Psalms 119:99

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.

World English Bible
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Other translations

WEBBE

I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.

BSB

I have more insight than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.

KJV

I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.

ASV

I have more understanding than all my teachers; For thy testimonies are my meditation.

BBE

I have more knowledge than all my teachers, because I give thought to your unchanging word.

Original Hebrew

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The early church

But what means the following verse, "I have more understanding than my teachers"? [Psalm 119:99]. Who is he who had more understanding than all his teachers? Who, I ask, is he, who dares to prefer himself in understanding above all the Prophets, who not only by speaking taught with so excellent authority those who lived with them, but also their posterity by writing?...What is here said, could not have been spoken in Solomon's person....I recognise plainly Him who had more understanding than His teachers, since when He was a boy of twelve years of age, Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, and was found by His parents after three days' space, "sitting in the temple among the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions." [Luke 2:42-46] The Son Himself has said, "As My Father has taught Me, I speak these things." [John 8:28] It is very difficult to understand this of the Person of the Word; unless we can comprehend that it is the same thing for the Son to be taught as to be begotten of the Father...."He took upon Himself the form of a servant;" [Philippians 2:7] for when He had assumed this form, men of more advanced age might think Him fit to be taught as a boy; but He whom the Father taught, had more understanding than all His teachers. "For Your testimonies," He says, "are my study." For this reason He had more understanding than all His teachers, because He studied the testimonies of God, which, as concerning Himself, He knew better than they, when He spoke these words: "You sent unto John, and he bore witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man," etc. [John 5:33-36]
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

16

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