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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.


17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. He had shown that sacrifices have no such efficacy in procuring the Divine favor as the Jews imagined; and now he declares that he needed to bring nothing whatever to God but a contrite and humbled heart. Nothing more is necessary, on the part of the sinner, than to prostrate himself in supplication for Divine mercy. The plural number is used in the verse to express more forcibly the truth, that the sacrifice of repentance is enough in itself without any other. Had he said no more than that this kind of sacrifice was peculiarly acceptable to God, the Jews might easily have evaded his argument by alleging that this might be true, and yet other sacrifices be equally agreeable in his sight; just as the Papists in our own day mix up the grace of God with their own works, rather than submit to receive a gratuitous pardon for their sins. In order to exclude every idea of a pretended satisfaction, David represents contrition of heart as comprehending in itself the whole sum of acceptable sacrifices. And in using the term sacrifices of God, he conveys a tacit reproof to the proud hypocrite, who sets a high value upon such sacrifices as are of his own unauthorised fancy, when he imagines that by means of them he can propitiate God. But here a difficulty may be started. “If the contrite heart,” it may be said, “hold a higher place in the estimation of God than all sacrifices, does it not follow that we acquire pardon by our penitence, and that thus it ceases to be gratuitous?” In reply to this, I might observe, that David is not speaking at this time of the meritorious condition by which pardon is procured, but, on the contrary, asserting our absolute destitution of merit by enjoining humiliation and contrition of spirit, in opposition to everything like an attempt to render a compensation to God. The man of broken spirit is one who has been emptied of all vain-glorious confidence, and brought to acknowledge that he is nothing. The contrite heart abjures the idea of merit, and has no dealings with God upon the principle of exchange. Is it objected, that faith is a more excellent sacrifice that that which is here commended by the Psalmist, and of greater efficacy in procuring the Divine favor, as it presents to the view of God that Savior who is the true and only propitiation? I would observe, that faith cannot be separated from the humility of which David speaks. This is such a humility as is altogether unknown to the wicked. They may tremble in the presence of God, and the obstinacy and rebellion of their hearts may be partially restrained, but they still retain some remainders of inward pride. Where the spirit has been broken, on the other hand, and the heart has become contrite, through a felt sense of the anger of the Lord, a man is brought to genuine fear and self-loathing, with a deep conviction that of himself he can do or deserve nothing, and must be indebted unconditionally for salvation to Divine mercy. That this should be represented by David as constituting all which God desires in the shape of sacrifice, need not excite our surprise. He does not exclude faith, he does not condescend upon any nice division of true penitence into its several parts, but asserts in general, that the only way of obtaining the favor of God is by prostrating ourselves with a wounded heart at the feet of his Divine mercy, and supplicating his grace with ingenuous confessions of our own helplessness.


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