Psalm 119:97-104

“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103)

Psalm 119 is an alphabetic acrostic of twenty-two strophes of eight lines, every line within a strophe beginning with the same Hebrew letter; vv. 97-104 are the thirteenth, Mem. Within it the theme is wisdom by comparison: the commandment makes the psalmist wiser than his enemies, more understanding than his teachers, more discerning than the aged (vv. 98-100), claims that would be intolerable boasting were the wisdom not borrowed. The strophe cycles through the psalm’s stock of near synonyms for torah, and its sensory line, words sweeter than honey (v. 103), belongs with Psalm 19:10 and with the scroll Ezekiel is told to eat (Ezekiel 3:3). Paired in this series with Solomon’s request at Gibeon and with the boy Jesus among the teachers, the strophe supplies what both narratives assume, that understanding is received from outside rather than achieved.

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