The psalm expresses its author's devotion to the word of God, both in terms of God's laws and His promises. In doing so, he employs eight Hebrew words provided by Old Testament tradition--torah ("law"), 'edot ("statutes"), piqqudim ("precepts"), miswot ("commands"), mishpatim ("laws"), huqqim ("decrees"), dabar {"word"), and imrah ("word"). He uses at least six of these terms in each of the 22 stanzas, and sometimes all eight, varying the order of these words in each stanza.
As I have noted in an earlier post, my most recent reading of the Psalms has made me much more appreciative than before of the Psalms' value as poetry. This was especially the case for me while reading Psalm 119. I could not help marveling at how the author of Psalm 119, writing within the linguistic constraints he had chosen, was able to create a work not only of great spiritual power but also of considerable beauty. It is not easy to use essentially the same elements over and over again and yet be able to create a sense of variety at the same time. Such an approach risks the danger of repetitiveness. However, it seemed to me that the author of Psalm 119 managed to pull it off. In fact, in thinking this over, I came to see a connection between the form of Psalm 119 and a musical form quite familiar to me as a devotee of classical music--the theme and variations. A form much used by composers over the centuries, a theme and variations consists of a melody (either invented by the composer or borrowed from another composer) which is then serially transformed using various techniques, like changes in key, melodic structure, syncopation, and so on. In a sense, one could say that Psalm 119 is an example of a verbal counterpart of a musical form, and this, in turn, is an example of the sometimes surprising parallels between different forms of artistic creation.
Of course, I was reading Psalm 119 in translation, and it is well understood that--to some degree, at least--a translation of a literary work, no matter how skillful, can never quite fully capture the beauty of that work in its original language. Inevitably, some of the subtleties of the work will (literally) be "lost in translation." Nevertheless, such was the skill (ultimately, divinely inspired) of the author of Psalm 119, that its beauty of form and expression can still be appreciated by those--like me--who are wholly ignorant of its original language. This, for me, is one of the many wonderful things about the Holy Scriptures.
Image of the Bible from thegospelcoalition.org