Psalm 25 Bible study: Teach me your paths

Read the first letter of each verse in Hebrew. After the title, "By David" (25:1), the psalm's first word begins with aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and so does the first word of 25:2. Then the verses begin with the alphabet's letters in its order: gimel (25:3), dalet (25:4), he (25:5), zayin (25:6), chet (25:7), tet (25:8), yod (25:9), kaf (25:10), lamed (25:11), mem (25:12), nun (25:13), samekh (25:14), ayin (25:15), pe (25:16), tsade (25:17), resh (25:18), resh again (25:19), shin (25:20) and tav (25:21), the alphabet's last letter. Three letters begin no verse: bet, vav and qof. The two resh verses open with the same word, Consider: "Consider my affliction and my travail" (25:18), and "Consider my enemies" (25:19). Then, after tav, comes one more verse, and it begins with pe: "God, redeem Israel out of all his troubles" (25:22). Psalm 34 ends the same way. After the verse that begins with tav (Psalm 34:21) comes a last verse that begins with pe, with the verb of Psalm 25:22's redeem: "The LORD redeems the soul of his servants" (Psalm 34:22). Psalm 9's notes set out how Psalm 119 shows the letters' order; these notes don't repeat them. The psalm doesn't explain its letters, and these notes go no further than what the letters show.

Psalms 25:11→leads to1 John 2:12

The psalmist prays, "For your name’s sake, LORD, pardon my iniquity, for it is great" (Psalm 25:11). John writes, "If anyone sins, we have a Counselor with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous" (1 John 2:1), and further on, "I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake" (1 John 2:12). 1 John doesn't cite Psalm 25, and the psalm is written in Hebrew and 1 John in Greek, so no link between their words is claimed; setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on a shared subject: sins forgiven, and the ground both give for it, a name. Some read what the psalmist asks for, pardon for the sake of the LORD's name, beside what John tells his readers they have, sins "forgiven you for his name’s sake" (1 John 2:12), and read his name there as the name of Jesus, whom John names in 1 John 2:1. Others read the psalm in its own setting, the psalmist's prayer for his own iniquity, read his name in 1 John 2:12 as the Father's or leave it open, and draw no line from the psalm, since no New Testament verse names it. Neither reading makes the psalmist Jesus or says the psalm speaks of him.

דֶּרֶךְderekhsay DE-rekh

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "way, road, distance, journey, manner", and in a figurative sense, "of course of life, or action". Strong's: "a road (as trodden); figuratively, a course of life or mode of action". The psalm has it four times: "Show me your ways, LORD" (25:4), "he will instruct sinners in the way" (25:8), "He will teach the humble his way" (25:9), and "He shall instruct him in the way that he shall choose" (25:12). First the psalmist asks for the LORD's ways; then the psalm says the LORD teaches his way to sinners, the humble, and the man who fears him.