Let your mercy come to me, that I may live;
for your law is my delight.

Psalm 119:77 ESV

In the previous verse, the psalmist made a similar request: “Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant.” Just as he appealed for God’s steadfast love there, he now petitions for God’s mercy here. We have already seen that the psalmist is writing from a place of affliction and distress.

So, he pleads for mercy.

Mercy is the compassion of God moved toward us. Indeed, the King James Version calls it ‘tender mercies.’ It is the compassion of God by which He spares us from the judgment that we deserve. Grace is a gift, the receiving of something that we do not deserve. But mercy is the relief of suffering.

He cries for God to be merciful, to look upon his affliction and not to treat him as his sin deserves but to deal tenderly and compassionately with him. And this ought to be cry of all God’s people because we utterly depend upon His mercy for life, which is why the psalmist adds: that I may live.

The Puritan Thomas Manton considers which kind of life the psalmist has in mind. Eternal life? Physical life?

I say: Why not both?

A beautiful aspect of the Psalms is that they are written generally enough apply to a multitude of situations in the lives of the saints. Every believer can pray this verse because we all need eternal life, which only comes through the mercy of God.

At the same time, we can also pray this prayer when our physical lives at risk. When we fear that our lives may be slipping away, we can cry out with the psalmist: Lord, let your mercy come to me, that I may live!

And praying these words keeps us grounded in the reality that another day or even moment of life is by God’s compassionate mercy toward us.

Now, the second half of the verse says, for your law is my delight. How does this connect to the request for mercy?

There are many possible ways to understand the connection, but here is my thought: it is through God’s law that the psalmist has learned that God is merciful.

He can only cry out for mercy because he delights in the God’s Word, which teaches him that Yahweh is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6).

Thus, the psalmist is delighting in God’s Word, like the Psalm 1 man, and now appeals for God’s mercy in accordance with His character.

Do you believe that God is merciful?

I pray that this would be your cry to the Lord as well, crying for Him to give you life everlasting through the great mercy that He has given us in Christ our Lord.

May we believe that God is merciful, that He is ready to forgive, and that He delights to show compassion to weary sinners like us.

God Himself has told us so.

May we believe and delight in His Word.