Psalm 51

Psalms 51:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads A Psalm of David, to the chief Musician, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba, fixing the psalm's occasion as 2 Samuel 12's confrontation. David appeals to God's own character before naming his sin, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, three words for mercy piled up before one word for the offense. Wash me throughly and cleanse me from my sin ask for more than pardon, a moral scrubbing that reaches the sin's stain and not only its guilt.

Psalms 51:3-5

David's confession names the sin as fully his own, I acknowledge my transgressions, then turns from Bathsheba and Uriah to name the offended party alone, against thee, thee only, have I sinned. The older commentators read this not as forgetting the wrong done to Uriah and his house but as placing every sin, however many people it touches, finally before God, whose verdict David accepts in advance, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest. Shapen in iniquity carries the confession back of the act itself to the condition David was born into, read by the Reformed tradition as a statement of original sin and by others as poetic overstatement of personal unworthiness, the positions named without settling between them.

Psalms 51:6-7

Thou desirest truth in the inward parts turns the psalm from the deed to the heart that produced it, the hidden part where God alone can teach wisdom. Purge me with hyssop borrows the ritual of Leviticus 14's cleansing of the leper and Numbers 19's water of purification, the plant used to sprinkle blood or water on what uncleanness had touched. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow reaches past the hyssop's ritual picture to ask for the reality the ritual only pictured.

Psalms 51:8-9

Make me to hear joy and gladness asks for more than relief from guilt; David wants the sound of gladness restored after what he calls the bones which thou hast broken, the crushing weight of Nathan's parable landing on him. Hide thy face from my sins reverses the psalm's opening plea in miniature, asking God to look away from the sin so his face can again be turned toward the sinner. The broken bones are read literally by some of the older writers as physical affliction following the sin and figuratively by others as the felt weight of conviction, both readings named without settling which David intended.

Psalms 51:10-12

Create in me a clean heart: Create in me a clean heart, O God uses the Hebrew word for creation out of nothing that opens Genesis 1, asking not for repair but for a new making, since the old heart proved incapable of the purity being asked for. Take not thy holy spirit from me is read by most of the bench against 1 Samuel 16:14, where the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul after his own unrepented disobedience, David's fear that his sin might cost him what Saul lost; other readers take it more generally of God's ordinary presence with any believer, the New Testament's indwelling not yet in view. Cast me not away from thy presence carries the same fear in the psalm's own words, and uphold me with thy free spirit closes the plea asking not for merit but for a willing spirit sustained by God's own willingness.

Psalms 51:13-15

Then will I teach transgressors thy ways turns the psalm outward for the first time, David's own forgiveness becoming instruction for others rather than a private relief. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God names Uriah's death plainly, the one part of the whole affair no ceremony could purge, only God's own deliverance. O Lord, open thou my lips anticipates the praise of the verses that follow, asking for the very speech the confession has so far spent on confession alone.

Psalms 51:16-17

For thou desirest not sacrifice states plainly that no animal offering, however correctly performed, answers a sin like this one; else would I give it concedes David would gladly offer if offering were the answer. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit relocates the true offering inside the man rather than on the altar, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise standing as the psalm's own definition of what God actually receives. The older writers read this not as abolishing the sacrificial system David still worshipped under but as naming what every sacrifice under that system was meant to carry with it.

Psalms 51:18-19

Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion widens the prayer from David's own soul to Jerusalem's walls, a line some read as David's own hope for the city he had brought under one throne and others read as a later liturgical hand extending a personal psalm for use after the walls had actually fallen, the positions named without settling between them. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness answers verse 16 rather than contradicting it, the burnt offering and whole burnt offering welcomed again not because the ceremony changed but because the offerer has. The psalm's sacrifice turn is complete across these two verses, the altar refused at verse 16 and received at verse 19 with the broken heart standing between them as the difference.