What does Psalms Chapter 119 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Ad Dominum introduces a heading describing prayer in tribulation and a gradual canticle. The edition annotation calls the next fifteen psalms gradual from gradus, steps, ascensions or degrees. It offers alternatives: appointment for fifteen temple steps, rising voice in singing, or people returning from captivity ascending mountainous Jerusalem. These possibilities are not certified as observed performances. It attributes to holy fathers a mystical reading of degrees toward virtue, perfection and heavenly Jerusalem.

The speaker cried in trouble and was heard, then asks delivery from wicked lips and a deceitful tongue. He asks what shall be given or added to that tongue, followed by sharp arrows of the mighty and waste-laying coals. Broom wood is not specified.

He laments prolonged sojourning and having dwelt with Cedar’s inhabitants; his soul has long been a sojourner. He was peaceable with peace-haters, who fought without cause when he spoke. No hostile tents, reconciliation speech or achieved departure toward a heavenly sanctuary is supplied.