Psalms 119:103

How sweet are your promises to my taste, more than honey to my mouth!

World English Bible
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Other translations

WEBBE

How sweet are your promises to my taste, more than honey to my mouth!

BSB

How sweet are Your words to my taste— sweeter than honey in my mouth!

KJV

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

ASV

How sweet are thy words unto my taste! [Yea, sweeter] than honey to my mouth!

BBE

How sweet are your sayings to my taste! truly, they are sweeter than honey in my mouth!

Original Hebrew

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The early church

Consider then what follows: "O how sweet are Your words unto my throat!" [Psalm 119:103]. Or, as it is more literally rendered from the Greek, "Your utterances, above honey and the honeycomb unto my mouth." This is that sweetness which the Lord gives, "So that the earth yield her increase:" that we do good truly in a good spirit, that is, not from the dread of carnal evil, but from the gladness of spiritual good. Some copies indeed do not read "honeycomb:" but the majority do. Now the open teaching of wisdom is like honey; but that is like the comb which is squeezed from the more recondite mysteries, as if from cells of wax, by the mouth of the teacher, as if he were chewing it: but it is sweet to the mouth of the heart, not to the mouth of the flesh.
Augustine of Hippo · d. 430Expositions on the Psalms

Commentary

Matthew Henry · Verses 97–104

What we love, we love to think of. All true wisdom is from God. A good man carries his Bible with him, if not in his hands, yet in his head and in his heart. By meditation on God's testimonies we understand more than our teachers, when we understand our own hearts. The written word is a more sure guide to heaven, than all the fathers, the teachers, and ancients of the church. We cannot, with any comfort or boldness, attend God in holy duties, while under guilt, or in any by-way. It was Divine grace in his heart, that enabled the psalmist to receive these instructions. The soul has its tastes as well as the body. Our relish for the word of God will be greatest, when that for the world and the flesh is least. The way of sin is a wrong way; and the more understanding we get by the precepts of God, the more rooted will be our hatred of sin; and the more ready we are in the Scriptures, the better furnished we are with answers to temptation.

Read Matthew Henry on Psalm 119 →

Cross-references

12

Topics

Cross-references: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Hebrew and Greek data from STEPBible.org (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0. Library: sources.