Psalm 51 is an
individual lament and one of several psalms of repentance, in which the speaker
is not the victim of sin but its perpetrator. James L. Mays suggests that “it
may have been composed for use by the congregation, and individuals as part of
it, in connection with the Day of Atonement (see Lev. 16:30).”[1] Tradition
connects the psalm with David’s affair with Bathsheba and Nathan’s subsequent
conviction of the king’s sin (2 Sam. 11-12). In that case as well as in this,
the sinner’s reaction was to cry out, “I have sinned against the LORD!” For David, the
immediate result was forgiveness. Taking his cue from David, the psalmist is
audacious in approaching God, firm in his belief that God can redeem him, wants
to redeem him, and desires
a relationship so personal that forgiveness and grace not only are certain
to come, but also will exemplify God’s sovereignty and power by coming in
abundance.
While
the psalm begins in a place of desperation, it moves swiftly to absolute
certainty that the God who acted in the lives of such fallen heroes as David
will act again in the psalmist’s own life and will restore it to wholeness. Brutal
honesty is the first item on the psalmist’s agenda, for he knows that this is
necessary for a fresh start. A cry for mercy leads to an announcement that the
psalmist has sinned against God and deserves judgment. Whatever unnamed
commandment he has broken, he admits that he is guilty as charged and that God
has every right to judge him severely. Nevertheless, he fully expects a
merciful response from God, for this is his understanding of what God does: “as
befits Your faithfulness; in keeping with Your abundant compassion” (vv. 3-4).[2] Neal
H. Walls points out that this is covenant language and implies that this means God
has a responsibility to forgive the penitent:
Psalm 51 shares much of its vocabulary
with God’s self-revelation in Exodus 34:6-7, which describes the LORD as
“merciful and gracious” (וְחַנּוּן רַחוּם),
“abounding in steadfast love [חֶסֶד] and faithfulness [אֱמֶת],”
and “forgiving iniquity and transgression of sin.”[3]
Furthermore,
the psalmist calls out, “wash me thoroughly,” translated in the Anchor Bible as “wash me again and
again.” According to Mitchell Dahood, “The psalmist seems to suggest that the
number of washings should equal the number of God’s mercies.”[4] If
God is as merciful as scripture and tradition teach, and if God is faithful to
the covenant established with Israel, then the psalmist knows he can fully
expect that mercy to become available to him.
It is commonly remarked
by preachers that justice means getting what we deserve, mercy means not getting what we deserve, and grace
means getting what we don’t deserve. The
psalmist deserves justice and pleads for mercy, but he fully expects grace. He claims
that his sin is deep enough to be inherent: “Indeed I was born with iniquity;
with sin my mother conceived me” (v. 7). Even this bleak assessment, however, will
not hold him back from his pleas. He implores God to do things that only God
can do. How can anyone “un-sin” (תְּחַטְּאֵנִי) the sinful
(v. 9)?[5] How
can bones that have been crushed exult again (v. 10)? How can the sinner’s
iniquities be deleted from the divine bookkeeping (v. 11)?[6] Yet
God’s grace can bring righteousness out of sin and joy out of pain, and God can
even change the basic mathematics of sin. He has done so before, so the psalmist
expects him to do it again.
This expectation
culminates in verse 12: “Fashion [create] a pure heart for me, O God; create [renew]
in me a steadfast spirit.” Here the psalmist invokes the most powerful of God’s
creative powers. If a heart is so corrupt that it cannot be redeemed, God can
create (בְּרָא) a new one from scratch, in the same way
that God created (בָּרָא) the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1)! Edwin
McNeill Poteat adds, “And [the psalmist] even dares to insist that such
response as his contrition evokes from God shall—much or little—be ungrudging.”[7]
Indeed, there is
nothing stingy about God’s grace. Dahood interprets the finer points of Hebrew
word order to translate “till I am pure” as “I’ll indeed be purer than gushing water,” and “till I am whiter than
snow” as “I’ll be much whiter than
snow”[8]
[italics mine]. The psalmist is certain not of a sufficient outcome, but of an
abundant outcome. And what of “the bones You have crushed” (v. 10)? Dahood is
uneasy about this translation, as it seems to accuse God of having done wrong,
either physically or spiritually, to a man who is confessing his own wrongdoing.
He suggests an alternate verb, “purify,” which is one letter off from “crush,”
but even Dahood admits the argument for it is weak.[9] Perhaps
the shock of the suggestion that God has crushed the psalmist’s bones reveals
the extremes of God’s power: God will even restore that which He Himself has
destroyed—and not only restore, but bring back to the point of rejoicing!
The
psalmist does not expect to get something for nothing, what some call “cheap
grace.” Indeed, that kind of transactional language is not appropriate, for just
as he is certain God will redeem him no matter what, the psalmist is intent on
praising God no matter what. But he cannot do so from within his state of sin:
he needs God to restore him first, and now is the time for that to happen.
After that, “I will teach transgressors Your ways” (v. 15), “I may sing forth
your beneficence (v. 16),” “let my mouth declare your praise” (v. 17).
Verses 18 and
following present and wrestle with a radical idea for postexilic Israel. The psalmist
is so close to God that he even sees through the futility of the temple
sacrifice system to remit sins. William R. Taylor writes:
It is consonant with his spiritual temper
that [the psalmist] considers no offering of thanks for the answering of his
appeal acceptable to God except that of a broken and contrite heart. Such a
point of view is so revolutionary in its implications for the traditional
sacrificial system that a later editor, fearful of its influence, sought to
qualify it by the addition of vss. 18-19 [20-21].[10]
While there is
no indication that the psalmist condemns the system of temple sacrifice, he
most certainly does not deem it necessary in order for God’s grace to function.
Perhaps it came as a welcome relief to Jews living in exile to imagine that
one’s relationship with God might require no intermediary.
Even
from a poetic perspective, Psalm 51 focuses on the personal relationship
between the psalmist and God. No wider community is acknowledged, nor does such
a community seem relevant to the situation until the final two verses which
Taylor mentions above. Like many other psalms, this one revels in parallelism,
but Psalm 51’s poetic cadence also relies on the first person object “-ni”
ending for a series of imperative verbs that begin in verses 3-4: חָנֵּנִי (have
mercy on me), כַּבְּסֵנִי (wash me), טַהֲרֵנִי
(purify me). In verse 6 we see a shift from
imperative pleas to recognition of God’s role in the situation, and when this happens,
many verbs end with the
“-kha” second person singular form, creating a new cadence: לְךָ (against you), לְבַדְּךָ (against you
only), בְּדָבְרֶךָ (when you speak), בְשָׁפְטֶךָ
(when you judge). Verse 9 restores the progression of imperatives: תְּחַטְּאֵנִי (purge or “un-sin” me), תְּכַבְּסֵנִי (wash me), תַּשְׁמִיעֵנִי (make me hear). In verses 13-14, the two styles alternate
without a break: אַל-תַּשְׁלִיכֵנִי (cast me
not away) מִלְּפָנֶיךָ (from your presence), קָדְשְׁךָ וְרוּחַ (and do not take
away) מִמֶּנִּי תִּקַּח-אַל (your holy spirit from me). The two
endings continue to appear throughout the remainder of the psalm. The speaker
knows whom he addresses, and he expects God to act in a way that will produce abundantly
positive results in his life—all for the purpose of reasserting and showing
forth God’s glory.
James
Mays writes, “Many of the prayers for help say, ‘Change my situation so
I may praise you.’ This one says, ‘Change me; I am the problem.’”[11] Also,
he notes that Psalm 51 “is not merely an expression of human remorse or
preoccupation with failure and guilt; it looks beyond self to God and lays hold
on the marvelous possibilities of God’s grace.”[12]
The Psalmist knows that not only can
God do amazing, life-restoring things, but God wants to do them and is so inclined at every available opportunity.
One
year on the first Sunday in Lent, I told the members of my youth group, “Lent
is a great time to work on things about yourself that need to change.” A
14-year-old boy named Adam piped up, “Or you could let God work on changing
you.” I was totally called up short. I told Adam so on the spot, and I quoted
him in a sermon the very next week. Adam’s comment reminded me of a simple, basic
premise of our faith: God is always at work in our lives, but we get to decide
how much of this work to allow. This psalmist felt the same way, and it was on
that faith that he staked his ability to approach his creator with bold
confidence and ask for salvation—even from within the depths of sin.
End Notes
[1] James L. Mays, Psalms
(Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1994), 199.
[2] The translation cited throughout this paper is the Tanakh (Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society, 1985). Consequently, I am using the verse numbering scheme
that treats the superscription as verses 1-2.
[3] Neal H. Walls, “Psalm 51:1-17, Exegetical
Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word,
Year A, Volume 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 13.
[4] Mitchell Dahood, S.J., The Anchor Bible: Psalms II (51-100) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday
& Company, Inc., 1968), 3.
[5] Ibid. See also William R. Taylor, “Psalm 51 Exegesis”
in The Interpreter’s Bible Volume IV:
Psalms, Proverbs (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1955), 270.
[6] Dahood, 3; his language refers
specifically to v. 3.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Dahood, 5.
[9] Dahood, 7.
[10] Taylor, 267.
[11] Mays, 202.
[12] Ibid, 199.
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