I am only a foreigner in the land. Don’t hide your commands from me!
Parallel translations
- WEB I am a stranger on the earth. Don’t hide your commandments from me.
- KJV I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
- BSB I am a stranger on the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me.
- NKJV I am a stranger in the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me.
- NASB I am a stranger on the earth; Do not hide Your commandments from me.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Conscious of being a sojourner on earth, the psalmist begs that God not hide His commandments from him. It matters because life's brevity and pilgrimage drive the believer to depend on God's guiding word.
Overview
The psalmist describes himself as a stranger passing through the earth, needing God's commandments as his guide. His sense of transience intensifies his hunger for direction. This pilgrim identity is shared by all believers, who, like Abraham, look for a lasting city and walk by God's word toward their home in Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- 1 Chr 29:15For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining.
- Ps 39:12“Hear my prayer, Yahweh, and give ear to my cry. Don’t be silent at my tears. For I am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers were.
- Heb 11:13–16These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
- Ps 119:10With my whole heart, I have sought you. Don’t let me wander from your commandments.
- Luke 24:45Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures.
- 1 Pet 2:11Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
- 2 Cor 5:6Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;
- Isa 63:17O Yahweh, why do you make us wander from your ways, and harden our heart from your fear? Return for your servants’ sake, the tribes of your inheritance.
- Gen 47:9Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”
- Luke 9:45But they didn’t understand this saying. It was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.
- Job 39:17because God has deprived her of wisdom, neither has he imparted to her understanding.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 119:19 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.