Hymns based on Psalm 119

Psalm 119 has given hymn writers words for 3 hymns in this library, by writers including Isaac Watts, Bernard Barton, Allen William Chatfield; Synesius of Cyrene and Bishop of Ptolemais. Each is listed below with the lines that echo the chapter and the verses they draw on, quoted from the World English Bible, a public-domain modern translation.

The verse these hymns return to most is Psalm 119:5: “Oh that my ways were steadfast to obey your statutes!”

Hymn writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries knew their Bibles almost by heart, and they wove its phrases into their lines — sometimes as a close paraphrase, as in the metrical psalms, and sometimes as a single image carried into a new setting. Reading the verse beside the line shows what the writer had in mind, and often why a hymn was chosen to be sung alongside a particular reading.