Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.
Psalm 119:67 ESV
A painful reality is expressed by the psalmist in this verse. God afflicts His people for their own good. A strain of hedonistic thought has wormed its way into the church that if God is truly good then He will never cause us any harm. It also expresses the converse: if God were to ever cause us harm, He could not be good. How foolish that we who are fortunate to live seventy or eighty years would presume to judge the everlasting Creator! How absurd that we who cannot keep from sinning against even our own consciences would claim to have moral authority over God!
No, the uncomfortable reality is that God does cause harm, that God does afflict even those in whom He delights. Job’s affliction was certainly the direct result of Satan, yet God was also clearly orchestrating the whole matter. After all, it was God who asked Satan to consider Job rather than the reverse.
Or should we consider God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Of course, he stopped Abraham from actually slaughtering his son, yet would any parent not call Abraham’s three-day journey to Moriah a time of affliction?
It was God design for Joseph to be taken down to Egypt. It was God’s design for all of Israel to dwell in Egypt and to become slaves. There is no shortage of examples, if only we have the honesty to face them head-on.
Should we then doubt God’s goodness since He so frequently afflicts His people? By no means! Whenever God’s afflicts his people, He does so to discipline them, to correct them of their errors and to set them upon the proper path. Both Proverbs 3 and Hebrews 12 affirm this fact by relating God’s discipline to parental discipline of children. When administered properly, parental discipline is a mighty expression of love toward children, for it expresses concern not merely for the child’s immediate happiness but for his or her overall character and behavior. Indeed, it is unloving to leave children to their own devices. Proverbs 13:24 even calls it hatred: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” The child has less understanding and less wisdom than the parent, and imparting both through discipline is ultimately an act of love.
So it is with the disciplining afflictions that God brings upon us. They are meant to bring us back to God’s good path whenever we go astray. They bring us back into obedience to God’s Word whenever we have begun to do whatever is right in our own eyes. Painful though it may be, all God’s people can rightly pray alongside the psalmist: Before I was afflict I went astray, but now I keep your word.
B. C. Newton 
I don’t know if I agree with this comment. Because the word before it’s an important connection between the Psalmist affliction and his sin. When I read this verse I see what God tells us the whole time in the bible. It is our sin and the sin of other who cause us affliction. Even in the event of Job. Even though was God that brought up Job to Satan, the whole story only happen because Sin was brought to this world. Because we live in a broken world and now we need to deal with death and suffering. Abraham would never have to almost sacrifice his son if it wasn’t for the sin of Eve and Adam, God would have never to sacrifice his Son either. Joseph would have never gone through the suffering if it wasn’t for the sin of his siblings. God allowed all this things to happen not to discipline us, but because perfect love entails freedom and with that in this world, death and evil comes when we chose different than love. However, God gets angry at what afflict us as much as we do, but He is the only one who can use what was meant for evil for good, as Joseph affirms to his sibling. God used death to bring us life through His Son Jesus Crist. I can’t believe in a God that needs to use pain to create discipline. I believe in a God that uses pain for good, but he is never the one who causes it.