music :: worship :: life
The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.
—Martin Luther
How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
—Psalm 1:1-2 (NASB-U)
The word translated as meditate here is the Hebrew hagah. It means groan, speak, declare, utter, growl, or muse. So the image here is not of a person who silently ponders and thinks about God’s Word, but who speaks it aloud—perhaps reciting scripture from memory, declaring it to others, or softly uttering favorite passages under his breath.
To me, this calls to mind William Wilberforce, who in his later years lived fifteen minutes walk from Parliament. He had memorized Psalm 119, the longest chapter of the Bible, and recited it every morning on his way to work. It took exactly 15 minutes to recite. I picture this lawmaker slowly making his way through the London fog, bent and twisted by the disease that was distorting his body, reciting the Psalmist’s ode to the glory of God’s perfect Law. Traveling the same route every day, each phrase would become associated with a landmark along the way. I find it ironic that the first verse of Psalm 119 is about walking with integrity. The Hebrew word tamim translated as integrity or blamelessness, literally means straight, upright. And although his flesh could not walk straight or upright, who in history has walked a path more straight, more steady, more steadfast? Wilberforce had committed prodigious swaths of scripture to memory. Some have even said he could recite as much as a fifth of the Bible from memory. While this must surely be an exaggeration—one of those legends that grows up around people of greatness—there is no doubt that his intimate and detailed scripture knowledge and his incessant meditation (hagah) upon it was the source of his greatness. He was only a little over five feet tall, and appeared much shorter because he could not stand upright. Yet he towered over his peers. Truly a giant in the land.
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