“How I long for your precepts! In your righteousness preserve my life” (Ps 119:40). To long for (taev) is how the psalmist caps this section of the psalm. He yearns for God’s precepts.
This word is also used in Psalm 119:174, and there the psalmist longs for “salvation.”
This psalmist, who is in the posture of learning, pointed toward the Source of learning, focused on the purpose of learning, and knows the turnings of learning, now confesses what drives the whole: he yearns to learn by yearning to know God’s will.
Our question is obvious: What do we really yearn for? If our ultimate yearning is not focused on God, who in that perichoretic dance of love establishes the central meaning of all of life, then our learning will fall to bits.
But, if our yearning is oriented to God, we will “follow” God “to the very end” (v. 33).