Psalm 119: The Shepherd's Clock

8041 words long.

Published on 2024-06-16

This article originally appeared in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew as the chapter "Psalm 119: The Shepherd's Clock". It follows the chapter that described how I overcame confusion and settled on a period length of 119 years for some prophetic clocks but 120 years for others. This chapter then worked out the details of the clock found in that psalm.

Really? 119 years? That’s so random!

The engineer in me says, “If the numbers work, use them.” The Bible Scholar in me says that God inserts clues in His Word to back up every assertion. The task is to establish sound reasons why two kinds of clocks, generational and celestial, should have almost the same period yet be different. Since we already put forth solid reasons to back up the existence of 120-year celestial clocks, we must turn our attention to the 119-year generation clocks.

To understand the number 119, there are only two places to go: Genesis 8 and Psalm 119. The chapter on interpreting Biblical numbers exposed a curious combination:

and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month

the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

- Genesis 8:4, NIV

Since 17 x 7 = 119 and this verse describes God’s complete (the number 7) victory (the number 17) over man’s evil as a result of the flood, we need to look closer. The verse refers to the Jewish calendar, so relates to time. This verse suggesting the number 119 also comes near the end of the story of Noah, whereas the verse justifying 120-year generations came near the beginning of the story of Noah, in Genesis 6. If we are to have two intertwined clocks, one with a period of 119 years and the other 120, this coincidence gives us encouragement, but weak support.

Psalm 119, on the other hand, provides such rich details that I wonder if I am dreaming! I confess a fondness for this Psalm. I designed an important part of the Courtlands, a city in my earliest novels, based on imagery from this Psalm. Furthermore, the hero of my second novel was saved by meditating on Psalm 119. Like Job and certain other parts of the Bible, its words are buried deep in my soul. Psalm 119 is the anthem for all who love the Bible.

Recall how the good shepherd of Psalm 23 sustained me during the years before I found God? And how Ecclesiastes concludes right after saying this:

The words of the wise are like goads,

their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—

given by one shepherd.

- Ecclesiastes 12:11, NIV

Wouldn’t you know, Psalm 119 ends like this:

I have strayed like a lost sheep.

Seek your servant,

for I have not forgotten your commands.

- Psalm 119:176, NIV

The Author of Psalm 119

A Shepherd and a lost sheep. Jewish tradition assigns authorship to David, who began life as a shepherd. According to Rabbi Joshua Maroof, the linguistic evidence is compelling. In “Who Wrote Psalm 119?” he cites eight reasons to believe David wrote it:

• All other Psalms using acrostics were written by David
• Only King David refers to himself as “your servant”
• “turn to me and show me favor” – also unique to David
• Refers to commandments as pekudim
• Author eats & converses with noblemen, hence is royal
• Themes similar to other Davidic Psalms (19, 25 & 86)
• "I am a stranger in the land" and many other phrases
• Examples of suffering (e.g. being pursued) match David

Why is knowing the author helpful? It is because of the story that goes along with it. Each section of Psalm 119 has eight verses. Each verse in a section begins with the same letter of the alphabet, and there is one section for each Hebrew letter, twenty-two in all. Tradition holds that King David wrote this Psalm and read it often to little Solomon to teach him his ABC’s!

Marking off the Generations

If Solomon has twenty-eight times, what are we to make of David’s twenty-two sections? Here we can connect to the 42-generation clock. Before we do, let’s ground ourselves in when each generation starts, and place important people and events in them.

Start Years for the Forty-Two Generational Clock:

1. 4020 BC Adam
2. 3090 BC Methuselah
3. 2361 BC Noah
4. 2242 BC Babel
5. 2123 BC
6. 2004 BC Abraham
7. 1885 BC Job
8. 1766 BC Joseph
9. 1647 BC Moses
10. 1528 BC Joshua
11. 1409 BC
12. 1290 BC Ruth
13. 1171 BC Samson
14. 1052 BC David
15. 933 BC Elijah
16. 814 BC
17. 695 BC Exile
18. 576 BC Esther
19. 457 BC Nehemiah
20. 338 BC
21. 219 BC
22. 100 BC JESUS
23. 19 AD ✞
24. 138 AD
25. 257 AD Constantine
26. 376 AD
27. 495 AD
28. 614 AD
29. 733 AD
30. 852 AD
31. 971 AD
32. 1090 AD
33. 1209 AD
34. 1328 AD Black Plague
35. 1447 AD
36. 1566 AD
37. 1685 AD
38. 1804 AD
39. 1923 AD Today
40. 2042 AD
41. 2161 AD
42. 2280 AD ???

In that clock, the twenty-second generation (100 BC – 19 AD) is special: that was when Jesus was born. Could Psalm 119 contain another generational clock, also with a period of 119 years, starting with Adam and stopping in Bethlehem at the birth of the savior, heir to David’s throne?

The Bad News of Judgment

Like history, Psalm 119 has low points and high points. Are they in agreement? Let’s start with the low points. Years ago, someone told me every verse in this Psalm mentions the Word of God – except one. Eight semi- synonymous Hebrew words were used in this capacity:

• Dabar – promise or word
• Imrah – saying
• Chuqqim – statutes
• Mishpatim – judgements, rules or rulings
• Torah – law
• Miswah / miswot – commands
• Piqqudim – precepts
• Eduth – testimonies

To gain insight into the psalm, it seemed sensible to first find that one verse that fails to extol the Bible. Perhaps it falls in a section corresponding in this hypothetical 22- generation clock to a particularly dark generation for Israel or the world?

My hypothesis was flawed. Sherry Early’s 2015 article “50 Facts and Links for Psalm 119” on semicolonblog.com explained that this widespread idea was false. Five verses lack a reference to God’s word, not one! After reviewing the list given in the article (verses 84, 90, 121, 122 and 132), it was apparent that her source was correct.

That told me to abandon the idea, but...

... Stubbornness prevailed. This was my only line of inquiry, so I asked whether all five verses correspond to low points in history when Israel neglected the Word. If there had only been one verse not mentioning the Bible and it corresponded to the worst generation out of twenty-two, the odds would be 21:1 against, but a chance correspondence would still be possible. However, for all five verses to accidentally match the several worst periods of Israel’s history, the odds would be much worse: more than 160 thousand to one against!

(The above probability is based on picking the top four worst time periods correctly, without replacement, then picking the worst period a second time by doubling up.)

How did the verses line up?

• Verse 84 is in Section 11: Generation 11 began the time of the Judges.
• Verse 90 is in Section 12: Generation 12 was later in the time of the Judges.
• Verses 121 and 122 are in Section 16: Generation 16 saw the doubly bad Assyrian Captivity.
• Verse 132 is in Section 17: Generation 17 saw two important events: During King Josiah’s reign, Hilkiah found the Book of the Law – it had been lost! Later in that generation, Judah was carried into exile by Babylon.

The Bible sums up the spiritual condition of the people during the time of the Judges in one verse:

In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

- Judges 21:25, ESV

Translation: they ignored God’s law. Josiah is to be commended for paying heed to the Word, but the fact that it had been gathering dust in a storeroom speaks volumes. Following his reign, Judah soon returned to ignoring God’s Word, with exile the result.

That leaves the two verses that correspond to the Assyrian Captivity. The Northern Kingdom of Israel departed farther and faster from true worship than the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Despite the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, the people refused to turn back. Unlike the temporary oppression that the people suffered at the hands of foreigners during Judges and the Exile, the Northern Kingdom was destroyed. Few descendants returned to the fold. That is why two verses from the same stanza lacked reference to the Word. It was the worst period of all.

Another indicator of “bad news” is not saying God’s name. Yahweh (rendered in the NIV and ESV as LORD, and in some Bibles as Jehovah) appears twenty-three times in the ESV and twenty-four times in the NIV. In both translations, five stanzas make no mention of Yahweh. The stanzas in which that divine name is not mentioned correspond to many of the worst generations, though not exactly matching the previous list. Those generations are the third (following the flood), eleventh and thirteenth (both during the time of the judges), fifteenth (civil war), and seventeenth (the Babylonian exile).

Thus the four stanzas where the Word was least regarded match the four generations where God’s judgements against the Jewish people were the most severe. Also, the times when God’s name is not uttered also match dark times. The bad news lines up. How about the good news?

The Good News of Salvation

One English word (mapping to two related words in Hebrew) stands out. It appears six times, rising to a crescendo as you near the end of Psalm 119. That word is salvation.

• Stanza 6: May your unfailing love come to me, LORD, your salvation, according to your promise; (v41, NIV)
• Stanza 11: My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. My eyes fail, looking for your promise; I say, “When will you comfort me?” (v81-82, NIV)
• Stanza 16: My eyes fail, looking for your salvation, looking for your righteous promise. (v123, NIV)
• Stanza 20: Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek out your decrees. (v155, NIV)
• Stanza 21: I wait for your salvation, LORD, and I follow your commands. (Psalm 119:166, NIV)
• Stanza 22: I long for your salvation, LORD, and your law gives me delight. (Psalm 119:174, NIV)

The first occurrence is not until the sixth stanza. The next is five stanzas later. Then five more. Then four. Then one. Then one again. Cries for salvation appear more frequently as the Psalm moves towards its conclusion.

Why?

The first, in stanza 6, says “according to your promise”. In Generation 6, Abraham received a promise of many descendants, land and the kingdom David now clings to.

The second, in stanza 11, sees the supplicant with both a fainting soul and failing eyes. Salvation is so far away! When is it coming? Generation 11 fell during the time of the Judges. The Israelites periodically cried out for deliverance, until a new Judge was sent, they were saved, forgot the Lord and were plunged into oppression again.

The third, in stanza 16, sees the supplicant once again with failing eyes. The Northern Kingdom was carried off by the Babylonians in this generation, but perhaps it was Judah’s King Hezekiah whose cry is in mind. Sennacherib surrounded Jerusalem, but by a miracle, failed to capture the city.

The final progression in stanzas 20, 21 and 22 mirrors the inverse of the condition of the people. In generation 20, “salvation is far” and people are described as wicked for not seeking God’s Word. The Ptolemies conquered the Jews but their rule was mild, Hellenism attractive, and people drifted away.

In generation 21, the Seleucid’s snatched them back from Egypt’s control. Their rule was harsh; they made it illegal to follow many Jewish customs. Now people eagerly await a savior and show renewed interest in following God’s commands. This is the time of the Maccabean revolt and the cleansing of the temple.

Finally, in generation 22, Rome captures Palestine and oppression continues, though at first not as bad as under the Seleucids. Not only do some Jews now long for salvation, but God’s law gives them “delight”. This is when Jesus was born.

Many of the stanzas speak of difficult trials and enemies, but persecution and oppression are only explicitly named in seven verses: 84, 86, 121, 122, 134, 157, and 161. The first six fall (predictably) in generations 11, 16, 17, and 20. Persecution by a ruler is mentioned only the last time; verse 161 falls in generation 21, under the Seleucids, whose ruler Antiochus Epiphanes had a pig slaughtered on the altar in their temple.

Hidden Messages in every Stanza

All twenty-two stanzas include word pictures that suggest events from their generations. Some are ambiguous, but others unmistakable.

Stanza 1: In verse 6, the word translated “shame” or “ashamed” recalls Adam and Eve hiding in shame after eating forbidden fruit. They invented shame. They also invited blame. Verse 1 says, “Blessed are those whose ways are blameless...” Eve blamed the serpent while Adam blamed Eve in a way that also pointed a finger at God.

Stanza 2: How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. (v9, NKJV) Modern translations use an adverb or adjective like “pure”, instead of a verb, like “cleanse” or “purify”. The verbs make the connection clearest: they harken back to the flood of Noah that ended generation two. It cleansed the earth of people who didn’t “take heed”.

Stanza 3: I am a stranger on earth... (v19, NIV) After the flood, the world Noah had known was gone. No man ever felt as estranged from his surroundings as he. While Noah saved the world from one scourge, his anger introduced another. Humiliated by one of his sons (in Genesis 9:20-27), anger prompted Noah to curse Ham with slavery, the first mention of slavery in the Bible. The word servant – also rendered slave – occurs eleven times in Psalm 119, but this is the first of two stanzas that use that word twice. In the following words, can you feel the sting of Ham’s scorn and contempt, and the curse flying off Noah’s tongue?

You rebuke the arrogant, who are accursed,

those who stray from your commands.

Remove from me their scorn and contempt,

for I keep your statutes.

Though rulers sit together and slander me,

your servant will meditate on your decrees.

- Psalm 119:21-23

Stanza 4: I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free. (v32; NIV84) This is my favorite verse in Psalm 119. The newer NIV reworded it, robbing it of its poetry. It’s a stretch, but I imagine all the people fleeing the destruction of Babel. God wanted mankind to spread out, but the people refused, stuck together and built a tower instead. Now forced to leave and unwillingly obey God’s commands, they run in fear, but the Psalmist runs in freedom.

Stanza 5: How I long for your precepts! In your righteousness preserve my life. (v40, NIV) The Bible is silent about what happened in the fifth generation save for one thing: human lifespans steadily declined.

Stanza 6: This was Abraham’s generation, and this stanza records two observations about him. The first is the promise God gave to him, and the second extols how he conducted himself in war, refusing to accept the spoils of victory from the Kings of Sodom and Gomorrah:

May your unfailing love come to me, LORD,

your salvation, according to your promise...

I will speak of your statutes before kings

and will not be put to shame.

- Psalm 119:41,46, NIV

Stanza 7: concisely summarizes Job’s suffering. He was unmercifully mocked in generation 7 by those who should have been comforting him and Satan’s goal was to get Job to “turn from your law”.

My comfort in my suffering is this:

Your promise preserves my life.

The arrogant mock me unmercifully,

but I do not turn from your law.

- Psalm 119:50-51, NIV

Stanza 8: Though the wicked bind me with ropes, I will not forget your law. (v61, NIV) This falls in generation 8, when Joseph was bound by his brothers and sold into slavery. Despite that, in Egypt he held onto his morals and his belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Stanza 9: The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold. (v72, NIV) Only one man spoke with God as a friend face to face. Only one man received the law directly from the mouth of God: Moses, who lived in generation 9, humble and not arrogant (see v69). What was that law given to accomplish? To set the people free from slavery in Egypt. Stanzas 9, 10 and 11 each use the word servant (which can mean slave). This extended period runs from the bondage in Egypt to the servitude of wandering the desert at God’s direction, to the serial oppressions that befell the people during the time of the judges.

Stanza 10: May those who fear you turn to me, those who understand your statutes. (v79, NIV) How often did Israel’s enemies choose to fear her God and join her cause? In the days of Joshua, who took command in the tenth generation, Rahab of Jericho protected Joshua’s spies. This citizen of a hostile city not only turned to Joshua, she married into the family of God and became part of the Royal line of David.

Stanza 11: During the time of the Judges, moral backsliding led to persecution. The people cried out to the God they had forgotten and he sent a Judge to rescue them. The irony of a people who have abandoned God’s law crying out for one to enforce that law appears in verse 84, the first of the five verses which make no reference to God’s law:

For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke,

yet I have not forgotten your statutes.

How long must your servant endure?

When will you judge those who persecute me?

The insolent have dug pitfalls for me;

they do not live according to your law.

All your commandments are sure;

they persecute me with falsehood; help me!

They have almost made an end of me on earth,

but I have not forsaken your precepts.

- Psalm 119 83-87, ESV

The wineskin metaphor had me stumped. Several commentators say that people in ancient times hung wineskins over a fire so the gentle warmth of the smoke would ripen the wine faster. As gentle as it was with the wine, it was harsh with the wineskin, which shriveled and hardened by that treatment. No sweet wine comes without the sourness of suffering.

In Judges 3:1-2, the Lord explained why he did not drive out all the nations from the promised land. It was not only for punishment because Israel continually turned away to other gods, but to train a new generation for war. Those remaining nations were the smoke that would toughen them on the outside, but make their souls sweet by its transforming power.

Tragically, one of those wars they fought against each other. Though it occurred early in the time of the Judges, it was placed at the end of the book, in chapters 19-21, to show its significance. A crime of rape and murder at Gibeah set eleven tribes against Benjamin. Tens of thousands died and one tribe almost disappeared from the land. In the final battle, the signal to attack was the smoke rising from a city set ablaze. Truly Israel was the wineskin hanging in the smoke.

Stanza 12: This was the generation of the Great Drought. Scientists studying riverbed cores with ancient pollen estimate it lasted fifty years, the worst drought in recorded history. It ended the Bronze Age and brought down empires. The famine it triggered forced Ruth and Naomi to travel to Israel. Ruth, a Gentile, changed allegiances. She told Naomi: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16-17, NIV) This is the matching passage in Psalm 119:

If your law had not been my delight,

I would have perished in my affliction.

I will never forget your precepts,

for by them you have preserved my life.

Save me, for I am yours;

I have sought out your precepts.

- Psalms 119:92-94, NIV

That Ruth lived during this twelfth generation is significant. Naomi returned from Moab to Israel with Ruth during the Great Drought, sometime between 1250 and 1200 BC. Ruth was a Moabitess and the Moabites were under a curse:

No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord.

Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the

assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not

meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you

came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you

Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia,

to curse you.

- Deuteronomy 23:3-4, ESV

Do you see the problem? Jesus was descended from a Moabitess, so according to Moses’ curse, he would not be permitted to enter the assembly of the Lord! But wait! The curse would only last for ten generations. Jesus was born just over 1,200 years later, which is just above ten times 119 years. He was born at the beginning of the eleventh generation! That means Jesus, descended from a Moabitess, could now enter the assembly of the Lord forever.

See the prophetic irony? The curse against Moab was really a prophecy of the coming of the messiah who would forgive every sin and cancel every curse.

Stanza 13: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (v103, NIV) In the latter part of the age of the Judges, no figure captures the imagination more than Samson. In the stanza in Psalm 119, David boasts that “Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies.” (v98, NIV) With Samson, God’s Spirit made him not wiser, but stronger. He slew a lion with his bare hands and made a riddle from what he found and tasted later, honey from a beehive growing in the lion’s carcass:

“Out of the eater, something to eat;

out of the strong, something sweet.”

- Judges 14:14, NIV

Stanza 14: There is no riddle to solve for the fourteenth generation; for it is David’s. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (v105,KJV) His song in this Psalm echoes his praise over defeating Saul. “You, LORD, are my lamp; the LORD turns my darkness into light.” (2 Samuel 22:29, NIV)

Stanza 15: One man lit the darkness of the fifteenth generation: the prophet Elijah. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel constantly sought his life. Elijah often went into hiding to escape death at their hands. He hid in a ravine and was fed by ravens. He hid in a cave, where he heard the still, small voice of God. Likewise, Obadiah, a servant of King Ahab who nevertheless was faithful to Yahweh, hid one hundred prophets of God in two caves to save their lives from Jezebel.

Things came to a head when God told Elijah to come out of hiding. He challenged Ahab and the priests of Baal to a public duel. He resolved to settle once and for all whether their God or his God was the real God. Each called for fire from heaven to come down and consume their sacrifice. Only Elijah received an answer. After that, he called for the priests of Baal to be executed. The crucial part of that story is the challenge Elijah made at the start to the people looking on:

So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled

the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before

the people and said,

“How long will you waver between two opinions?

If the LORD is God, follow him;

but if Baal is God, follow him.”

But the people said nothing.

- 1 Kings 18:20-21, NIV

Compare this to the words of the Psalm:

I hate the double-minded,

but I love your law.

You are my hiding place and my shield;

I hope in your word.

Depart from me, you evildoers,

that I may keep the commandments of my God...

All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross,

therefore I love your testimonies.

- Psalm 119:113-115,119, ESV

The people of Elijah’s day were double-minded. For fear of the king and queen, they refused to take a stand. The righteous had to go into hiding. God graciously provided them a hiding place until better days came. When God pronounced His judgment by sending down fire, the wicked priests were discarded like worthless dross from a furnace used to refine metals.

We live in the age of “cancel culture” when innocent people are being hounded out of their jobs for the opinions they hold. Their convictions were until recently considered normal and even Biblical. To live a life of peace, we might need a hiding place just like Elijah.

Stanza 16: We already noted how not one, but two verses in this stanza make no mention of the law and how the Psalmist’s eyes fail looking for salvation. The words oppressors and oppress both appear, doubling the jeopardy. This time lines up with the disastrous Assyrian Captivity. This is the second stanza that twice uses the word servant (which can mean slave). God ignored the cries of the northern tribes being carried off as slaves, but answered Judah’s King Hezekiah. Sennacherib’s soldiers died outside his gate without an arrow being fired. Yet Hezekiah blundered when he boasted of his kingdom’s wealth to an emissary from Babylon. His pride was like blood on the water for those sharks from the East. If only he had the same heart as David, who wrote:

Because I love your commands

more than gold, more than pure gold,

- Psalm 119:127, NIV

Stanza 17: This stanza holds one of the verses that do not mention the law, marking the generation as a time of peculiar pain:

Turn to me and have mercy on me,

as you always do to those who love your name.

- Psalm 119:132, NIV

In its place, verse 132 expresses loyalty to God’s Name. There is a stylistic incongruity, however. Translations like the ESV and NIV use LORD in place of God’s actual name, Yahweh. Yahweh (LORD) appears in most but not all of the stanzas. This stanza is the fifth and final stanza that does not mention the name Yahweh. So the Psalmist loves God’s name but is afraid to speak it. Despite such loyalty, the succeeding verses were fulfilled in a terrifying way:

Direct my footsteps according to your word;

let no sin rule over me.

Redeem me from human oppression,

that I may obey your precepts.

Psalm 119:133-134, NIV

Israel’s footsteps were directed by the Lord – into exile! Yet at the end of the allotted time, their feet would also be guided back to Jerusalem. They would be redeemed. The stanza ends with a sentiment that defines this generation:

Streams of tears flow from my eyes,

for your law is not obeyed.

- Psalm 119:136

This is the generation when Jeremiah wrote Lamentations, of all the books, the one most filled with tears.

Just as verse 132 did not mention the law, early in this generation the law had been lost. One man from this generation was spared exile because when God’s law was found hidden in a storeroom in the temple, he read it, understood it, and wept like David that both he and the people were not obeying that law. That man was King Josiah:

Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the LORD,

‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says

concerning the words you heard: Because your heart

was responsive and you humbled yourself before the LORD

when you heard what I have spoken against this place

and its people—that they would become a curse and

be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and

wept in my presence, I also have heard you,

declares the LORD.

Therefore I will gather you to your ancestors,

and you will be buried in peace.

Your eyes will not see all the disaster I am

going to bring on this place.’ ”

So they took her answer back to the king.

- 2 Kings 22:18-20, NIV

Even after a long chain of abuses brings judgment near, a humble heart that love’s God’s commands will find peace.

Stanza 18: If there is a prophecy in this stanza, it is tied up with this one word: zeal.

My zeal wears me out,

for my enemies ignore your words.

- Psalm 119:139, NIV

Zeal, an uncommon word, shows up most often in Isaiah (six times) and refers to the zeal of the Lord working salvation for his people. This generation, the people began to return from exile in Babylon. It was not of their doing; it was the zeal of the Lord.

That zeal was not without opposition. This stanza is rife with images of danger: “enemies”, “lowly and despised”, “trouble and distress”, and a plea for help “that I may live”. Despite this, because of God’s commands, the Psalmist finds “delight”. Why?

Your promises have been thoroughly tested,

and your servant loves them.

- Psalm 119:140

Another rare word found here and in Isaiah is “tested”. In Isaiah 48:10, it is Israel that is tested – in the furnace of affliction. However, in Isaiah 28:16, something else is tested – not the promise, but the promised one:

See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone,

a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;

the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic.

- Isaiah 28:16

Stanza 19: This generation was about anticipation, about living in darkness but hoping for light.

I rise before dawn and cry for help;

I have put my hope in your word.

My eyes stay open through the watches of the night,

that I may meditate on your promises.

- Psalm 119:147-148, NIV

Under Nehemiah the Jews tried to rebuild following the exile, but suffering and disappointment had hardened many hearts toward God. Malachi chastised the people for the sub par sacrifices they were offering, but he also delivered a message of a new dawning of hope:

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness

will rise with healing in its rays.

And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.

- Malachi 4:2, NIV

This stanza has one more remarkable feature. The name Yahweh (LORD) appears three times, the most of any stanza.

I call with all my heart; answer me, LORD... (v145, NIV)

...

Hear my voice in accordance with your love;

preserve my life, LORD, according to your laws. (v149, NIV)

...

Those who devise wicked schemes are near,

but they are far from your law.

Yet you are near, LORD,

and all your commands are true. (v150-151, NIV)

The first mention concerns the call of the heart. This is an appeal to the Holy Spirit.

The second concerns the call of the lips and being preserved by the Law, which is the God the Son.

The third mention concerns material protection from evil people and God’s nearness, which is God the Father.

Malachi’s words concluded the Old Testament. There would be no new authoritative words from God for centuries. The people needed a powerful prayer to sustain them. David gave it to them.

Stanza 20: The defining verse for the 20th generation is “Many are the foes who persecute me, but I have not turned from your statutes.” (v157, NIV) Israel always had many foes, but during this era, control of Jerusalem changed hands ten times (in 332, 323, 320, 315, 312, 311, 302, 302 again, 301, and 219 BC). I think that generation holds the record for turnovers. (The 1942 Detroit Lions don’t count.) Don’t be fooled by that eighty-two year stretch between 391 and 219 BC. During that time the Seleucids and the Ptolemies fought four of their six Syrian wars, and the Jews were caught in the middle. Because of such turmoil, the Psalmist cries out for salvation with every verb he can think of:

look, deliver, defend, redeem, preserve, preserve, preserve

Stanza 21: During the 21st generation, the Seleucids, a Syrian-Greek empire split off from Alexander’s empire after his death, conquered and oppressed the Jews. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, which means “the Gods’ beloved”, slew thousands of Jewish people, confiscated and burned Torah scrolls, compelled people to eat pork, built pagan altars and stole from the Temple gold reserved for orphans. He zealously suppressed every attempt by the Jews to obey their ancient laws.

No one word or verse from this stanza captures that moment; the whole of it defines that terrifying time. The mad king was after the “great spoils” hidden in the temple to satisfy his tribute to Rome, but heroic Jews prized God’s law above gold and died for their faith. Not even the point of a spear “can make them stumble”.

Rulers persecute me without cause,

but my heart trembles at your word.

I rejoice in your promise

like one who finds great spoil.

I hate and detest falsehood

but I love your law.

Seven times a day I praise you

for your righteous laws.

Great peace have those who love your law,

and nothing can make them stumble.

I wait for your salvation, LORD,

and I follow your commands.

I obey your statutes,

for I love them greatly.

I obey your precepts and your statutes,

for all my ways are known to you.

- Psalm 119:161-168, NIV

Stanza 22: Longing for salvation and admitting to being a lost sheep (119:176) surely refers to the lamb of God who would bring that salvation, Jesus, born in the 22nd generation. As Jesus hung on the cross, this was the horrible derision he endured:

And those who passed by derided him,

wagging their heads and saying,

“You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it

in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God,

come down from the cross.”

So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders,

mocked him, saying,

“He saved others; he cannot save himself.

He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross,

and we will believe in him. He trusts in God;

let God deliver him now, if he desires him.

For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

- Matthew 27:39-43

Those vile mockers did not know that they were calling on God to answer David's ancient prayer:

Let my plea come before you;

deliver me according to your word.

- Psalm 119:170

God DID deliver him, for he IS the Son of God.

Three-way Intersection

While events prior to the 14th stanza happened before David lived and so cannot be considered prophecy, they reinforce the idea that each stanza points to a different era in history. Taken together with the prophetic references in the remaining eight stanzas, it tells us something that can give us the “great peace” of verse 165:

We saw that Psalm 119 connects history with three words: the law, the Name (Yahweh), and salvation. Just as there are eight verses in each stanza, eight different words for God’s law were used, to emphasize the diverse aspects of its benefits to our soul. The ups and downs of history are inextricably linked to how our hearts approach each.

• Religion without relationship
• Relationship without holiness
• Holiness without humility
• Justice, mercy and humility

The first person acknowledges the truth of the Bible, but has no passion, no friendship, no family connection. They have the Word but not the Name.

The second person professes to be spiritual, cries out to God for help, but chafes at having to obey the law, repent and pursue holiness.

The third person loves God and His law, but thinks they can take it from there. They try to perfect their character in the flesh instead.

Only the fourth person lives at the intersection of all three influences. That intersection is where the Prophet Micah told us goodness lives:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.

- Micah 6:8

Justice flows from the law, loving mercy flows from loving the author of mercy, and humility frees us to rely and cry out to God for salvation.

What of the opposite intersection? What of people who abandon the law AND cherish not the name of Yahweh AND turn to anything but Him for their salvation? If you cross reference the three axes of our analysis and look for stanzas where at least one verse omits all reference to the law, where no mention is made of Yahweh, and where there is no cry for salvation, you will find only one. The seventeenth stanza stands alone. That is the generation of the Babylonian exile. Recall that seventeen also means victory. Amid defeat, God declared His coming victory through the prophet Jeremiah, who also lived in the seventeenth generation:

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel

after that time,” declares the LORD.

“I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor,

or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest,”

declares the LORD.

“For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more.”

- Jeremiah 31:33-34, NIV

Everything wrong about the people would be made right.

A Chance Occurrence?

What if all these points of similarity between Psalm 119 and different eras of history are mere coincidence? After all, the Bible often revisits the same themes, uses the same words, and sprang from a set of values shared across millennia. Surely you need to raise the bar when evaluating the significance of all this! Another calculation is in order.

If you count the distinct matches in the per stanza analysis, plus the presence or absence of salvation, Yahweh, and words for law matching the most painful periods in history, there are at least fifty-two. Assume for argument’s sake that each point of concordance had seven out of eight chances of being mere coincidence – a near certainty. What is the chance that all those fifty-two coincidences piled up and made into a single Psalm, but just got put in the wrong stanza? It is seven eighths raised to the fifty-second power. That works out to a thousand-to- one against pure chance, ignoring their accurate sequencing. Conclusion: The Psalm most certainly was intended to convey a structure based on history.

Assume David meant the early stanzas to be a commentary on history. He could certainly pick those events and get their sequence correct. That leaves about twenty prophesied future events that he would have to put in the right order. Further concede that half of those are repeated references to the exile and such. That leaves ten events left. Ignoring the difficulty of predicting correct future events at all (which nobody can quantify!), let’s compute the odds of putting them in the correct order by chance if they were handed to us. The function from probability theory that we can use to compute that is called the factorial. Ten factorial (10! = 10x9x8x...x2x1) is over three million. That means the odds are worse than three million-to-one. Multiply that by the even smaller chance of picking correct events to order and you begin to see how unlikely it is that Psalm 119 is anything less than a rich vein of prophecy.

What seals it for me is that when you reach the stanzas that correspond to the generations after David lived, the details become more precise, not less. The historical events with which David was familiar are sketched more vaguely than the prophetic events that were in his future. That is not what you would find with a false prophet.

Taking all these observations together, it is plain to see that Psalm 119 points forward to a day when the lost sheep of Israel will be saved as the Word of God conquers every evil ruler that oppresses them. Each stanza (besides the first two) lasts 119 years and the prophecy concludes in the era when Jesus was born.

One more piece of evidence connects the number 119 to Jesus and sheep. The Bible mentions the “sin offering” 119 times. It is found 114 times in the Old Testament (singular or plural) and 4 times in the New Testament. Once in the Old Testament (in Numbers 19:17), the same word that is usually rendered as “sin offering” is in some translations (like the NIV) rendered “purification offering” and in others (such as the ESV) as “sin offering”. Thus between the Hebrew and Greek you have 119 occurrences of “sin offering”. Among the animals permitted to be offered for this purpose is a lamb. Thus one lamb ( Jesus) offered himself to pay for the sins of the other lambs (us).

A Riddle for the Heart to Solve

These pages are chock full of numbers, patterns, logic, and the fruits of historical research. That is the surface work of study and analysis, the search for evidence to back up a claim. You find that in every book. But where do the formulas flow from? From what hollow spring the hypotheses?

I am fortunate, for I know when the idea that Psalm 119 holds a riddle first occurred to me. I know how I turned the psalm over in my mind, chewed on its pastoral images, and buried it deep in my imagination so that one day it might grow. I marvel at how the whole thing evolved. It was art, emotion, poetry and yearning that drove me, not logic and science. I was writing a novel and needed a design for H Street. H Street was my allegorical conception of the “Way of Holiness” in Isaiah, the passage that set me free from nightmares. (See Dreams for details.)

I decided to break the street into twenty-two segments of eight blocks each, just like Psalm 119. Each segment ended with a magical sculpture built around an image from the corresponding stanza from the psalm. The seventeenth sculpture featured a sad woman holding out a goblet. Before you could pass her, you had to fill her goblet with a libation of tears. Only those who had tarried in the House of Mourning could perform this task.

At the end of the street was the place where a person dies and is reborn into a new body. H Street had a beginning and led to an end, to salvation and to a savior. It described a process and it stretched out through time and space. When the hero of my second book finally decoded the riddle of H Street and discovered that it was an allegory for Psalm 119, he found God. Hours later he died.

In the prophetic exploration of Psalm 119 we just completed, the end of the road is the 22nd generation, when Jesus Christ entered the world. My heart and imagination comprehended this riddle almost twenty years ago. My mind just caught up. What does this teach us? The truth of Scripture comes alive to you when you wholeheartedly immerse yourself in its language and savor its every word like a poet, a lover, a mourner, and a friend. That is the way of the harvest. Plowing, planting, watering, pruning, harvest. The tears that watered those verses for the hero so he could fill the lady’s goblet in my story were not his, they were mine.

Solomon’s Sacrifice of Dedication

Having substantiated the 119-year length of generations in two clocks, let’s return to Solomon’s twenty-eight times. Thankfully, he was more overt than David in how he attached themes to each generation. In transitioning, it is fruitful to compare David’s use of the number twenty-two with Solomon’s. We determined the starting point of Solomon’s celestial clock to be 960 BC, when Solomon dedicated the temple in Jerusalem to Yahweh. However, what if the dedication of the temple fell in the middle of a different clock? Note the sacrifices offered on that day:

Then the king and all Israel with him offered sacrifices

before the LORD. Solomon offered a sacrifice of

fellowship offerings to the LORD: twenty-two thousand cattle

and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats.

So the king and all the Israelites dedicated the

temple of the LORD.

- 1 Kings 8:62-63, NIV

See that? The numbers 22 and 120 are associated with one of the most important sacrifices in the Old Testament. With Psalm 119, we counted twenty-two overlapping generations from the creation, with the first two being longer periods for Adam and Methuselah, to reach the time of Christ’s birth. The 22nd generation of that clock ended in 19 AD. What if we do the same thing for clock cycles of 120 years? Since Adam and Methuselah’s generations remain unchanged, only twenty of the twenty-two generations are lengthened. We end twenty years later, at 39 AD, a few years after the crucifixion of Christ, the most important sacrifice in all of history. Thus we have the final ticks of the clocks from Psalm 119 and this passage from 1 Kings bracketing the sacrifice of Christ between 19 and 39 AD.

On a lark, I checked what you get if you add twenty-two generations of 120 years not to the creation but to the day of the temple dedication circa 960 BC. That 22nd generation falls between 1560 and 1680 AD. What period in world history began during that generation?

The Enlightenment! Of all Biblical figures, Solomon embodies spiritual wisdom. Of all the times in human history, the Enlightenment is seen by the secular world as the start of the greatest advance in secular wisdom. Near the beginning of the era, Galileo established the isochronism of pendulums (1582 AD). Christian Huygens exploited this by constructing the first pendulum clock in 1656 AD and refining it with a balance-wheel regulator in 1675 AD. His inventions made vastly more accurate the measurement of time. Yet nothing compares to the feat of Isaac Newton, whose theory of gravity enabled us to understand the path through the heavens of God’s celestial timepieces, the sun, moon, planets and stars.

The end of this era saw the development of the calculus by Newton and Leibniz, who published their findings in the 1680’s. Newton is hailed as one who helped set the world free from religious superstition by kicking the scientific revolution into high gear. How ironic that Newton spent fifty years studying Bible prophecies and chronologies in hopes of seeing what lay ahead! That future was spread out in Solomon’s opus, but neither the Jewish king nor the British scientist could comprehend what Ecclesiastes had to say. That age could hear the faint ticking of hours and days on Huygen’s new clock, but not the eternal, thunderous tolling of God’s.