Holy God,

your ways are just and your commandments are true.

Help us to understand your law, and when understanding fails

inspire us to follow you in joyful obedience, so that we may faithfully serve you,

O God, my folly has trapped me.
Give wisdom and deliver me.

 

My folly has deceived me.
Come, Lord, and be my present help.

 

My folly has stripped me of all support.
Sustain me by your holy word.

 

Psalm 119 is an acrostic psalm; there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with 22 corresponding eight-verse sections, each a meditation on the law of God.  The 1912 Psalter provided a separate musical setting for each of those 22 sections; “Your Word Sheds Light upon My Path,” (at 759) as well as “O Let My Supplicating Cry” are given the same musical setting (also see #720 and #721). 

The 1912 Psalter was the first ecumenical psalter published in the United States and the most widely used metrical psalter of the twentieth century in North America.  The United Presbyterian Church invited all other Reformed and Presbyterian denominations to join them in the effort to provide a new versifications of the psalms; six Presbyterian denominations, as well as the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America joined in the effort in revising the 1887 Psalter (whose texts actually dated back to the 1871 Book of Psalms; the 1887 edition had added music to the texts.).  The 1912 Psalter included all the psalms in 413 settings, eight doxologies, and the three Lukan canticles (Song of Mary, Song of Zechariah, and Song of Simeon).