Psalm 119 (29 of 190 notes)

25. My soul cleaveth unto the dust. He means in part that he was full of sorrow; for mourners in the east cast dust on their heads, and sat in ashes, and the psalmist felt as if these signs of woe were glued to him, and his very soul was made to cleave to them because of his powerlessness to rise above his grief. Does he not also mean that he felt ready to die? Did he not feel his life absorbed and fast held by the grave’s mold, half choked by the death-dust? It may not be straining the language if we conceive that he also felt and bemoaned his earthly-mindedness and spiritual deadness. There was a tendency in his soul to cling to earth which he greatly bewailed. Whatever was the cause of his complaint, it was no surface evil, but an affair of the inmost spirit; his soul cleaved to the dust; and it was a continuous and powerful tendency. But what a mercy that the good man could feel and deplore whatever there was of evil in the cleaving! Many are of the earth, and never lament it; only the heaven-born and heaven-soaring spirit pines at the thought of being fastened to this world and bird-limed by its sorrows or its pleasures.

Quicken thou me according to thy word. More life is the cure for all our ailments. Only the Lord can give it. He can bestow it at once, and do it according to his Word, without departing from the usual course of his grace, as we see it mapped out in the Scriptures. It is well to know what to pray for; David seeks quickening: one would have thought that he would have asked for comfort of upraising, but he knew that these would come out of increased life, and therefore he sought that blessing which is the root of the rest. When a person is depressed in spirit, weak, and bent towards the ground, the main thing is to increase his stamina and put more life into him. The phrase according to thy word means “according to thy revealed way of quickening thy saints.” The Word of God shows us that he who first made us must keep us alive, and it tells us of the Spirit of God who through the ordinances pours fresh life into our souls. Perhaps David remembered the word of the Lord in Deuteronomy 32:39, where Jehovah claims both to kill and to make alive, and he beseeches the Lord to exercise that life-giving power.

Note how this first verse of the 4th octave tallies with the first of the third (verse 17)—“that I may live.”