Eights on Eights

Uche Anizor writes (Kings and Priests, 78-9) analyzes Psalm 119 as a “developed expression of devotion to God’s Word” and a complex literary structure:

“The first is its acrostic form: each stanza is headed by a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet and each line begins with that particular letter. The deployment of an acrostic structure was likely for aesthetic reasons, with the ultimate aim of exalting torah and showing its magnificence and beauty. The second compenent is the eight terms deployed to describe torah. In each stanza, the psalmist uses a combination of these eight terms (laws, statutes, commandments, judgments, ordinances, words, testimonies, and precepts) as synonyms of torah.” On the surface, the poem is divided into 22 8-line stanzas.

The rationale behind the acrostic structure is likely something more than aesthetic. The point is to display the law as an alphabet, torah as alpha and omega, beginning and end, reflecting the God who is beginning and end. And the eights point to the torah as a word for the new creation: In seven days God created heaven and earth, but torah is something from the eighth day, the first day of a new week.