Oh, how I love Your law! All day long it is my meditation.
Parallel translations
- WEB How I love your law! It is my meditation all day.
- KJV O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.
- NKJV Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.
- NASB ¶How I love Your Law! It is my meditation all the day.
- NLT Oh, how I love your instructions! I think about them all day long.
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
The psalmist exclaims how deeply he loves God's law, making it his meditation all day long. Love for the word fills his every waking thought.
Overview
Opening the MEM stanza, the psalmist bursts out in heartfelt affection for God's law, which occupies his mind continually. This is not cold legalism but warm devotion to the God who speaks. Such delight in Scripture mirrors the blessed man of Psalm 1 and finds its perfection in Christ, who loved and lived by the Father's word (Ps. 1:2; John 4:34).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Ps 1:2But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.
- Prov 2:10For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will delight your soul.
- Ps 119:159Consider how I love Your precepts, O LORD; give me life according to Your loving devotion.
- Ps 119:48I lift up my hands to Your commandments, which I love, and I meditate on Your statutes.
- Josh 1:8This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in all you do.
- Deut 17:19It is to remain with him, and he is to read from it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by carefully observing all the words of this instruction and these statutes.
- Ps 119:167I obey Your testimonies and love them greatly.
- Ps 119:127Therefore I love Your commandments more than gold, even the purest gold.
- Deut 6:6–9These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts.
- Ps 119:165Abundant peace belongs to those who love Your law; nothing can make them stumble.
- Ps 119:113The double-minded I despise, but Your law I love.
- Prov 18:1He who isolates himself pursues selfish desires; he rebels against all sound judgment.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 119:97 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.