This stanza has a great deal to say about the psalmist's enemies, as if at this point his thoughts were nearly taken up with them. He has spoken of them before and will again, though they assume a far less threatening role from stanza twelve onward to the end. Here he reports that these enemies have been persecuting him (v. 84), digging pitfalls for him (v. 85) and trying to wipe him from the earth (v. 87). The last phrase is literally “in the earth," which seems pointless until we remember verse 85, which reports that his enemies were digging pits for him. That is how they wanted to get him “in the earth.” They wanted to kill him and see him buried. No wonder he has been so depressed in this stanza.
The tenth stanza of Psalm 119 is the yodh stanza, the Hebrew letter Jesus referred to when he said, “Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matt. 5:18). The yodh is a mere dash of a letter. But we must see that in Psalm 119 the yodh section does not deal with trifles. On the contrary, like the stanza before it and the stanza following, it deals with the afflictions that come into the life of the trusting child of God.
So far in our study of stanza nine I have been writing about suffering and God's purposes in it. But I need to say now that affliction is not the most frequently mentioned matter in these verses. The most prominent word in these verses is “good.” There is a very good reason for it. This is the teth stanza. Teth is the first letter of the Hebrew word "good” (tov). So it was a natural thought for the composer of the psalm to use “good” at the beginning of these verses. The word occurs at the beginning of five of them (vv. 65, 66, 68, 71, 72).
Psalm 119, verses 65-88, explore the second of five uses of affliction in the believer's life—that is, suffering that is corrective—because this is what the writer says God did with him. God sent affliction into his life as a divine corrective to direct him into right paths so that he might know and obey God's Word. As the writer explores in stanza nine, this answer to the purpose of God in suffering has two parts.
Why do the righteous suffer? What is the purpose of affliction in their lives? When we look for the answer to these questions given in the Bible as a whole, we find that there are various explanations, which is not surprising since this is not a simple problem.
