Week 5 Friday — Walking with The Word
Friday: Samek (ס) — Psalm 119:113-120
Friday: Samek (ס) — Psalm 119:113-120
INTRODUCTION
This week we’ve traveled from love to craving, from a lamp to its source. The psalmist has been singing — “Oh how I love your law!” — and we’ve felt the warmth of it. It’s been a good week.
But now the tone shifts. The enemies are back. The wicked are closing in. And the psalmist turns from celebration to something harder and more honest: a declaration of where he stands, a cry to be upheld, and a trembling before the God whose Word judges everything — including him.
Samek (ס) means “support” or “prop” — the thing that holds something up when it would otherwise fall. This stanza is the psalmist leaning his full weight on God and asking: will You hold me?
SCRIPTURE
¹¹³ I hate the double-minded, but I love your law. ¹¹⁴ You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word. ¹¹⁵ Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God. ¹¹⁶ Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope! ¹¹⁷ Hold me up, that I may be safe and have regard for your statutes continually! ¹¹⁸ You spurn all who go astray from your statutes, for their cunning is in vain. ¹¹⁹ All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross, therefore I love your testimonies. ¹²⁰ My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.
— Psalm 119:113-120 (ESV)
REFLECTION
Single-Minded in a Double-Minded World
The psalmist opens with a sharp declaration: “I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.” The double-minded are those with divided commitments — people who claim to follow God but live as though He doesn’t exist, who say they believe God’s Word but obey it only when it’s convenient. The psalmist has no patience for the gap between profession and practice. He’s seen what it costs. He wants no part of it.
This isn’t self-righteousness. It’s clarity. The psalmist has been through enough — the affliction, the enemies, the long nights of holding his life in his hands — to know that half-commitment is no commitment at all. You cannot lean your weight on a prop you only trust halfway. Either God’s Word is your hiding place and your shield, or it isn’t. “You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.” This is a declaration of where he has placed his full weight — not partially, not conditionally, but completely.
And then: “Depart from me, you evildoers.” The psalmist understands what we often underestimate — that the company we keep shapes the commitments we keep. Evil is contagious. Compromise spreads. The people who surround us either reinforce our walk with God or quietly erode it. He isn’t being harsh. He’s being honest about how formation works.
Uphold Me
Verses 116-117 contain one of the most vulnerable moments in the entire psalm. Twice in two verses the psalmist asks to be held up: “Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live... Hold me up, that I may be safe.” He has just declared his single-minded commitment to God’s Word. Now he immediately confesses that he cannot sustain it on his own.
This is not contradiction. This is the posture of genuine faith. The psalmist knows what he is — a man who without God’s support would fall. The confidence of verse 114 (”You are my hiding place”) and the dependence of verse 116 (”Uphold me”) aren’t in tension. They are the same truth seen from two angles. God is the hiding place precisely because the psalmist has nowhere else to go.
Notice what he’s asking to be upheld for: “that I may live... that I may be safe and have regard for your statutes continually.” He isn’t asking to be upheld for comfort or ease. He’s asking to be upheld so he can keep obeying. The goal of being held is continued faithfulness. That is a prayer God is always glad to answer.
Holy Fear
The stanza closes somewhere unexpected: “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.” After a week of honey and lamps and light, this lands with weight. The psalmist isn’t trembling in terror. He’s trembling in awe — the kind of fear that comes from standing before a God whose Word is the measuring line for everything, including his own life.
He has just watched God discard the wicked like dross — the impurities skimmed from refining gold, worthless and discarded. And instead of celebrating, the psalmist looks inward. He knows his own heart. He knows his own unrighteousness. The same God whose Word has been his comfort and his lamp is also the God whose judgment is perfect and whose standards are absolute.
C.S. Lewis captured this precisely through Mr. Beaver’s reply to Susan’s question about whether Aslan is safe: “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” The psalmist would have understood that exactly. The God whose holiness makes him tremble isn’t safe in the sense of being predictable or tame. But He is good. And goodness — absolute, perfect goodness — is the only thing that makes a hiding place worth running to.
And that’s exactly where the psalmist runs. Not away from God in shame, but toward Him in need. The hiding place he declared in verse 114 is the same refuge he runs to now. The God whose holiness makes us tremble is the same God whose mercy invites us near. We don’t run from Him in shame. We run to Him in need. That is the only place to be.
“You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.” — This is the way.
PRAYER PROMPT
Lord, I confess that I am more double-minded than I want to admit. There are areas where I claim to trust You but live as though You aren’t there, where I say I believe Your Word but obey it only when it’s easy. Forgive me. I don’t want to be a person who leans on You halfway.
Today I declare what the psalmist declared: You are my hiding place. You are my shield. My hope is in Your Word — not in my circumstances, not in my own strength, not in the approval of others. Uphold me according to Your promise. Hold me up so I can keep walking, keep obeying, keep trusting You.
And Lord, as I consider Your judgments — Your perfect, absolute standard — I don’t run from You. I run to You. Because the God whose holiness makes me tremble is the same God whose mercy welcomes me. That is where I want to be. Amen.
RESPONSE
Single-Minded in a Double-Minded World: The psalmist declared his commitment completely — no divided loyalties, no halfway trust. Where are you currently double-minded? Where are you saying you trust God’s Word but living as though you don’t? Write it down honestly. Bring it to God today and ask Him to make you single-minded in that area.
Uphold Me: The psalmist asked to be upheld so he could keep obeying — not for comfort, but for continued faithfulness. What area of obedience are you struggling to sustain right now? Write out the psalmist’s prayer in your own words: “Uphold me according to Your promise, that I may...” and finish it with your specific need. Pray it today.
Holy Fear: The psalmist’s trembling didn’t drive him away from God — it drove him deeper in. Is there an area of your life where conviction has been making you want to run from God rather than to Him? What would it look like today to run toward the hiding place instead of away from it? Take one step in that direction.
Here is a link to all the posts in this devotional series:
https://www.thisistheway.live/t/psalm-119