Psalms 119:96
I have seen a limit to all perfection, but Your commandment is without limit.
BSB
ASV
I have seen an end of all perfection; But thy commandment is exceeding broad. מ MEM.
KJV
I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Matthew 24:35Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.
leads to
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
but the word of the Lord stands forever.” And this is the word that was proclaimed to you.
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?
so My word that proceeds from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will accomplish what I please, and it will prosper where I send it.
For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Through
Matthew 5:18For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
leads to
But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a single stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.
Your word, O LORD, is everlasting; it is firmly fixed in the heavens.
Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.
I have seen an end of all perfection - The word which is here rendered “perfection” - תכלה tiklâh - occurs only in this place; but a similar word from the same root - תכלית taklı̂yth - occurs in the following places: in Neh 3:21, and Job 26:10, rendered “end;” in Job 11:7; Job 28:3, rendered “perfection;” and in Psa 139:22, rendered “perfect.” It means properly “completion, perfection;” or, as others suppose, “hope, confidence.” It is rendered, in the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate, “consummation.” Luther renders it, “of all things.” It is proper here to apply it to character; to perfect virtue, or to claims to perfect virtue - either in one’s-self or in others. The word rendered “end” here refers not to the fact of its existence, or to its duration, but to a limit or boundary as to its extent. To all claims to perfection made by man, he had seen an end or limit. He had examined all which claimed to be perfect; he had found it defective; he had so surveyed and examined the matter, as to be able to say that there could be no claim to perfection which would prove good. All claim to perfection on the part of man must be abandoned forever. But thy commandment is exceeding broad - The word but is not in the original, and enfeebles the sense. The idea is, that the law of God, as he now saw it, was of such a nature - was so “broad” - as to demonstrate that there could be no just claim to perfection among people. All claims to perfection had arisen from the fact that the law was not properly understood, that its true nature was not seen. People thought that they were perfect, but it was because they had no just view of the extent and the spirituality of the law of God. […]
