“Even though officials are sitting down and speaking to one another against me, your slave muses on your statutes.
Also, your testimonies are my delight, my men of advice.”
Psalm 119:23-24 (author’s translation)
How would you respond to learning that the most powerful people in the world were allied against you? What would you do first? Would you pack up yourself and your family in a hurry? Would you seek to retreat somewhere safe? On your way perhaps into hiding, what cherished keepsakes would you take from your house at a moment’s notice? Where would you go so that you could think soundly about next steps? Whose guidance would you trust to remain sane?
In the course of human history, few have had to consider such a predicament as the one just described. However, in Psalm 119, we encounter one faithful saint in such a situation. He is suffering greatly at the hands of the most powerful men in the world who are seeking his life. Psalm 119:23-24 provides a significant window into his response, and his imitable response provides clarity for the current controversy concerning the sufficiency of Scripture for counseling. The writer of this psalm seeks to instill confidence in his readers regarding the doctrine of sufficiency by using descriptive prose rather than didactic instruction.1I am thankful for David Powlison’s helpful observation on this point. See David Powlison, Speaking Truth in Love (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2005), 13-15. In this prose, he tells the tale of two councils.2For teaching on these verses related to the sufficiency of Scripture, see “Psalm 119:23-24 | The Sufficiency of Scripture for Counseling” at https://gracebiblenola.org/sermon/psalm-11923-24-the-sufficiency-of-scripture-for-counseling/.
A Poignant Dichotomy
He mentions one council in the first line of verse 23, “Even though officials are sitting down and speaking to one another against me…” This first group of men includes powerful government officials who function as formal representatives of the king.3שָׂרִים (sharim), meaning representatives of a king, officials, people of note, commander, or leaders of a group or a district, appears here and in verse 161. These verses also lend helpful insight into the likely author of this psalm. For more information on the authorship of Psalm 119, see George J. Zemek, The Word of God in the Child of God: Exegetical, Theological, and Homiletical Reflections from the 119th Psalm (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 7-15. They were “sitting down and speaking to one another” against him. He is describing a council of rulers taking counsel together to plot the psalmist’s downfall. However, there is also another, better council in view.
The psalmist describes this second council in verse 24. The testimonies of Yahweh4The personal, covenant name of Israel’s God, Yahweh (יהוה), appears as the LORD in most English translations. (the Scriptures), he says, are “my counselors,” or as the Hebrew reads literally, “my men of advice.”5The Hebrew phrase here is אַנְשֵׁי עַצָתִי (aneshāy atsotē). See Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson, and Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 866-867. His intentional word choice to describe God’s words and his relationship to them is noteworthy. They are my men, meaning, they belong to him because he has claimed them as a personally dear possession. He also personifies them as multiple men (note the plural nouns: testimonies…counselors/men). They stand in contradistinction to the multiple men allied against him for the Scriptures are also speaking, not to one another to do the psalmist harm, but to the psalmist in pursuit of his good.
The final picture that emerges from these verses is that of two distinct groups of advisors: one against the psalmist and one for the psalmist—one council of men advising each other for his harm and the other council advising the psalmist for his transcendent happiness (cf. Psalm 119:1-3).
When worldly advisors gathered against him, the psalmist’s response was to retreat to his own group of advisors—the Scriptures. In this way, he masterfully describes his confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture because he does not turn anywhere else except God’s testimonies. Let that sink in. When experiencing a form of immense, rare, excruciating suffering, the psalmist anchors his confidence in Scripture alone. He receives only them as his counselors.
A Present Dissonance
Before and after Psalm 119 was written, God’s people found sufficient help in Yahweh’s Word for counseling sufferers. Before neuroscience was ever a field of study and before the proliferation of trauma-informed drivel, the Scriptures were proving themselves sage “men of advice” to all who would listen.
However, presently, some who wear the biblical counseling label do not possess the same commitment as the psalmist to the sufficiency of Scripture for advice.6See this author’s previous article, “Between Bethel and Dan: Clinically-Informed Biblical Counseling’s Failed Attempt at Balance,” here: https://biblicalcounseling.com/resource-library/articles/clinically-informed-biblical-counseling-failed-attempt-at-balance/ They are unsuccessfully attempting to harmonize Scripture with the latest psychological jargon, producing an awful dissonance between the two. They cannot say with the psalmist, “Your testimonies are my delight; They are my counselors” (LSB). They welcome ungodly people and psychological theories to join their council alongside God’s testimonies. Their council includes Bessel van der Kolk and The Body Keeps the Score. It includes Francine Shapiro and EMDR therapy. It includes Dr. Stephen Porges and Polyvagal Theory. It includes Judith L. Herman and Trauma Recovery7In Trauma Aware: A Christian’s Guide to Providing Help and Care, author Eliza Huie cites Judith L. Herman favorably, no less than seven times, even calling Trauma and Recovery “a benchmark book for understanding trauma” (p. 143). Clearly, Huie is building on Herman’s interpretation of catastrophic human suffering. For a summary of why this is problematic, see TIL 519: Complex Trauma (feat. Francine Tan). and a host of other so-called scientific ideas currently in vogue.
The secular experts on which some biblical counselors depend are, in the biblical sense, foolish advisors. They claim expertise on man’s mental life and behavior, but are unqualified to speak alongside the living God. “[His] testimonies are wonderful” and “The unfolding of [His] words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple” (Psalm 119:129-130). Therefore, the alleged discoveries of unbelievers concerning the truth about man and his counseling needs, by contrast, are not wonderful and cannot give light or understanding to the simple. They only cast a shadow on the already perfectly pure light of God’s word and fortify the ignorance of those who lack understanding.
A Practical Directive
Many in the biblical counseling world have been wondering, how did we get here? How have so many lost their moorings regarding the sufficiency of Scripture in such a seemingly short period of time? This is where, again, the details of the text are immensely helpful. Psalm 119:23-24 implies at least three weaknesses that will eventually loosen our grip on the sufficiency of Scripture.
An insufficient embrace of God’s authority loosens our grip on the sufficiency of Scripture. How could it not, since “All…doctrines are related to one another and ultimately stand or fall together”?8Heath Lambert, A Call to Clarity: Critical Issues in Contemporary Biblical Counseling (Jacksonville, FL: First Baptist Church Jacksonville, 2024), 29. Furthermore, the psalmist who received only God’s words for counsel (the doctrine of sufficiency) identifies himself as Yahweh’s slave in verse 23 (the doctrine of authority). In fact, slave is the cherished and only title he adopts for himself (cf. Psalm 119:17, 23, 38, 49, 65, 76, 84, 122, 124, 125, 135, 140)! If we are God’s slaves, then we do not have the authority to seek counsel where God has not spoken.
An insufficient meditation on God’s statutes loosens our grip on the sufficiency of Scripture. In this context, the Hebrew word שׂיח (syach), thankfully translated “muse” in the LSB since it so well captures the sense of the original, means “to meditate with thanks and praise.”9Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, M. E. J. Richardson, and Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 1320. As the entire psalm demonstrates, the psalmist practiced meditating with a thankful, worshipful attitude on the statutes of God and the God who spoke them. Evidently, this joyful, humble, deep reflection led him to conclude that God’s words were the only ones necessary for counsel. Therefore, wherever the sufficiency of Scripture for counsel wanes, also lacking is a grateful, worshipful consideration of all that God has said.
An insufficient delight in God’s testimonies loosens our grip on the sufficiency of Scripture. The parallel relationship between the phrases in verse 24 indicates that the psalmist’s sentiment, “Your testimonies are my delight,” implies the psalmist’s standard, “They are my men of advice.” In other words, it is because God’s words are his delight that he naturally and necessarily makes them his only counselors. Only when we totally abandon ourselves to the counseling wisdom of Scripture alone can we claim with full conviction that His testimonies are our delight. Truly, we have no good apart from them because the source of all goodness is the God who speaks (cf. Psalm 16:2; 119:68). Currently, biblical counselors are in desperate need of relearning this very lesson.
The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is being undermined in a nuanced way by some biblical counselors. For others, this present season of controversy is also an opportunity to insist again with the hymnwriter,
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
