Thoughts
Appreciation of the Mystery
Ephesians 3:14-21 NKJV
14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,
17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height
19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,
21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
New King James Version
ט TETH: God’s word brings benefit from a time of affliction.
65
You have dealt well with Your servant,
O Lord, according to Your word.
66
Teach me good judgment and knowledge,
For I believe Your commandments.
67
Before I was afflicted I went astray,
But now I keep Your word.
68
You are good, and do good;
Teach me Your statutes.
69
The proud have forged a lie against me,
But I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart.
70
Their heart is as fat as grease,
But I delight in Your law.
71
It is good for me that I have been afflicted,
That I may learn Your statutes.
72
The law of Your mouth is better to me
Than thousands of coins of gold and silver.
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