Psalms 119:136 Meaning and Explanation
“Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.”
King James Version (KJV)
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Read Full Chapter →Strong convictions can curdle into contempt for people who lack them. This line shows another possibility. The same man who has asked for ordered steps and rescue from oppressors ends his stanza in tears, and the tears are shed for the very people whose conduct grieves him. It is worth asking what kind of love produces such weeping.
Tears run down the psalmist's face over people who disregard God's law. His grief is for others rather than for himself, a sorrow flowing from love for the law and for those who break it.
The Context of Psalms 119:136
Verse 136 closes the stanza that began at verse 129, the section in which each line starts with the Hebrew letter pe. The preceding lines have asked God for mercy, for steady steps, for deliverance from human oppression, and for the light of his face. This final line turns outward to the community. The word they carries no stated antecedent inside the verse, and readers have long taken it to mean the wider society whose disregard the psalm has already lamented, as in verse 126 where people have made void God's law. Rivers of waters stands as the psalm's strongest image of grief.
What Does Psalms 119:136 Mean?
The image comes first and dominates the line. Rivers of waters running down the eyes is deliberate exaggeration, the kind Hebrew poetry uses to make an inner state visible. The picture is of streams rather than drops. The cause follows without softening: because they keep not thy law. Two loves are pressed together in a single sentence. The psalmist loves God's law, and he loves the people who ignore it, and the collision of those loves comes out as water. Notice also what is missing. No request that God destroy them, no satisfaction taken in their fault, no distancing of himself from their company. Grief is the whole of his response here.
The verse supplies the psalm's emotional counterweight. Elsewhere the writer hates every false way and asks God to deal with those who err from his statutes, and here the same conviction produces mourning. Prophets carry this pairing. Jeremiah wished his head were waters so that he might weep day and night for the slain of his people, and Ezekiel saw a mark set on those who sigh and cry over the abominations done in the city. Samuel mourned for Saul. The pattern suggests that faithful attention to God's law forms people who feel the loss deeply when it is abandoned.
Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and wept over it, saying the city had missed the things belonging to its peace. Luke records that scene in language much like this verse, sorrow poured out over people who would not receive what God had spoken. Paul carried a similar continual heaviness for his own nation. Here the psalmist's inner life anticipates the heart of Christ with unusual directness. When we find ourselves grieved by the world's disregard for God, the question that follows is what shape our grief will take. Tears keep the door open toward the very people we are tempted to write off.
Psalms 119:136 in the Original Language
palgey mayim (פַּלְגֵי מָיִם), 'rivers of waters' -- literally channels or divisions of water, the same phrase Psalm 1 uses for the streams that feed a planted tree. Applied to the eyes, it turns an image of nourishment into one of overflow.
Bible Verses Related to Psalms 119:136
“Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”
- Jeremiah 9:1
“And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”
- Ezekiel 9:4
“Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law.”
- Psalm 119:53
“And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,”
- Luke 19:41
Where Psalms 119:136 Echoes in Scripture
Luke 19:41 records Jesus coming near to Jerusalem and weeping over it, grieved that the city did not know the time of its visitation. That scene gives the clearest later expression of what this verse describes: sorrow over people who have set aside what God has spoken, carried by someone who loves both the word and the people. Reading the two together keeps the psalmist's tears from sounding like wounded pride. Weeping of this kind arises from love that still hopes for those it weeps over.
How to Apply Psalms 119:136 Today
It is easier to be angry at a culture than to grieve for it. This verse invites a different posture toward neighbors, relatives, and public figures whose choices trouble us. We might begin by praying for one person by name before we say anything about that person to anyone else. Tears also test our motives, since sorrow over the harm someone is doing to himself feels different from irritation at being contradicted. Where our hearts have hardened, we can ask God for the softening this verse assumes. Love for God's law and love for people who ignore it can live in the same chest.
Reflection & Prayer
Whose disregard for God troubles me most, and have I ever wept for that person? A prayer: Lord, keep my convictions from turning cold. Give me your own grief for those who have set your word aside, and let that grief send me to prayer. Soften whatever has hardened in me, and make my sorrow useful to someone.