NOTES for Psa 143:10
The path of righteousness has always been God's path, and every righteous person in every age has asked God to teach him His ways. Everything would be simpler if the matter concerned only commandments or laws that one need only observe in order to be righteous. Of course, the commandments given by God must be observed, otherwise there can be no talk at all of the path of righteousness.
But external, formal observance of the commandments alone is not enough. If the commandments and the law of God in general were like human laws, if they were only a set of rules God invented for people to observe, formal observance would be enough, as formal observance of laws invented by people is enough in order not to be their violator.
But with the law of God the situation is different. The word "Torah," used in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to designate the law, has a fairly broad range of meanings: it means legislation, and the way of life corresponding to it, and even the spiritual state of a person that corresponds to this way of life.
This range of meaning is due to the fact that, unlike human laws, the law of God is not conditional or arbitrary: it reflects the laws that characterize the relationship between God and the human being. It is an objective law of spiritual life reflected in the commandments.
Natural laws are impersonal, so definitions are enough here. Spiritual laws are personal, because spiritual life itself is, first of all, a system of relationships linking a person with God and with other people. Here the main thing is the choice made and the decision taken, will and intention; and will and intention are easier to describe in the language of commandments than in the language of abstract definitions.
If a commandment is turned into an abstract definition, even one with moral and ethical content, only a dead abstraction remains of the concrete and living relationship, and only its scheme remains of spiritual life. That is why the hymn writer mentions the breath, or Spirit, of God: only His breath can give life to any relationship, whether with Himself or with any person.
Then the path of righteousness truly turns out to be God's path, and not the path of rather dreary "moral self-improvement," which can lead to nothing except harsh legalism and dry rigorism. Unlike this dead-end path, the path of righteousness leads into the Kingdom, full of life and joy, into the Kingdom filled with the breath of God.