Advent Blog Day 4, Daleth -- Pslam 119:25-32

The fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the letter "Daleth".  The Hebrew word "daleth" refers to "the thing you draw" and references a "door" which you draw to let someone in or after you when you go out.  It is also used figuratively of the lips as the door to one's mouth.  An example of this representation may be found in Psalm 141:3.  Remember to keep in mind that each line of the Hebrew text begins with a word begun by this letter:
         My soul clings to the dust; revive me in accordance with Your word.
         I have declared my way, and You have answered me; train me in Your laws.
         Make me understand the way of Your precepts, that I may study Your wondrous acts.
         I am racked with grief; sustain me in accordance with Your word.
         Remove all false ways from me; favor me with Your teaching.
         I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I have set Your rules before me.
         I cling to Your decrees; O LORD, do not put me to shame.
         I eagerly pursue Your commandments, for You broaden my understanding.
     It is interesting that only three different words begin the lines of the Hebrew text: the verbs "cling" and "racked with grief" (its actually a verb in the Hebrew literally meaning "to melt away" or "to pour forth as water") and the noun "way".  Each of the verbs reference a state of extreme sorrow.  The first clause of verse 25 could be rendered "my self-identity, my inner being with its thoughts and emotions is inextricably linked with the dust of the earth in utter defeat and humiliation."  Likewise, the first clause of verse 28 could read "my self-identity, my inner being with its thoughts and emotions is being poured out in complete sorrow, grief, and great loss like water running out of a colander."  Both verses reveal the Psalmist to be very very sorrowful.
     If you spend any time at all reading the Psalms or perusing the life stories of the major characters in the Bible you will find heaps and heaps of sorrow and grief.  Jesus Himself showed sorrow on many occasions and was even counted "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" by the prophet Isaiah.  The Apostle Paul frequently states his great sorrow and concern over the churches he has ministered to.  How often we too find ourselves in this same mental and spiritual state brought on by our humanity and its ongoing effects in and around our lives!  In each case, however, the cure is the power and reality of God's Word and the total necessity to get it into our hearts and minds!  We must "open the door" so-to-speak of our hearts and minds and get It into us.  The effects mentioned here are revival, sustaining, and the removal of shame.  This thought is climaxed in the book of Revelation when Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears My voice and opens the door I will come into him and eat with him and he with Me." (Revelation 3:20)
     In the other five verses of this stanza our "D" word is "derek" which means "path, journey, or way."  When we go out and close the door behind us this is what we follow.  The Psalmist is deeply concerned with supplanting his own "false ways" with God's teaching and in hotly pursuing the ways of God as revealed in His Word.  Jesus echoed this desired when He said, "enter by the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it, because narrow is the gate, and constricted is the road that leads to life, and there are few who find it!" (Matthew 7:13-14)   The worldview informed by the Bible insists that the only way to conduct the course of one's life and the only way to live and behave everywhere we go and are is the way in complete conformity to the paths described, delineated, and decreed in the Scriptures!  As the Psalmist says, "I cling to, or am inextricably linked, with Your decrees!"  That is the path Jesus spoke of in the passage in Matthew.
     As we close I pray that we may seek the solace and succor of God's Word when we find our inner being clinging to the dust or being poured out like water.  May we so link the path of our lives with the path of God's Word that we can't see where one ends and one begins!  May we earnestly desire for any falsehood in our lives to be surgically removed by the Holy Spirit and the scrubbing action of the Word of God!  May our hearts soar as we study the myriad of God's wonderful acts, and may both our comings and goings be marked by the presence of the Living God in the form of His Spirit and His Word!

Here is a song to accompany this meditation

Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), Ps 119:25–32.

W. Hall Harris, III, The Lexham English Bible (Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2010), Mt 7:13–14.