MORE TO BE DESIRED THAN GOLD

"They are more to be desired than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the extract of the honeycomb." — Ps 19:10

The beauty of God's word is not the beauty of a thing beheld from across a room. Scripture never sets the word behind glass and bids men admire it. When the psalm reaches for the highest praise it can give the ordinances of God, it does not reach for the eye. It reaches for desire and for taste: more to be desired than gold, sweeter than honey. Gold is the summit of what men want. Honey is the summit of what men taste. The word is set above both summits, on their own ground, in their own currency. The word of God is beautiful the way bread is beautiful to a hungry man: not by how it looks, but by what it does when it is taken in.

The psalm has already shown us a glory that is only seen. "The heavens declare the glory of God. The expanse shows his handiwork." (Ps 19:1). "Day after day they pour out speech, and night after night they display knowledge." (Ps 19:2). Yet the speech is silent: "There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." (Ps 19:3). Creation preaches without sentences, and its voice runs to the end of the world. At the center of that silent sermon stands the sun, coming out of its tent "as a bridegroom coming out of his room, like a strong man rejoicing to run his course," and of that sun the psalm says the one searching thing: "There is nothing hidden from its heat." (Ps 19:5-6). All of it addresses the eye. None of it can be eaten. No man was ever fed by looking at the sky.

Then the psalm turns, and the speech becomes sentences. "Yahweh's law is perfect, restoring the soul. Yahweh's covenant is sure, making wise the simple." (Ps 19:7). "Yahweh's precepts are right, rejoicing the heart. Yahweh's commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes." (Ps 19:8). "The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever. Yahweh's ordinances are true, and righteous altogether." (Ps 19:9). Six names are set in a row — law, covenant, precepts, commandment, fear, ordinances — and not one of the six is praised for its appearance. Every one is praised for its work inside the man who receives it. The law restores. The covenant makes wise. The precepts rejoice the heart. The commandment enlightens the eyes. This is the psalm's definition of the word's beauty: it is beautiful by what it does to the soul that takes it in. A perfect law is not a decorated law. It is a law under whose operation a dead soul comes back.

So when verse 10 crowns the praise, the crowns are wanting and tasting. "More to be desired than gold" — the word outbids the strongest desire men have, the desire that moves nations and murders brothers. "Sweeter also than honey and the extract of the honeycomb" — not honey in the jar but the dripping of the comb itself, sweetness at its most concentrated, undiluted, straight from the source. The psalmist is not decorating the word with compliments. He is testifying from the inside. He has wanted it more than wealth. He has tasted it sweeter than the sweetest thing his world contained.

He stands in a line of men who ate. Jeremiah did not say that God's words were found and admired: "Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words were to me a joy and the rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by your name, Yahweh, God of Armies." (Jer 15:16). Ezekiel was handed a scroll and commanded, "eat what you find," and the prophet records the flavor before he records anything else: "It was as sweet as honey in my mouth." (Ezek 3:1-3). David joins the two senses in one command and puts taste first: "Oh taste and see that Yahweh is good." (Ps 34:8). Taste, then see. The order is the doctrine. The goodness of God in His word is not proven to the spectator; it is proven on the tongue of the man who takes it in. No one knows that honey is sweet by hearing it described. He knows it by eating. The word of God is known the same way, and its beauty is known no other way.

But the sweetness does not flatter. The psalm that begins in praise of the perfect law ends with the servant on his knees about his own hidden rot: "Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors." (Ps 19:12). The movement is not accidental. The sun left nothing hidden from its heat (Ps 19:6); the word leaves nothing hidden in the heart (Ps 19:12). The same purity that makes the commandment enlighten the eyes (Ps 19:8) makes the man see what he could not see in himself. So the servant prays to be kept back: "Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me." (Ps 19:13). This too belongs to the beauty. A word that only comforted would be confection. This word warns as it sweetens — "Moreover your servant is warned by them. In keeping them there is great reward." (Ps 19:11) — and the warning is part of the sweetness, because it keeps the eater alive.

And then the psalm closes where all its speech has been traveling: in the mouth of the servant. "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Yahweh, my rock, and my redeemer." (Ps 19:14). The heavens declared, and could not pray. The law spoke, and the servant answered. The first speech in the psalm was God's glory poured out wordlessly over the whole earth; the last speech is one redeemed man's words laid before God and found acceptable. Between them stands the word that was desired above gold and tasted above honey. That is the final form of its beauty: it gives sinners speech that God receives. Behind the declaration, behind the law, behind the sweetness, the psalm's last name for God is Redeemer. The word is beautiful because the God who speaks it redeems the men who eat it — and having eaten, they open their mouths, and what comes out is praise.