Testimonies — the word that means evidence

One of the words Psalm 119 uses for Scripture is not a teaching word or a command word at all. It is a courtroom word.

Edut — testimony. From the root meaning to bear witness, to repeat, to say again. The related noun ed is the ordinary word for a witness in a legal case, the man who stands up and says what he saw.

So when the psalmist writes about God’s testimonies, he is describing Scripture as evidence given by a witness.

Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors. The second half is the courtroom again — men of counsel, advisers to a king.

And the word turns up in the tabernacle, attached to the most sacred object Israel had.

The ark of the covenant is called in Hebrew the ark of the testimony, and what made it that was the contents.

The tablets go in and the box is named after them. Not the ark of gold, though it was. Not the ark of the presence, though it was that too. The ark of the testimony — a container for evidence.

Two parties enter an agreement; the terms are written; the document is deposited; and if either side later disputes what was agreed, the document is produced. That is what a testimony is. It exists for the day somebody says that is not what we agreed.

So Scripture as testimony is Scripture as evidence held in reserve. It is not primarily inspiring. It is admissible.

And that reframes what the psalmist means by calling it his delight and his counselors. He is not saying the testimonies make him feel good. He is saying that when he needs advice, he goes to the deposition rather than to the room — because the room is full of opinion and the deposition is full of what was actually said.

Which is also why Moses put the book beside the ark as a witness against them, as Week Six found. The same word family. A testimony that only ever agreed with the reader would be no testimony at all.

And this is why the word deserves a day of its own. Most of the vocabulary for Scripture describes what it does to the reader — instructs, commands, judges. This one describes what it is in itself, independent of anyone reading it. A testimony is true whether or not it is produced in court.

A witness that can be contradicted, deposited where it can be produced, standing ready to be read against the people who own it. That is one of the words Scripture uses for itself, and it is one of the least sentimental.

The eight terms of Psalm 119 — torah, edut, piqqudim, choq, mitzvah, mishpat, dabar and imrah — are distributed through the psalm so that most of its 176 verses contain at least one. The pattern is deliberate and it is why the psalm reads as a catalogue as well as a poem.

The tabernacle vocabulary carries the word repeatedly: the ark of the testimony, the tent of the testimony, the veil of the testimony, and the two tablets called the tablets of the testimony. The word is the technical term for what was deposited at the center.

Israel’s legal standard required two or three witnesses for any matter — a rule Jesus applies to church discipline and Paul to accusations against elders, and which Jesus invokes about His own claims in John 8. The concept of testimony is load-bearing throughout Scripture, not just in the vocabulary for Scripture.

The related root also lies behind the word for the annual festivals, the appointed times — the moments fixed in advance when the people and God met by agreement. Testimony and appointment come from the same neighborhood of meaning.

Isaiah 8:16 — bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples — uses the word of a document to be preserved through a period when nobody would listen. The chapter is the one from Week Eight where Isaiah is told to write with named witnesses. The vocabulary of testimony and the practice of depositing documents belong together.

Look it upH5715 עֵדוּת edut, testimony · H5707 עֵד ed, witness · H5749 עוּד ud, to bear witness, repeat · G3141 μαρτυρία marturia, testimony

Then note where the New Testament takes the word. John’s Gospel and letters use marturia constantly — the Father testifies, the works testify, the Scriptures testify, the Spirit testifies, and John says his own testimony is true. The last book of the Bible is introduced as the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Where this touchesPsalm 119:2, 14, 24, 88, 111, 129, 144 · Exodus 25:16, 21–22; 31:18 · Deuteronomy 31:26 (Week Six, Day Four) · John 5:39 · Revelation 1:2. The earlier word studies were dabar, theopneustos, logos, torah, graphe, emeth, amen, the messenger formula, and sepher.