"... A law given by God invites meditation and study as well as obedience. The meditation enjoined in Joshua 1:8 (“This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it”) has obedience as its explicit goal. But when meditation on the law (again carried on “day and night”) is paralleled with “delight ... in the law of the LORD” in Psalm 1:2, it is clearly viewed as a good in itself. Psalm 19 praises the perfections of God’s commandments and finds them “more to be desired ... than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb” (19:7–11, here verse 10).The psalmist of Psalm 119 refers not only to the “keeping” and “observing” of God’s commandments (verses 2, 4, 5, 8, etc.), but also of “learning” them (verse 7), “treasuring” them (11), “meditating on” them (15), “delighting in” them (16), “longing for” them (20), “clinging to” them (31), “hoping in” them (43), even “loving” them (47). To seek and delight in God’s commandments is to seek and delight in God (119:2, 10, 12, etc.) ..."

"... Psalm 1 maintains that whoever orients themselves toward instruction (“Torah”) will have a successful life. It is not merely incidental that the Torah in this psalm is the Torah of Yhwh (and not the Torah of Moses), recalling the terminology of Chronicles. This statement makes clear that Psalm 1 subordinates itself to the Torah. Torah is the entity toward which the pious should orient themselves. In addition to this explicit reference, there are also implicit allusions in Psalm 1 that are meaningful in terms of a specific canon theology. Psalm 1 recalls the above-mentioned opening text from the Neviʾim (Joshua 1:8), where God speaks to Joshua after the death of Moses ... By way of this reference, Psalm 1 places its reader, that is every reader, back into the position of Joshua immediately after the death of Moses. One could even say that Psalm 1, on the one hand, returns the history of Israel’s salvation back to the point before the entrance into the land so that every possibility is again open for the individual. Psalm 1 thereby places the responsibility on each individual. Each person is charged with Torah observance, which is linked to one’s welfare—not only the leaders like Joshua or the kings ..."