Psalms 119:92

EVEN in those Psalms which are not associated with any particular chapter of history, we can often trace out the trail of the writer's experience and track his soul through its wanderings. His reflections become vivid with intense reality. The meditation now before us is evidently prompted by some event deeply carved on the writer's memory. "Unless Your Law had been my delights, I should then have perished in my affliction." We know nothing of the time or circumstance when the heart was terrified, when the nerves were shaken, when the weakness of nature asserted itself—the veil is wisely drawn over the sharp pains or sullen griefs that bowed the sufferer down and we are simply solaced with a song celebrating his deliverance out of all his troubles and fears. Possibly his affliction was long, but certainly it reached a crisis so perilous that his life then trembled in the balance! He was then ripe for destruction, ready to have perished. Moreover, it is noteworthy that whatever his trial may have been, whether it was a sickness or a disaster, or any other manner of adversity, he refers to it as his own—he calls it, "my affliction." It would ill become us, therefore, to pry into the cause or fashion of his grief, or to ask any further questions. Quite likely I may be addressing some dear child of God who is vexed with an affliction so personal and so peculiar that he feels it to be "his own," and would deem it an intrusion for another to interfere. Let us not intrude, for we should only increase the grief by our enquiries. "My affliction" is an expression that bears a marked emphasis and has a tone entirely its own. I do not know whether I am more struck with its pathos or its reticence.

"Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction." That word which has preserved the heavens and the earth also preserves the people of God in their time of trial. With that word we are charmed; it is a mine of delight to us. We take a double and treble delight in it, and derive a multiplied delight from it, and this stands us in good stead when all other delights are taken from us.

Unless thy law had been my delights - Had we not had the consolations of religion, we should long ago have died of a broken heart.

Unless thy law had been my delights - See Psa 119:16, note; Psa 119:24, note. Unless I had had pleasure in thy law, thy word, thy truth; unless I had derived support and consolation in that. I should then have perished in mine affliction - I should have sunk under my burden. I should not have been able to hold up under the weight of sorrow and trial. How often the people of God can say. this! How often may each one in the course of his life say this! “I should have sunk a thousand times,” said a most excellent, but much afflicted, man to me, “if it had not been for one declaration in the word of God - ‘The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’“