Psalm 32
11 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 38×3Proverbs 28×2Romans 4×1Isaiah 44×1Psalms 85×1John 1×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The second penitential psalm; Paul quotes its opening in Romans 4. 'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.' Silence rotted the bones, day and night the hand was heavy. 'I acknowledged my sin unto thee… and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.' Therefore let every godly one pray in a time of finding. 'Thou art my hiding-place.' Instruction follows: be not as the horse or mule needing bit and bridle; lovingkindness compasses him that trusteth in Jehovah. 'Be glad in Jehovah, and rejoice, ye righteous.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 32The history
"Maschil" in the heading marks a psalm meant to instruct. This one is a teaching psalm built out of a personal collapse.
"My moisture is turned into the drought of summer" is a precise complaint in that climate. From roughly May to October it does not rain at all in Judah. The ground cracks, cisterns drop, streams vanish, and everything green goes brown and brittle. The psalmist says his bones aged and his strength dried out like that, month after month, while he stayed silent.
"Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle" comes from real animal handling. A horse or mule had to be controlled by hardware in its mouth because it would not respond otherwise; an ox worked to voice and a light goad. The insult is that God would rather guide with his eye — the way a master directs a servant across a room with a look — than have to fit a bridle.
"In the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him" is the other half of that climate. When the autumn rains break, dry wadis run in minutes and carry off anyone in the channel. Israelites feared both extremes: months of nothing, then a wall of water.
What it meant to them
For Israel the psalm did something the sacrificial system alone could not: it described what silence costs and what confession does, from the inside.
The word it uses for forgiveness means lifted off and carried away — the load taken from the back, not merely excused. That is what an Israelite walked away from the altar hoping had actually happened.
Sources cited
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David on Psalm 32
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 32. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.