We all love the psalms so I thought I would share with you what I found in Spurgeon's book called Treasury of David and as far as I am concerned it is a treasure.
The Rabbis say that there are five books of the Torah and in them God tells us how to walk.
There are five books of the psalms and we pray to God and ask Him to guide us in His way.
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We will go through the psalms beginning with Psalm one and I will just put down what struck me.
Psalm 1
This psalm could be considered as a Preface to all the psalms. In this one psalm you have the contents of the entire book of Psalms and really the contents of the entire Bible.
It is short of composure but full of length and strength as to the matter.
verse 1-Happy is the one (man) that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful
It starts off with v1- Blessed but the Hebrew has ashrai which means happy and in a sense this is the better translation since God blesses -and the word happy is like the state that we are in if we follow God's lead.
The psalmist wishes to teach us the way to happiness and it is to walk in God's way.
Haish is emphatic in the Hebrew and it can mean that man or that one among a thousand who lives for the accomplishment of the end for which God created us.
Tuesday August 19
Verse 2 But he delights in the law of the Lord. and in His law meditates day and night.
In the Hebrew law is translated Torah which means the first five books of the Tanak(which is the Hebrew Bible) so when we read "law" the psalmist is speaking of the first five books of the Tanak.
The Rabbis say that someone is up all night studying the Bible in case someone comes to ask them a question about the Scriptures.
The psalmist says that we are not under the law but we delight in the book as a rule of life. ( We could say the same about the Gospel-our rule of life)
We should meditate on it by day and think upon it at night. We take a text and carry it with us by day and think upon it at night. This is what St. Francis of Assisi would do.
So we could look lightly upon a Scripture and see nothing;meditate upon it and there we shall see a light , like the light of the sun.
To meditate as it is generally understood, signifies to discuss, to dispute; and it is always confined to a person employed in words, as in Psalm 32 verse 30"the mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom." Augustine has, in his translation,"chatter" and a beautiful metaphor it is-as chattering is the employment of birds, so a continual conversing in the Torah of the Lord should be our work.
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