PSALMS 119:153 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“Consider mine affliction, and deliver me: for I do not forget thy law.”
The Resh stanza opens with the psalmist appealing to God to see affliction and deliver, requesting that divine attention be directed toward suffering. This verse begins a stanza emphasizing vision and seeking: the Resh letter symbolizes "head" or represents the first letter, introducing fresh appeals for divine recognition of distress. The request that God "see" presumes that divine awareness will generate intervention, that God's omniscience includes responsive compassion. This verse returns to the theme of external oppression and internal distress that occasioned earlier petitions, reminding readers that the psalmist's meditation on Scripture occurs within ongoing suffering. The request for deliverance frames the appeal to God's covenant, assuming that recognition of covenant relationship should prompt divine rescue. The psalmist does not hide suffering but brings it directly before God.
Church Fathers on Psalms 119:153
1. From its commencement, dearly beloved, does this great Psalm exhort us unto bliss, which there is no one who desires not....And therefore this is the lesson which he teaches, who says, “Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord” Psalm 118:1. As much as to say, I know what you wish, you are seeking bliss: if then you would be blessed, be undefiled. For the former all desire, the latter fear: yet without it what all wish cannot be…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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