Psalm 119:72 Good Book

No matter what the topic of any given 8-verse stanza, in Psalm 119 David always steers back to the Word. The Good Book.

Meriam Webster says the first known use of the term "the good book" was in 1651. It was an obvious and inevitable phrase people would use to describe the Bible.

By the time I was growing up, from the late 50s through the 70s, the phrase had become a generic term used throughout American culture to describe the Bible, without wandering too much into discussions of God and faith.

People would reference "the Good Book" in conversation, whether or not they were particularly religious or faithful to the Good Book. Often as not, the quote from "the Good Book" might not actually be from the Bible at all, or it might be a corrupted version of an actual verse.

This clip from Fiddler on the Roof, a Broadway musical written and first performed in the 1960s, reflects this usage of the term:

The phrase continues to be used this way in the 21st century.

I think most people mean well when they reference "the Good Book", but too often they're actually downgrading the Bible by the way they use it. They seem to be giving it credit for being a book with some good stories and with plenty of good quotes. But that's not at all the same as David's description of it.

The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

Psalm 119:72

Collections of good quotes are plentiful. The internet is bursting with resources for good quotes, even good quotes from the Bible.

On the Goodreads.com page devoted to Holy Bible: New International Version, the author is listed as Anonymous. As with most other books, Goodreads members have posted their favorite quotes from The Bible. There are 299 quotes listed for this particular version, ranging from the ubiquitous John 3:16 to this one from Leviticus 19:16, which is certainly not from the NIV:

Thou shalt not stand idly by.

Whether believers or unbelievers, Christians or atheists, people do love to quote "the Good Book" to suit their own purposes and advance their own agendas. Few, though, use it in a way that shows they value the words from God's mouth more than a precious fortune in material wealth, as David did.

Many believers claim to value the Bible as the final authority on life and godliness. But by their handling of it they betray the true value they place on it, as a tool to defend and prop up their own theologies and way of life. And, for too many, it's a weapon to beat down anyone who believes or behaves differently.

David, the warrior, knew the power of God's Law as a weapon. A millenium before Paul wrote Ephesians 6:17 and Hebrews 4:12, David knew the Word of God is a sword, filled with divine power when used to do surgery on his own heart. He learned this by going through the bad times and struggling mightily to find the good in himself and the good in God's purposes.

Only when we use God's Word as a blazing scalpel on ourselves will we understand the true value of "the Good Book".