Psalm 119:52
I remembered Your judgments of old, O LORD, And have comforted myself.
In Hebrew verbs are the most important part of the sentence. Even God calls Himself, “I AM.” ”Am” is a verb – “to be” in the present tense, ongoing. Anyway, one of the things that Adam was made to do was to remember. His job was to remember what God had said. He failed to do this when his ezer failed to guard him by not believing that God had made her exactly right for her job and thinking that she could do her job better if she just listened to her heart (the one that God had given her). Adam, standing there, could have remembered and stopped her. But, that’s another story.
I learned the other day that Hebrew verbs don’t have tenses and that there wasn’t a word for “time” either. Everything was finished or not yet finished. Here’s something that might blow your mind: the word for “of old” is ‘owlam. Here’s what it means (blueletterbible.com):
1) long duration, antiquity, futurity, for ever, ever, everlasting, evermore, perpetual, old, ancient, world
a) ancient time, long time (of past)
b) (of future)
1) for ever, always
2) continuous existence, perpetual
3) everlasting, indefinite or unending future, eternity
Do you see it? This word means both antiquity and futurity, both the past and the future! Interesting how it’s so intertwined…
Anyway, David finds comfort in looking back at (remembering) the judgments of God because they remind Him that God is faithful. The covenants that God has made last from the ancient past to the indefinite future. As God has faithfully judged in the past, so He will faithfully judge in the future. God is constantly reminding His people of the things He’s done for them – bringing them out of Egypt, routing their enemies, feeding them with manna from heaven, etc.
I can’t always understand the Hebrew way of thinking about things because I am so steeped in the Greek mindset (we almost all are); however, I can look back and remember the faithfulness and judgments of God, and this is comforting.
One last note: apparently in Hebrew a thing can’t be separated from its characteristics. For example, in our language we say that the kettle is silver, assuming there’s a kettle and there’s silver and the kettle just happens to be silver. It’s like a coloring book where everything is lines, and we just happened to put some silver crayon in the kettle lines. In Hebrew it’s a silver kettle (there is no word for “is” in Hebrew). If you take away the silver, there is no kettle. There are no lines to be filled up with a little bit of this or that. You can’t separate something from its characteristics or it ceases to be. So, in Hebrew, God and faithfulness are the same thing. Take away faithfulness and there is no more God. Take away God, and there is no more faithfulness… Kind of cool, right? Now think about what that means for Christians and what our characteristics are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do (like obey the commands of God)… That’s kind of scary, huh?
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