PSALMS 119:163 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love.”
The psalmist hates falsehood and loathes it, yet loves God's law, completing the integration of positive devotion and negative rejection. This verse establishes that commitment to God's law naturally produces opposition to falsehood; they are not merely different but contradictory. The intensity of language—hates and loathes—indicates that rejection of falsehood is not passive indifference but active repudiation. This verse illustrates that meditation on Scripture produces not merely knowledge but transformed moral sensibility: what one loves and hates are reshuffled by encounter with divine truth. The parallel structure emphasizes that the psalmist's existence is defined by this fundamental polarization: love for God's law on one side, hatred of falsehood on the other.
Church Fathers on Psalms 119:163
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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