Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:1-2(NRSV), 3-4(NAB)
Since prayer is at the heart of both the Jewish and Christian faiths, the Psalms can be a great source of inspiration for believers. The Psalter is our best example of how the ancient Hebrews prayed and what prayer was to them. It is in the Psalms that we learn what it means to talk to God from the heart, which in Hebrew is the lebab, more than just an internal organ, but “the seat of desire (Ps 21:2) and other emotions…[and also] very frequently a synonym for intellectual activity,”
[1] something that we moderns assign to the brain. We must learn from the Psalmists what it means to pray to God so that we can truly understand the word of God, since the Psalms are, at their most basic, poetic, and, in the words of Karl Rahner, “the ability and practice of perceiving the poetic word is presupposition for hearing the word of God…the poetic word and the poetic ear are so much a part of a person that if this essential power were really lost, we could no longer hear the word of God in its human expression. In its inmost essence, the poetic is a prerequisite for Christianity.”
[2]The power of the Psalms is that they teach us that prayer, even when done under certain formulations, must come from the heart. We often “sanitize” our prayers, with the belief that it is only acceptable to pray for ‘politically correct’ objectives, based on the “implication…that only ‘pious thoughts,’ not reality, are to be considered prayer material.”
[3] Yet, we see prayer as it truly is when we read “O that you would kill the wicked, O God (Ps 139:19)” and “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? (Ps 139:21),” passages of which are sometimes excised so as not to offend. The Psalms may not always express what we think of as sound theology when we see a Psalmist calling on God to perform acts of evil, but it is sound prayer. Prayer becomes great prayer not in that it gets ‘dogma’ about God right but in that it is speaking to God first and foremost more so than just speaking about God. It is the reason why Job stood in God’s favor over his three friends, who had the correct theology about God. They may have talked a good game about God, and Job may even blaspheme against the LORD, “indirectly calling him an unjust tyrant,”
[4] yet Job is the example of faith not because “Job spoke truth but that he spoke truthfully, and not that the three friends did not speak truth but that they did not speak truthfully, as Job did.”
[5] This is so because all of the talking and theologizing about God, no matter how true or correct or orthodox it may be, cannot bring you to a relationship with God by itself. Prominent in building and maintaining a relationship with God is prayer, which, at heart, is talking to God from the Lebab. Prayer is what, at the most basic level, the Psalms are. And, we can see these ‘prayers of the heart’ strongly at work in the seven penitential Psalms.
The Psalter contains 150 individual Psalms, divided into five parts, or books, indicated by the doxologies “Amen, Amen” inserted at the end of each of these five books, the marking spots being the final verse in Psalms 41, 72, 89, 106, and 150.
[6] The Psalms, themselves, can also be divided by their different literary forms. “Although in Jewish tradition, the entire Psalter has received the name, tehillim, or praises,”
[7] the name tehillim, or hymn, also refers to a “specific literary type of praise.”
[8] There are 33 hymns in the Psalter, and the hymn acts to acknowledge in praise and thanksgiving who God is and what God has done.
Another category of Psalms are the Psalms of Thanksgiving. “Closely related to the songs of praise,”
[9] these songs of todah, or praise, open up, like hymns, with a word of praise. The body of the hymn is a description of how God has answered their prayers and delivered them from whatever infirmities they were faced with.
There are also laments, both individual and communal. Communal laments are “individual laments writ large; they are the lamenting voices of the community.”
[10] That is, these laments follow a similar structure as the individual lament, only they are the prayers of a whole community, often thought to be the people of Israel, as opposed to one person crying out to God.
Individual laments, the most used literary form in the Psalter, are complaints to the LORD over an affliction with an accompanied cry for help. The structure of such individual laments “consists of the following: an appeal to the LORD for deliverance; a description of the complaint; a confession of sin (Pss 32 and 51) or affirmation of innocence (Ps 26), as the case may be; reasons the LORD should intervene (e.g., because of the psalmist’s trust); often a vow to offer sacrifice; and finally, an expressed certainty that the prayer has been heard or an anticipated thanksgiving for when it will be heard.”
[11] Amongst these individual laments are the seven that have come to be called the penitential psalms.
The seven psalms “are, as is said in the title of Psalm 102, the ‘prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the LORD.’ They are (Neale and Littledale, I, p. 125) ‘the seven weapons wherewith to oppose the seven deadly sins: the seven prayers inspired by the sevenfold Spirit to the repentant sinner: the seven guardians for the seven days of the week: the seven companions for the seven Canonical Hours of the day.’”
[12] These are the psalms for those who feel lost, who feel that God has abandoned them. When we are happy, we feel “welcomed” by God “with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face.”
[13]One day you will relax to meditate, and nothing will happen. You will read a passage of the Gospel, and within a few minutes you will fall off to sleep. This may never have happened before, or only rarely when you were very tired. But now it seems to happen every day. You try to think, and no thought comes. You try to focus on God, or on Jesus, and distractions flood your mind. You no longer feel that closeness to God, or to Jesus, that you used to feel. You are just numb. Your mind is sterile. You call out to God and all you hear is an echo. “Where are you, God?” you begin to ask. You feel as if God has abandoned you. Then you look inside yourself and wonder, “Am I bad? Have I done something terrible for God to abandon me like this? Maybe I am just not worthy of all these beautiful graces God has given me all these months. Maybe I have not been faithful enough.”[14]Those who have hit rock bottom need an example of how to talk to God during these times of vulnerability. These psalms that “explore and manifest the depth of God’s redeeming grace, His concern for Everyman, and His demand for repentance and faith”
[15] can be seen as a special way for those experiencing “this spiritual dryness, which is called the dark night of the senses.”
[16]The seven penitentials are Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. Yet, even from them, special attention can be paid to one of these, that “has been, for well over a thousand years, the most used of all psalms.”
[17] Attributed to David during his period of penance over the grave sin regarding Bathsheba, it has been used by Martin Luther to “show that sin, a great and innate evil, can be dealt with only by being born again in Christ.”
[18] Yet, if the “fame of this ‘penitential’ psalm is only partially explained by the superscription that needlessly puts it in the context of David’s sin with Bathsheba,”
[19] then why have “Godly men in all ages…written on this psalm, some to the extent of over a thousand pages”
[20]?
This psalm that has been “interpreted to be definitely related to the events described in 2 Samuel xi-xii”
[21] is Psalm 51. Though “Davidic authorship was historically improbable and impossible to prove,”
[22] it has spiritually been understood as David’s prayer in response to his incident with Bathsheba.
It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. 2 Samuel 11:2-4
According to the account in the Second Book of Samuel, David really enjoyed Bathsheba’s company, and decided that it would be best if her husband, Uriah, were out of the way. Uriah happened to be in David’s army, so David commanded Joab, one of the leaders in the Israelite army, to put Uriah on the frontlines, where the battles were most violent, and then have the fellow frontline soldiers pull back. As David had hoped for, Uriah was killed. After Bathsheba finished mourning her husband’s death, she was summoned by David, and went to him and became his wife.
David’s joy at having his cake and eating it too would eventually wade. The prophet Nathan would come to David with a message of disapproval from the LORD. To get David to see in his heart what he had done, Nathan presented him with a parable.
There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him. 2 Samuel 12:1-4
David rose in righteous anger over the rich man from the story, even going so far as to exclaim that if this story were true, that the rich man would deserve to die. When Nathan told David that the rich man was a metaphor for he, the king, David immediately realized what he had done. He now knew that he had been wrong in committing adultery with Bathsheba, and then exacerbating the crime by having her husband Uriah killed so that he could theretofore lay with Bathsheba whenever he wished. This incident would mark the end to the ‘glory years’, so to speak, of David’s reign and be the spark that the Second Book of Samuel implies lit the fire of turmoil that would engulf David’s royal family. Beginning when “The LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David”
[23] resulting in the child’s death, strife would be the rule rather than the exception until David’s death. David’s son Amnon would fall in love with his sister and David’s daughter Tamar, and “being stronger than she, he forced her and lay with her.”
[24] When David refused to punish Amnon since he was his firstborn son, Absolom, son of David and brother of Amnon and Tamar, took vengeance on Amnon for raping Tamar by killing him, resulting in his own exile from Israel and subsequent return and usurpation of the throne. David and his army would defeat Absolom’s forces, resulting in Absolom’s death.
The biblical message in this huge family feud is that David’s sin in the face of the LORD after being given the throne of Israel resulted in God punishing David through the emotional suffering and heartache of the pain that his children would inflict on one another and himself. It is from this sin that it was traditionally believed that Psalm 51 was professed by David.
What is “probably the greatest penitential prayer ever composed”
[25] has its setting in life not in Israel’s Golden Age, in the palace of a sorrowful David, but later in the pre-exilic period, with the additional verses 20 and 21 (verses 18 and 19 in the NRSV, I will explain further down) to be written in the exilic period, but not the post-exilic period, “since the walls of Jerusalem are represented in v. 20 as requiring to be rebuilt” but “in v.21 sacrifices are represented as presently defunct,”
[26] and the sacrifices were not reinstituted until after the Babylonian Exile had ended. However, this does not mean that the Psalm in no way has a historical connection to David. “The coincidences between Psalm li and the life of David, particularly in his indiscretion with Bathsheba, are hardly accidental” and “the psalm is interpreted to be definitely related to the events described in 2 Samuel xi-xii.”
[27]This was a psalm written first as a way to pray to God for a person facing personal sin and seeking penance, with a look back to David’s great sin as an example of how to repent and atone. Later, in the exilic period, the final two verses were added. Before the exile, there were periods of defeat in battles and wars, however, Israel always stood. Psalms and prayers could focus on individual issues, such as offering thanksgiving and lamentations. Once in exile, with the nation that had been promised to them since the time of Abraham destroyed—a nation that they were delivered out of Egypt to inherit—the Israelites needed to come up with a new understanding of their relationship with God. Their worship had revolved around the place of the Temple in Jerusalem, and their only hope was for a return to the glory of the past. Verses 20 and 21 say:
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, then you will delight in right sacrifices; in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
A Psalm that was seen as either being written by David for his iniquities, or at the very least written with David’s personal sin in mind was chosen for this addition, I believe, for two reasons. It harkens back to the ‘Glory Days’ or ‘Golden Age’ of Israel, an age that becomes ever grander in the mind of 6th century BC Israelites four-hundred years removed from the splendor of David’s military victories and Solomon’s reign of peace and construction of their now lost temple. The Romans of the 5th century AD would feel something similar, with the destruction of Rome taking place four centuries after their own Pax Romana golden age ushered in by Caesar Augustus, the Emperor who restored Roman glory after the fall of the Republic.
The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day forward. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt treacherously with me. So I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions, and hid my face from them.
[28]As the prophet Ezekiel says, many of the exiled Israelites believed that they were in this predicament because, somehow, they had been sinful in the eyes of the LORD. In Psalm 51, they could identify with David in needing to hash out their faults, present them to the LORD, and beg for mercy. By adding verses 20 and 21, they personalized this psalm to their situation, by adding a prayerful hope that the walls of Jerusalem would be rebuilt and that God’s altar would again be there for offerings to be made. For, David went through a period of suffering in his own family with his children Amnon, Tamar, and Absolom, before peace would be restored to the family and the kingdom through the reign of David’s Son Solomon. The Israelites of the Exile had to hold out hope that they were just going through their own ‘battle between David and Absolom’ on the way to their new Temple of Solomon, a hope that is expressed in verses 20 and 21.
Depending on the particular Bible translation, one will find different numbers for the verses in Psalm 51. In the Revised and New Revised Standard Version, the opening—To the leader. A psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba—does not have any verses attached to it. In the New American Bible, the opening—For the leader. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after his affair with Bathsheba—is labeled as verses 1 and 2. I shall hereto forth use the New American Bible’s structure to refer to verses. It is easy to note which verses in the New American Bible translation and the New Revised Standard Version translation of Psalm 51 correspond by remembering that a verse in the NAB is two numbers ahead of a verse in the NRSV. Verse 9 in the NAB would be verse 7 in the NRSV.
The common metric poetic structure of Psalm 51 for most scholars is 3 + 3 for most verses, with a few variations. That is, there are three stresses in the first part of the verse, and three in the second. In verse 7a, we have True/I was/born guilty and in 7b, a sinner/even as/my mother conceived me. Gunkel, Oesterley, and Podechard chart verses 3, 12, and 13, as 3 + 4, verse 14 as 4 + 3, and the rest as 3 + 3. Kittel, Cales, and Kraus also chart verse 3 as 3 + 4, however they vary on verses 12 and 13. Schmidt charts verse 3 as 3 + 3, differing from the others. What is common is that all chart most verses as 3 + 3, with a handful of exceptions for each, with such charting as 3 + 4, 4 + 4, 4 + 3, 4 + 3 + 3, and 3 + 2 + 3. None chart verses 1 or 2, because they are just the psalm title for 51.
[29]The structure of this Individual Lamentation is the appeal for mercy in verses 3 and 4, followed by verses 5 through 7’s confession of sinfulness. There are requests for absolution in 8 through 14. In 15 through 17 there is a vow to praise God. The sacrifice that God desires is illustrated in 18 and 19, before the Exilic Period conclusion in 20 and 21, where the lost Israelites plea for Zion to be restored to sacrificial worship.
[30]For the leader. A Psalm of David. In verse 1 we encounter the first part of the Psalm title. Psalm 51 is the first out of the Second Major Davidic Collection of Psalms grouped from 51 to 71. Psalms 3 through 41 are the First Major Davidic Collection, and the first real ‘grouping’ of Psalms, since 1 and 2 are not grouped into any categories. The Second Major Davidic Collection is a part of the larger grouping called the Elohistic Psalter, containing Psalms 42 to 83, and Appendix Psalms 84-89, and so named because the divine name Elohim, or God, is used much more frequently in this collection than the divine name Yahweh, or LORD, as opposed to the rest of the Psalter, where the reverse is true.
[31] “For the leader” and “David” are in the title for the entire Second Major Davidic Collection, except in 63 and 71, where “To the Leader” is missing, and in 66, 67, and 71, where “David” is missing. Some psalms in this grouping are titled psalms of David, like 51, while others are titled song of David, and some, Maskils and Miktahs of David. Those are Hebrew words that are untranslatable into English.
When Nathan the prophet came to him after his affair with Bathsheba. Verse 2 is the conclusion of the psalm’s title. We are given a scriptural context with which to look at this psalm. This psalm is to be seen in light of the events taking place in 2 Samuel 11-12. The title implies that the reader is to see this psalm as a lamentation by David to God over the sin he had committed, regardless of whether later historical criticism has raised doubts to the historicity of actually placing these words on David’s tongue and the ink of David’s pen.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Verse 3 begins the appeal for mercy. The psalmist is making an appeal to God for mercy in the name of God’s hesed. Hesed is Hebrew for steadfast love, and it is God’s steadfast love that the psalmist is sure of that he can call upon God in light of. Steadfast love is a love that is ever strong, that is unending, and does not go away. The psalmist invokes this aspect of God because it is this hesed that allows God to forgive any transgression.
The second part of verse 3 ties into the beginning with “according to your abundant mercy.” It inveighs both the opening “have mercy” and the “according to your steadfast love.” The psalmist has asked for God’s mercy in light of God’s steadfast love, and here, in the conclusion of verse 3, he details how he wishes for God to go about granting him mercy. God is to have mercy on the psalmist by “blot[ting] out his transgressions” according to God’s “abundant mercy.”
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Verse 4 concludes the appeal for mercy. Whereas in the final part of verse 1 the psalmist asks God to work according to his abundant mercy for the purpose of blotting out transgressions, verse 2 adds to the list of items that the psalmist wishes for God’s abundant mercy to heal. On top of blotting out his transgressions, the psalmist wishes for God to wash him from his iniquity and cleanse him from his sin.
Here, there are three uses of the idea of sin, expressed in three different Hebrew words. The first “is pesha‘, usually translated ‘transgression’, but definitely wrongly so translated. The word means ‘rebellion’.”
[32] First and foremost, we are to think of sin as a rebellion, a “rebellion against God.”
[33] There is ‘awon, usually translated as ‘iniquity.’ This connotes sin much more than a mistake.
There is no question here of accidental wrong-doing and no sense of missing the way. The word is much more serious. It involves a deliberate offense, a deliberate turning out of the way.
[34]Chattath, or sin, can be used to describe the act of “sinning through accident or in ignorance.”
[35] Chattath originally means to miss, or to miss the way, miss the mark. It is an unfortunate fall into error, and a softer word than either pesha‘ or ‘awon, which both constitute deliberate disobeying of God. Three different words for sin are used by the psalmist to show the gravity of his indiscretions, so that we may see why he has called upon God in an appeal for mercy to the extent that he asks God to act according to his hesed, or steadfast love.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. The psalmist begins his confession of sinfulness. By claiming to know his pesha‘, to know that he, himself, had rebelled against God, he is owning up to what he has done. His “admission of sin is explicit so as to exonerate God of any unjust treatment.”
[36] Yet, merely “to know one’s sin, to be aware of it, is not enough…we must be confronted with it.”
[37] When he states that his sin is ‘ever before’ him, he is allowing himself to be confronted by it. And, ‘confront’ is actually a better description than ‘before,’ since:
The rendering ‘before me’ is not truly adequate for the Hebrew, which often carries with it a sense of oppositeness, obviously in front of, even contrariness. The Latin versions retain this with contra me, for which Father Ronald Knox has ‘is never absent from my sight’ and Moffatt ‘never out of mind.’
[38]The psalmist in verse 5 is acknowledging to God that he is fully aware of what he has done and is willing to own up to his misdeeds.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. “The psalmist confesses that he has sinned, and that it is against God alone that he has sinned.”
[39] Even though the particular infraction that this psalm refers to is David’s adultery with Bathsheba, a crime against her and her husband, and the vows that they swore to one another, the psalmist makes clear that the sin is against God, and against God alone. This allows us to see that the best understanding of sin in a biblical sense is not transgressions against other persons, but a violation of God himself. When we harm others, we are also acting against God, and this opposition to God is the greater crime. We are told this by Jesus, when he proclaims in Matthew’s Gospel that “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
[40] It was disobedience of God, not harm to fellow man, that brought sin into this world, for Original Sin was “a sin against God, an act of disobedience, not a sin against neighbor.”
[41]Not only is the psalmist solely responsible for this evil act against God, God is also completely on the side of justice. “The psalmist thus acknowledges that God was in the right all along, and that he himself was in the wrong.”
[42] He is going beyond just faulting himself entirely, and placing the crime entirely as one against God, to placing in God’s hands the authority to mete out justice as he sees fit. Since the psalmist was in the wrong, and God was in the right, it is only fitting in this sixth verse that the psalmist hands over all determination of justice and judgment to God.
Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. Verse 7 closes the confession of sinfulness by offering us a sense that “the psalmist is totally sinful, wrong from the start.”
[43] Whether this is an early reference to Original Sin, however, is a debated issue. Norman Snaith argues:
It is here that the fact of hereditary sin is most clearly expressed in the Old Testament. It is small wonder that some have seen here a doctrine of the total depravity of human nature.
[44]For Roland Murphy, this verse “has nothing to do with maternal conception or intercourse, much less to do with original sin (which is not a biblical phrase).”
[45] Yet, Murphy seems to be ignoring the obvious here. It cannot be argued that this verse has nothing to do with ‘maternal conception.’ The psalmist does call himself ‘a sinner when my mother conceived me.’ The psalmist is claiming that sin is part of his nature. He was born into sin, and the inclination towards sin has always been there. Snaith is right to claim that here ‘the fact of hereditary sin is most clearly expressed.’ The psalmist not only claims to have been born into sin, but also that it comes from his parents. However, this does not necessarily mean original sin. The notion of original sin is that:
Suffering and death and injustice all came into the world late, by a fall, or fault, or accident on our part; that we were originally innocent, happy, and immortal; that we brought suffering into the world; that we remember paradise lost.
[46]This is not presupposed by the verse. All the verse reveals is that sin is hereditary. The belief in original sin is the belief that it was not always this way; that this heredity of sin had a starting point, and that this starting point is with humans, not God—with the creatures, not the Creator. The verse does not offer any hint as to whether this heredity of sin has a starting point or whether it has always been this way and is part of God’s original plan for creation. Nevertheless, verse 7 does offer us a profound insight that may even seem to be a paradox. While, “indeed,” the psalmist “was born guilty, a sinner when” his “mother conceived” him, he does not blame heredity or nature, or even his mother, for his iniquities. He owns up to his sinfulness, and claims it to be his alone, giving us an example of how to own our own sins, and take responsibility, no matter what the outside factors or influences were in shaping the decision to sin.
You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. The psalmist has already bared forth his soul. He has placed himself at the hand of God, and owned up to what he has done. Now, he begins his request for absolution and renewal. In the beginning part of verse 8, he praises God’s desire for truth in battuchoth. Battuchoth “is taken to mean ‘in the tuchoth’—that is, in the covered part (things)”
[47] or inward parts or inward being. When, in the next line, we come across the word bsathum, which literally means ‘in the closed’, in reference to “the closed and secret place of the heart,”
[48] we are shown a “parallelism which is a marked feature of Hebrew poetry.”
[49] The Hebrew gives an understanding that the English translation does not reveal. The psalmist calls on God, who has truth in his secret, inward place, to, out of that truth, grant wisdom to the psalmist in his secret, inmost heart.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. The Hebrew word ’ezob is translated as ‘hyssop,’ and it is this substance of which the psalmist invokes of God to use in his cleansing.
No one is quite sure what this is. Jewish tradition identified it as a kind of wild marjoram, known to the Arabs as tsa‘tar. There is one of these plants which is grown in the near East; it has straight, slender, leafy stalks, small heads, growing from one root. It would make a handy bunch for sprinkling, and the leaves and heads have a pungent flavour, used, when powdered, as a condiment, sometimes sprinkled over bread. It is useful for quenching thirst, because it makes the saliva flow.[50]Hyssop is a liquid from a plant that was used for anointing and other rituals. Its use for quenching thirst is also an apt metaphor, since the psalmist is asking to be purged from his sin and made clean. The hyssop will quench his thirst for forgiveness, justice, and righteousness. The psalmist cannot cleanse himself; he needs an outside source to in effect do the cleansing. The hyssop is an outside tool of which God used to heal him, since “the meaning of the verse is clear enough. God must do the cleansing from sin if the psalmist is ever to be clean from it.”
[51]Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. The psalmist, after what he expects will be his purging with hyssop, is asking to be granted joy and gladness, which “perhaps” can be seen as “the festivities that accompany a thanksgiving sacrifice after one receives forgiveness.”
[52] The reference to ‘bones’ for some critics implies “that the psalmist is ill; others are of the opinion that the language is metaphoric.”
[53] In some way, the bones refer to something that is not in the right, and the psalmist is praising God for crushing these bones, because that which is sinful deserves to be crushed, to be destroyed, so that the process of healing can begin.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. The psalmist is not asking God to hide his face as if to avoid thinking of the psalmist and his sins. “God’s ‘hiding the face’ is here a sign of forgiveness, in contrast to its usual meaning of rejection.”
[54] The psalmist wants to show God his sins; he wants to place his sins on the top of the table, so that they will be fully present to God. So that God can ‘blot out’ his ‘iniquities,’ the psalmist wants his iniquities shown completely, so that God may then in turn blot them completely out.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and steadfast spirit within me. This verse is one of only two in Hebrew Scriptures that make reference to God’s spirit, along with Isaiah 63:10-11.
But they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit; therefore he became their enemy; he himself fought against them. Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit…?[55]Isaiah has spoken of how the Israelites turned from God’s spirit, and fell out of God’s graces. They turned from their ways, though, and returned to the one ‘who put within them his holy spirit.’ This is the same spirit of whom the psalmist has turned from in his sin, and of whom he invokes now that he is seeking to change. The hesed, or steadfast love, that he asked of God to use in granting mercy on him in vs. 3, he is invoking again, this time asking for God to fill him with a spirit of hesed. The same hesed that God uses to heal, and to grant mercy with, the psalmist wishes to have in his own heart. He wants his lebab created anew with hesed, or steadfast love, so that it will no longer be hardened and unclean, but created anew, and clean, with the mercy that is at the lebab, or heart, of steadfast love.
Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. This verse, like verse 12 before it, refers back to the Isaiah passage as well. The psalmist is asking God to not bestow the same punishment on him as on the Israelites who Isaiah describes as rebelling against God’s holy spirit, causing God to become “their enemy; he himself fought against them.”
[56] This “spirit of the Lord is the power of God in and through the lives of men,”
[57] and the psalmist wants to retain this spirit, so that he may remain within God’s presence.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. The psalmist is evoking an image from his past, with the hopes of having this image come to light in his future.
In the past, the psalmist had experienced the fellowship of God (v. 13a), the endowment of the spirit (v. 13b) and the joy of Jahweh’s salvation (v. 14a); for each of these petitions for their continuance or re-establishment. For the future the psalmist is concerned to ask for a clean heart (v. 12b) and a willing spirit (v. 14b).[58]Along with the clean heart he has asked for in vs. 12, the psalmist wishes for the spirit that he asked God to not take from him in vs. 13 to be a willing spirit, a spirit that will want to be in him, and will sustain him. Sustaining in the psalmist a willing spirit will allow for the restoring of the joy of God’s salvation, “the happiness that God’s forgiveness brings.”
[59]Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. The request for absolution and renewal of verses 8 through 14 has been concluded, and the psalmist begins his vow to praise God here with a call to go out and help other sinners like himself return to God. The psalmist is promising God that, in return for granting him absolution for his own faults, that he will make it up to God, so to speak, by teaching God’s ways to other sinners. He will help God out in reconciling other sinners to God.
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. The Hebrew word damim has been translated as the plural of ‘blood,’ but “E.G. King (The Psalms, 1898) says that the word would never have been translated this way if it had not been for the traditional association with David and the murder of Uriah.”
[60] The problem that King sees may lie in the observation that “there is no modern occidental thought-pattern quite equivalent to the Hebraic concept of blood.”
[61] Whether correctly interpreted or not, and whether it hits at exactly what the Hebrew is intending, the image of bloodshed does evoke in the reader the gravity of the sinfulness from which the psalmist wishes to be delivered.
‘Deliverance’ is sometimes translated as ‘righteousness,’ from the Hebrew word tsedaqah, conveying an image of God as “a God of righteousness, a God who puts things right and is against all those social injustices.”
[62] The psalmist is promising to sing praises to God in light of his tsedaqah, his righteousness, the quality of God that rights wrongs, and thus brings about salvation.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. The psalmist’s conclusion to his vow to praise God is a very famous passage that “has been in regular liturgical use from ancient times.”
[63] Its popularity is probably due to the profundity present in its simplicity. Instead of finding something to offer, he is simply offering himself. “The psalmist offers as praise, not a burnt offering.”
[64]The final four verses, 18 through 21, are the sacrifice that God desires and the plea that Zion be restored for sacrificial worship.
Le psaume cherche, pour finir, a justifier l’absence de sacrifice, soit dans le rite penitentiel, soit dans la todah. La raison donnee ici, c’est que Yahve n’en veut pas.
On ne saurait voir la, ce qui serait sans rapport avec le contexte, une critique de l’institution elle-meme; il s’agit bien plutot de la reconnaissance d’un etat de fait: le temple etant detruit, Yahve affirme que les immolations rituelles ne sont pas necessaires (Ps 40, 7 ; 69, 32 ; Dn 3, 38-40). D’un coeur brise, d’ailleurs, le Dieu d’Israel peut faire l’equivalent d’un sacrifice pour le peche (Is 53, 10).
On n’achete pas le pardon divin avec des rites; tel est, nous l’avons dit, le sens profound des passages bibliques, consideres habituellement comme anti-sacrificiels. Plutot qu’un moyen de pression entre les mains de l’homme, le sacrifice apparait meme, dans le psaume, comme un don de Yahve; il depend, en effet, de sa bienveillance, qu’Israel puisse un jour immoler encore ses taureaux, dans une Jerusalem reconstruite (v. 20-21).
[65]This psalm is outlining a way for the Israelites to praise God without having to turn to sacrifice. Beacamp believes that the psalmist is saying that God, Yahweh, does not even want sacrifice anymore. The sacrificial rituals of the past are no longer necessary. God would rather see contrite hearts, and penitential attitudes, than ‘right’ sacrifices. The psalmist is suggesting that God, in light of the destruction of the Temple, as the writer of verses 20 and 21 would see it, recognizes that different sacrifices must be made. Outward sacrificial rites in the context of the Temple cannot be done without a Temple, therefore interior sacrificial attitudes should replace them.
For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. There was a growing understanding among the Israelites of the “danger of thinking that the sacrifice itself is effective apart from right intention on the part of the one whose behalf the offering is made.”
[66] It is not in what is done outwardly that one is made right with God; that the psalmist reconciles himself to God. It is the interior attitude, and the openness of the person in his lebab to God’s spirit of hesed.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. In verse 18, we learn that God is not pleased with burnt offerings. We learn here exactly what kind of sacrifice God is pleased with. God wishes for a broken spirit. The psalmist’s spirit has strayed, and in order to receive the hesed, or steadfast spirit, he asked for in verse 12, he must offer up his broken, contrite, spirit.
The first half of vs. 19a is correspondent to the second half of vs. 19b, and the second half of vs. 19a is correspondent to the first half of vs. 19b. We learn in 19a that the sacrifice that God will accept is a broken spirit. In 19b, it is explained further, when the psalmist tells us that a broken and contrite lebab, or heart, extending upon the broken spirit, is a sacrifice that God will not despise, coming full circle to the admonition that this will be acceptable to God.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. This verse, and verse 21 to follow, “stand in deliberate tension with”
[67] verses 18 and 19. Whereas 18 and 19 are explicitly calling the reader to turn from burnt offerings and other outward sacrifices towards an inner contrition and change of heart, verse 20 immediately calls for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the restoration of Zion. This quick change in tone leads many scholars to believe that it was an addition, as mentioned above. “The disclosure of v.18 that sacrifice was still able to offered”
[68] since vs. 18 calls for abandoning sacrifice in favor of a contrite heart, hints at the idea that verses 3 through 19 (remember, vs. 1 and 2 is the title) were written in the pre-exilic period, before the Kingdom fell. In 20 and 21, the psalmist’s prayer is one of hope for a future in which sacrifice may be offered again. These verses seem to be from the exilic period, when there was no longer any Temple to offer sacrifices at.
Then you will delight in right sacrifices; in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar. We are presented here with a contrast. In verses 18 and 19, where sacrificial offerings can be done, the psalmist calls on the reader to avoid these in favor of a contrite and broken heart. In verses 20 and 21, where sacrificial offerings cannot be made, the people of Israel have had their spirit broken, and pray to God for a future wherein they will be able to once again make these offerings that were once looked upon as not fitting for God. Have the Israelites become selfish in their captivity, intent on making the sacrifices that “apart from right intention”
[69] cannot be effective? I do not believe it need be seen that way. One could argue that it was not the sacrifices and burnt offerings that were unworthy of God. It was the attitude with which they were offered that was not worthy. The psalmist in verses 18 and 19 is calling upon the reader to pull back from burnt offerings, so that he will be able to place the focus on contriteness of heart and interior attitude towards God. Once in exile, there is no pride left amongst the Israelites. The Kingdom is gone. Hope in the covenant made to Abraham long ago is not easy to come by. Their spirits in this period were surely broken. The psalmist can ask for God to restore Jerusalem for the sake of making burnt offerings, without any contradiction of verses 18 and 19. The psalmist knows now that a clean heart is what matters is reconciling himself to God. A burnt offering is worthy of God’s praise when done with a contrite heart.
We all go through periods where we feel unworthy of God’s love, where our actions appear to us so abominable, that we will say to the Lord, “you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”
[70] Psalm 51 is a place to look during these times of despair, when we have “broken and contrite hearts” that we hope “O God, you will not despise.”
[71] We can gain inspiration through the example of David, who, though maybe not actually writing this, is surely to be thought of when reading the penitential words of the Psalmist. Psalm 51 reveals that even a sinner as great as David can be reconciled to God. In fact, God is waiting with open arms, with hesed or steadfast love, for the psalmist, and for all who strive to follow the psalmist’s words, to allow the Lord to “teach me wisdom in my secret heart.”
[72][1] Murphy, Roland E. The Gift of the Psalms (Peabody, Ma: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.; 2000), 36
[2] Rahner, Karl. “Poetry and the Christian,” in vol. 4 of Theological Investigations
(Baltimore: Helicon; 1966), 363
[3] Murphy, 48
[4] Kreeft, Peter. Three Philosophies of Life; Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity, Job: Life as Suffering,
Song of Songs: Life as Love (San Francisco: Ignatius; 1989), 70
[5] Ibid, 89
[6] Murphy, 7
[7] Ibid, 9
[8] Ibid, 9
[9] Ibid, 10
[10] Ibid, 13
[11] Ibid, 12
[12] Snaith, Norman. The Seven Psalms (London: Epworth; 1964), 9
[13] Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed (New York: Bantom Books; 1976), 4
[14] Girzone, Joseph. Trinity (New York: Doubleday; 2002), 113-114
[15] Snaith, 7
[16] Girzone, 115
[17] Snaith, 47
[18] Ibid, 47
[19] Murphy, 98
[20] Snaith, 47
[21] Dalglish, Edward R. Psalm Fifty-One: In the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Patternism
(Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill; 1962), 209
[22] Murphy, 22
[23] 2 Samuel 12:15
[24] 2 Samuel 13:14
[25] Dalglish, 277
[26] Ibid, 209
[27] Ibid, 209
[28] Ezekiel, 39:22-24
[29] Dalglish, 73
[30] Murphy, 98-99
[31] Begg, Christopher. Notes, page 25
[32] Snaith, 50
[33] Ibid, 50
[34] Ibid, 50
[35] Ibid, 50
[36] Murphy, 99
[37] Snaith, 52
[38] Ibid, 52
[39] Ibid, 52
[40] Matthew 25:40
[41] Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain (New York: Simon & Schuster; 1996), 66
[42] Snaith, 53
[43] Murphy, 99
[44] Snaith, 53
[45] Murphy, 99
[46] Kreeft, Peter. Making Sense Out of Suffering (Ann Arbor, Mi: Servant Books; 1986), 93
[47] Snaith, 55
[48] Ibid, 55
[49] Ibid, 55
[50] Ibid, 56
[51] Ibid, 55-56
[52] Murphy, 99
[53] Dalglish, 142
[54] Murphy, 99
[55] Isaiah 63:10-11
[56] Isaiah 63:10
[57] Snaith, 58
[58] Dalglish, 161
[59] Murphy, 99
[60] Snaith, 60
[61] Dalglish, 173-174
[62] Snaith, 61
[63] Ibid, 63
[64] Murphy, 99
[65] Beacamp, E. Le Psautier: Ps 1-72 (Paris: J. Gabalda et Cie Editeurs; 1976), 226-227. The Psalm seeks, in order to accommodate, to justify the absence of a sacrifice, be it within the Penitential rite, be it within the “todah.” The upbraiding reason here is that Yahweh does not want it. / One sees there, that which is not without relevance with the context, a critique of the institution even; he acts preferably with the acknowledgement of a state of feat: the temple was destroyed and Yahweh affirmed that the sacrificial rituals are not necessary (Ps 40:7, Ps 69:32, Deut 3:38-40). Of a broken heart, elsewhere, the God of Israel can make the equivalent of a sacrifice for the sin (Is 53:10). / One does not purchase the divine pardon with rites; such is, us who have fixed, the profound sense of biblical passages, considered habitually as anti-sacrificial. Preferably that a means of pressure between the hand of man, the sacrifice appears even, within the Psalm, as a gift of Yahweh; he depends, in effect, of his goodwill, that Israel be able to one day still sacrifice again, in a rebuilt Jerusalem (v. 20-21).
[66] Snaith, 63
[67] Murphy, 99
[68] Dalglish, 223
[69] Snaith, 63
[70] Psalm 51:6-7
[71] Ibid 51:19
[72] Ibid 51:8
