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 it is enough to observe in order to be righteous. Of course, the commandments given by God must be observed, otherwise there can be no talk of any path of righteousness at all.

But outward, formal observance of the commandments alone is not enough. If the commandments and God's law in general were like human laws, if they were only a set of rules that God invented for people so that they would observe these rules, their formal observance would be enough, just as formal observance of laws invented by people is enough in order not to be their violator.

But the situation with God's law is different. The word "Torah," used in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament to designate law, has many meanings. It means legislation, the way of life corresponding to it, and even the spiritual state of the person who corresponds to that way of life.

This range of meaning is due to the fact that, unlike human laws, God's law is not conventional and not arbitrary: it reflects the patterns that characterize the relationships 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 sufficient there. Spiritual laws are personal, personal because spiritual life itself is first of all a system of relationships connecting a person with God and with other people. Here the main thing is the choice made and the decision accepted, the will and the intention, and will and intention are easier to describe in the language of commandments than in the language of abstract definitions.

If a commandment turns into an abstract definition, even one with moral and ethical content, all that remains of a concrete relationship filled with life is a dead abstraction, and all that remains of spiritual life is its diagram. That is why the hymnographer mentions God's breath, or "spirit": only His breath can give life to any relationship, whether with Him Himself or with any of the people.

Then the path of righteousness truly turns out to be God's path, and not the path of rather dreary "moral self-improvement," which is incapable of leading to anything except harsh legalism and dry rigorism. Unlike this dead-end path, the path of righteousness leads into the Kingdom, filled with life and joy, into the Kingdom filled with the breath of God.