Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary
Select a resource above

Psalm 51

Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

1

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

2

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

 

3

For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

4

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.

5

Indeed, I was born guilty,

a sinner when my mother conceived me.

 

6

You desire truth in the inward being;

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

7

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8

Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

9

Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

 

10

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

11

Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

12

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing spirit.

 

13

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will return to you.

14

Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,

O God of my salvation,

and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

 

15

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

16

For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

17

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

 

18

Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;

rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,

19

then you will delight in right sacrifices,

in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;

then bulls will be offered on your altar.


14 Deliver me from bloods His recurring so often to petitions for pardon, proves how far David was from flattering himself with unfounded hopes, and what a severe struggle he sustained with inward terrors. According to some, he prays in this verse to be delivered from the guilt of the blood of Uriah, and, in general, of the whole army. 270270     This opinion, although disapproved of by our Author, is very generally held by commentators. When blood is used in the plural number as here, it usually denotes murder or manslaughter, and the guilt following thereupon: as in Genesis 4:11, “The voice of thy brother’s bloods crieth unto me from the ground;” 1 Chronicles 22:8, “Thou hast shed bloods abundantly;” and Psalm 9:13, “When he maketh inquisition for bloods.” See also Psalm 106:38. “A man of bloods” is a bloody man, a man who is guilty of bloodshed, Psalm 5:6; 26:9; 59:2; and 55:23. David’s conduct towards Uriah, forming as it did a dark and an atrocious deed of treachery and cruelty which has few parallels in the history of mankind, must, on his recovery to a sense of its real character, have inflicted on his soul an agony which cannot be told. He escaped being tried before an earthly tribunal; but his conscience told him that he stood at the bar of Heaven, laden with the guilt of murder; and he was convinced that the mercy of God alone could pardon him and purify his conscience. No wonder then that he cries out with such emphasis and earnestness, O God! thou God of my salvation! deliver me! The Chaldee reads, “Deliver me from the judgment of murder.” But the term bloods in Hebrew may denote any capital crime, and, in my opinion, he is here to be considered as alluding to the sentence of death, to which he felt himself to be obnoxious, and from which he requests deliverance. By the righteousness of God, which he engages to celebrate, we are to understand his goodness; for this attribute, as usually ascribed to God in the Scriptures, does not so much denote the strictness with which he exacts vengeance, as his faithfulness in fulfilling the promises and extending help to all who seek him in the hour of need. There is much emphasis and vehemency in the mode of his address, O God! the God of my salvation, intimating at once how tremblingly he was alive to the danger of his situation, and how strongly his faith terminated upon God as the ground of his hope. Similar is the strain of the verse which follows. He prays that his lips may be opened; in other words, that God would afford him matter of praise. The meaning usually attached to the expression is, that God would so direct his tongue by the Spirit as to fit him for singing his praises. But though it is true that God must supply us with words, and that if he do not, we cannot fail to be silent in his praise, David seems rather to intimate that his mouth must be shut until God called him to the exercise of thanksgiving by extending pardon. In another place we find him declaring that a new song had been put in his mouth, (Psalm 40:3,)and it seems to be in this sense that he here desires his lips to be opened. He again signifies the gratitude which he would feel, and which he would express, intimating, that he sought the mercy of God with no other view than that he might become the herald of it to others. My mouth, he says emphatically, shall show forth thy praise.


VIEWNAME is study